RESPONDING TO ASSAULTS — A panel of experts advise PEF leaders and managers at the state Department of Correctional Services on how to respond if an employee is assaulted. Panelists at the May Joint L-M Conference are Clinton County DA Andrew Wylie, NYS Police Sr. Investigator Peter Arcadi, Clinton CF Supt. Dale Artus and PEF Region 2 Coord. Jim Carr. — Photos by Cynthia Demo

PEF-DOCS joint conference, training draw rave reviews

By SHERRY HALBROOK
According to comments from the more than 70 local PEF leaders and about a dozen managers from state prisons throughout New York who took part in the annual joint labor-management conference last month, it was one of the best ever.

Direct line to the top
The three-day conference, which was held this year in Lake Placid, gives the union’s local leaders a chance to meet and interact with top managers at the state Department of Correctional Services. It even features an “open forum” where the PEF participants can go to a mic and ask questions of the top managers or comment on issues.

“We had about six or seven DOCS nurses at the conference who met with PEF nurse organizer Nancy Wolff on the first night to prepare questions and comments about overtime, staffing and pay that they brought up at the open forum,” said Tom Donahue, PEF’s labor-management chair at DOCS.

“Many participants told me they felt the conference was very well done this year,” Donahue said.

Joint training a first
For the first time, the conference featured training which was jointly developed and presented by DOCS and PEF.

PEF Region 2 Coordinator Jim Carr, a teacher at Elmira Correctional Facility, participated in a four-person panel discussion of how to respond to assaults on prison staff.

Carr led off, talking about how he and other PEF leaders at Elmira have responded to such incidents and what they learned from it. He was followed by Clinton CF Superintendent Dale Artus, NYS Police BCI Sr. Investigator Peter Arcadi and Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie.

“I talked about what local PEF leaders need to do immediately when a member is injured to get them help and support, and how to follow up with them and family,” Carr said.

One of the first responders may be the facility’s Blood Emergency Response Team to deal with any possible exposure to HIV or other pathogens.

Other prison employees may be upset by the incident and need support from their union and DOCS, such as a DOCS crisis intervention team to help them talk through their anxieties and concerns.

“PEF has a lot of resources to help the victim, such as ATAC (Assault, Trauma and Attack Coverage) insurance benefits and expert advice on navigating the Workers Comp system,” Carr said.

Artus talked about the assaulted employee’s rights, and the responsibilities of the the employee, the union and DOCS. Arcadia explained the necessity of preserving evidence and aiding the police investigation. And Wylie discussed the need to testify and support prosecution efforts.

Jim Gonyo, PEF’s Health and Safety chair at DOCS, said he thought it was “a big awakening for a lot of people to hear that crimes committed inside the prisons are not necessarily prosecuted the same way as the same kinds of crimes committed outside.”

Wylie explained that counties often can’t afford to prosecute every crime, so the DAs focus on the strongest cases and those that will affect the greatest numbers of people.

Building on common ground
PEF Region 7 Coordinator Bill Crotty, a teacher at Clinton CF, said, “Usually, DOCS has done their trainings and we have done ours because we couldn’t agree. This workshop showed DOCS and PEF both recognized the importance of the safety and response problem and they both put a lot of effort into preparing the training.”

PEF participants met at the end of the conference and suggested topics they’d like to see addressed in the future. such as civil service and how the state goes about deciding the appropriate pay grades for various jobs.

The Communicator June 2006

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