Dear COBA Members ;

Since the new County Administration took over in January, COBA has engaged numerous times with the County Exec's Office, Civil Service and County HR over the continued staffing crisis that is plaguing our Dept. This in addition to trying to resolve our Contract, Longevity and HALT issues. We have expressed our dismay at how our Dept's needs were ignored throughout the Curran administration, and their failure to keep pace with the rate of attrition as compared to the Police Dept which seems to have no problem whatsoever in hiring/staffing.

We realize that other Depts in the County (other than PD) are also working very short staffed and services have suffered greatly in this County, all of which was exacerbated by the COVID Pandemic. But our issues are different. Our numbers have shrunk, as has that of every other Dept of Corrections in New York State mainly since 2019, because Municipalities attempted to take advantage and reduce the cost of incarceration under Bail Reform Laws. Most large Counties, including New York City delayed hiring while they tried to gauge what their staffing levels would be after Bail settled in. Then Covid hit throwing everything completely out of whack. In Nassau County alone, we lost 67 Correction Officers in 2020 and hired ZERO because of Covid restrictions. This problem is echoed throughout our neighbors in Suffolk and Westchester. This shortsightedness only resulted in staffing shortages, exorbitant overtime and stressed out Officers.

Since 2020, the County did not make up for that loss and hired as they usually do, only keeping pace with what they thought was the regular attrition rate, even though that was also greater than anticipated, while never making up for 2020 and that large loss of staff.

While all of this was going on, we also continue to point out that there has been a major disconnect between Nassau County Civil Service, Nassau's Budget Office and our Dept as to what our proper staffing levels are supposed to be. None of them appeared to be talking the same language to each other. During the Curran Administration, the County failed each year to hire even the proper budgeted amount of Officers. This was also further problematic when you have 3 different Sheriff's Dept Administrations in 4 years and a revolving door of support administrators that apparently have no concept of how to deal with the bureaucracy in Nassau County. This has resulted in a lot of frustrating wheel spinning that has borne no real fruit, while our Members continue to work unsafe and unhealthy amounts of forced overtime, and numerous areas of our facility are run daily without proper supervisors. This is completely unacceptable. Years of mismanagement and lack of attention to even the most basic of issues, like staffing have left us in a hole that has been increasingly harder and harder to crawl out of.

Where we stand now:

Over the past 2 months, COBA has met with, conferenced, zoomed (you name it) numerous times including now a recurring 2 week status meeting with Civil Service, the County Exec's Reps, County HR and our Dept to formulate a plan to properly hire, staff and control this Dept before the place falls down around our heads.

A commitment was made by the County to hire 3 classes of recruits this year, and promote the proper amount of staff to adequately supervise our facility.

To be clear, this Dept has lost over 34 Supervisors of all ranks (Cpl through Capt) since 2018 and only promoted back 7 total (Cpls and Sgts), only 6 of which are working in line positions. This in and of itself is completely unacceptable.

The first recruit class under this plan, consisting of 20 recruits was put together and scheduled to start April 8th, 2022. We know this is a low number itself but it's a start, again due to the consistent disconnect between our Dept, Civil Service and the County, in their failure to properly prepare. This class was to be followed up or possibly overlapped with a next class. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Additional offers of employment were also sent out a few weeks ago, with those candidates now coming in this week for interviews. Additional canvassing, backgrounds etc are going out on top of that. We all know someone who has a neighbor or a kid that got their packets in the mail.

Now the problem:

Out of the 20 candidates all ready to go for April 8th, (all who's backgrounds, psychs, medicals and physicals are complete), 5 of them deferred hire to a later date and 4 simply did not answer the call to start. This left 11 candidates available for April 8th. Additional candidates are not ready as they have not completed variations of their backgrounds, medicals, psychs etc.

This is a completely unacceptable practice for a Dept this size in a major metropolitan area and would certainly never happen with the Nassau County Police Dept. It would not be tolerated by that Dept and I have no idea why it is tolerated here. For this Dept to put in a class of 11 candidates after this amount of time is an embarrassment.

As of the timing of this email, the Recruit class has now been delayed approximately a month to process and fill in the class with more candidates.

This once proud Sheriff's Dept is an embarrassing shell of its former self, not only the state of infrastructure in our facility, our staffing, our ancillary units etc, but how far we have fallen in becoming a second rate organization over the past several years all at the hands of horrible management.

We have repeatedly made the Blakeman administration fully aware of where this Dept once stood, compared to where we are now, and fully hope and expect this administration to correct the sins of past administrations, and help us address these deficiencies beginning first and foremost with staffing and supervision.

Rest assured that COBA is doing everything humanly possible to correct these issues. Whether it be hiring, supervision, longevity, contract, grievances, roofs, you name it. The list is endless.

But remember, we are the union. We are not the Dept and we are not the County. Unfortunately over the past few years, COBA has had to act in many of those capacities to simply get business done. We've become ancillary HR staff, marriage counselors between county agencies, labor law teachers etc while continuing to fight lunatics in Albany who dont care one bit about anyone in a uniform in this State.

We know all of this is very frustrating to all of you who perform this most thankless job in law enforcement every day, without the praise and recognition that you all deserve.

Please bear with us as we continue to fight for reinforcements to help ease the staffing crisis here. We will keep you updated to any and all developments, beginning with those candidates coming in this week for processing.

Brian Sullivan, COBA President

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