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Manhattan murder highlights parole officers’ caseloads
By DEBORAH A. MILES
When Darryl Littlejohn was arrested for violating his parole in conjunction with
the investigation of the murder of a 24-year-old Boston graduate student, Imette
St. Guillen, the issue of overwhelming caseloads for parole officers also gained
national attention.
Littlejohn was hired as a bouncer at The Falls, a bar located in the SoHo
section of Manhattan.
If the managers at the bar had conducted a criminal background check, they would
have found Littlejohn had misrepresented himself and was a seven-time felon.
Working as a bouncer violated his parole-imposed curfew of 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.
At the time of this writing, no arrest for the murder has been made, and
Littlejohn is being held on parole violation at the Rikers Island jail. As this
high profile murder case began to unfold with dozens of reporters digging into
the facts, the number of caseloads assigned to parole officers became a second
story for news outlets.
The issue generated interest in The New York Times, New York Post, New York
Daily News, Newsday, The Chief Leader, The Boston Globe and almost a dozen TV
and radio stations. In numerous radio interviews, PEF Division 236 Council
Leader Manuelita Clemente repeated, “The parole officer in charge of Littlejohn
did her job. Littlejohn did not tell her about the after-hours bouncer job and
she couldn’t be around him 24/7.”
The officer had a caseload of 110 people, nearly double the standard caseload.
“When you have that many cases, you can’t properly monitor all the parolees. If
parole officers had the time to establish a relationship with parolees, officers
could follow their instincts and know when a person is on the verge of violating
parole and intervene.
“High caseloads endanger public safety,” Clemente said. “This is just one very
sad and unfortunate example.”
Littlejohn’s parole officer was one of 27 Queens-based officers who signed a PEF
class-action grievance about the excessively high caseloads just prior to the
Littlejohn news blitz.
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The Communicator April 2006
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