New York Civil servants have started firing prison guards who did not take themselves at a deal to end their illegal work attack, who has now expanded to a third week.
The Homeland Security Commissioner of the State, Jackie Bray, said that endings started on Sunday and that the State began to cancel the benefits of health insurance on Monday for correctional officers who continue to strike and charged their people.
According to Bray, fewer than 10 officers have been fired and thousands are planned to lose their health insurance, according to Bray.
“None of these actions that we take slightly,” said Bray. “We have tried to get people back to work at every turn without taking these actions.”
Officers of the Auburn Correctional Facility continue to hold the line on the third day of their strike to protest against unsafe working conditions in Auburn, New York, on Thursday 20 February 2025. (AP)
On Thursday, the government of New York Kathy Hochul announced a binding agreement between the State and Officers Union To end the strike. Under the deal, officers had to go back to work on Saturday to prevent them from being disciplined for Picket, because the Labor Action violates a Stups Act that prohibits strikes by most public employees.
This comes when the State Police has started an investigation into the death of a prisoner in one of the prisons of the state during the weekend.
Messias Nantwi, 22, who was housed in Mid-State Correctional Facility, died on Saturday in a hospital in the city of Utica.
Nantwi entered the State Prison System in May and served a five -year prison sentence for second -degree criminal possession of a weapon in connection with a shooting in 2021 in which police officers were involved. Nantwi, who was represented by the public defender’s office, also waited for the trial in the death of two men in 2023.
Officials have refused to provide additional details about what led to his death, but other prisoners told the New York Times that Nantwi was brutally beaten by correctional officers.
“Admittedly, he was locked up, but he still had right, as we all, based on human dignity and safety,” said Stan German, executive director of the New York County Defender Services, in a statement. “Instead, he suffered a violent meaningless death from state corrections that operate within a poisonous culture that mainly ignores our society.”
The correction department said 11 employees were placed with administrative leave, awaiting the results of the continuous probe In the death of Nantwi.
Mid-state is across the street of the Marcy Correctional Facility, where six guards are accused of murder in the December that defeat the death of Robert Brooks.
Correction officers at Auburn Correctional Facility Picket on the third day of their strike to protest unsafe working conditions, Thursday 20 February 2025, in Auburn, New York. (AP)
Another prisoner, the 61-year-old Jonathon Grant, was declared dead last month after he did not respond in his cell in the Auburn Correctional Facility in the midst of the continuous Labor strike, although it is unclear whether the prison staff played a role in his death.
The way Grant died will be determined by a medical investigation. The office of the public defender who gave him a legal adviser expressed himself from the concern that the strike may have influenced the medical care for prisoners.
Officers started walking on 17 February to protest against working conditions in the prisons of the state.
Jose Saldana, the director of the outdated people in the prison campaign, said that guards stood out as a “distraction” of the attention of prisoners abuse.
“To say the butter, guards hostage tens of thousands of detained people, whose basic overflowing needs are often unbridled, to demand even more power to harm those in their detention,” said Saldana.
The deal between the state and the union of the officers to end the officers’ strike includes ways to tackle staff shortages and minimize mandatory 24-hour overtime hours. The agreement also offers a temporary increase in overtime and a possible change in wage scale.
Correctional officers and their supporters demonstrate in the sight of Coxsackie Correctional Facility in the Hudson Valley., Monday 24 February 2025, in Coxsackie, New York. (AP)
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A 90 -day suspension of a law that limited the use of lonely imprisonment was also included in the agreement. During the break, the state must evaluate or the repair of the law “would cause an unreasonable risk” for staff and prisoners.
Hochul has used the National Guard in a few prisons to fill in for striking employees.
Correction commissioner Daniel Martuscello said on Monday that the number of facilities with striking employees decreased from 38 to 32, although visits on all state prisoners have been suspended.
“It doesn’t matter when this ends or how this ends, our long-term plan must be and is to recruit more correction officers because our facilities become safer if we are fully staffed,” said Bray. “That work cannot really start seriously until people go back to work and we end the strike.”
Fox News Digital has contacted New York Homeland Security and the Officers’ Union, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association.
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
