NAT’L GUARD TROOPS SLEEP IN CELLS AS STRIKE BY NYS PRISON GUARDS ENTERS 6TH DAY
GOV. KATHY HOCHUL APPEARS TO CAVE TO STRIKING PRISON GUARDS' MAJOR DEMANDS, BUT GUARDS STAY ON STRIKE.
An illegal strike by New York State prison guards is set to enter Day 6 and likely longer after deadline for returning to work passes. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Feb. 21, 2025
State prison guards who walked off the job starting on Monday ignored a midnight deadline to return to work and stretched their wildcat strike into a fifth day.
The strike shows no sign of easing, and the striking guards seem to be digging in. A small cabin was even delivered to one protest site on Friday.
On Thursday, 11 Black Hawk and 6 Chinook helicopters landed 220 National Guard soldiers at a remote and snow covered Adirondack airfield for deployment inside the Bare Hill, Upstate and Franklin Correctional Facilities, airport manager Bruce Burditt told The Free Lance.
The New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, which manages the National Guard, referred questions about the mission to Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Gov. Hochul's press office revealed an additional 2,000 troops were deployed and more were on there way, although the office refused to say how many.
Video taken by one soldier shows him unpacking his gear in his new quarters: a high-security cell in what appears to be a maximum-security cell-block at Upstate.
Striking guards and prisoners' families told The Free Lance Correction Officers who had been locked inside Bare Hill since Tuesday abandoned the prison to join the picket line outside.
State Sen. Dan Stec visited Bare Hill on Thursday. He told the local NBC affiliate, NBC5, that he'd seen "people who had been working three or four days straight."
"The men and women in there are exhausted," Stec added. "It's tough to see."
Early Thursday morning, prisoners at the Riverview Correctional Facility seized control of three dormitory-style housing units, the state agency that manages New York's 42 prisons, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, said.
The alleged take-over appeared to be resolved relatively peacefully, as this reporter witnessed police SWAT and DOCCS CERT teams leaving the prison at 8:00am—along with empty ambulances without patients.
What state prison officials said was an uprising by prisoners at the Riverview Correctional Facility early Thursday morning ended by 8:00 am, as these police from the nearby city of Ogdensburg depart. Photo credit: JB NIcholas.
The dramatic developments occurred on the same day six state prison guards were charged with murder for killing Robert Brooks at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9.
As The Free Lance reported before the strike, New York's entire 42-jail state prison system is facing a crisis. It’s not just the fallout from Brooks’ killing. It’s also mass suspected Fentanyl "exposure" incidents, what Inspector General Lucy Lang called "significant workers’ compensation-driven staffing shortages" and a scarcity of new recruits.
Two weeks ago, the union that represents prison guards, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, voted it had no confidence in the commissioner of the state prison system, Daniel F. Martuscello.
The strike started at the Elmira and Collins Correctional Facilities in western New York on Monday morning.
"Families are afraid," Kelly Gordon, told The Free Lance on Tuesday. "They're afraid their loved one is gonna get drugged. They're afraid that they're gonna get cut."
Some of the striking prison guards protesting outside the Bare Hill, Franklin and Upstate Correctional Facilities on Friday, Feb. 21. Photo credits: JB Nicholas.
Strikers circulated a list of 17 demands, starting with repeal of the HALT Act. The HALT Act passed the state legislature and was signed into law by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021. Guards said it emboldened prisoners to break the rules, and even attack guards.
The HALT Act places a 15-day limit on the amount of time prisoners can be placed in solitary confinement for misconduct. After that, they can be segregated from the general population but must be given rehabilitative programming and allowed 4-6 hours outside of a cell everyday.
Striking guards also demanded DOCCS rescind an order to adjust plans to accommodate a permanent 30% reduction in security staff.
Although the union representing the guards says it didn't sanction the strike, it's representing the officers in negotiations with Gov. Hochul and DOCCS. It boiled down the strikers' 17 demands to three and presented them on Tuesday.
The union's three demands include immunity from punishment for striking officers, "suspension of HALT or persistent holiday schedule to ease the burden on staff" and "pay-grade increase for all COs and sergeants to help with recruitment and retention."
As Brooks' killers were being arraigned, Commissioner Martuscello issued a memorandum titled "Path to Restoring Workforce."
The plan announced the immediate suspension of those parts of the HALT Act "that cannot safely be operationalized under a prison wide state of emergency." It also announced DOCCS would "immediately rescind" its previous directive to enact operation plans incorporating a 30% cut in guards.
Finally, DOCCS promised it wouldn't discipline any guard if they returned to work regardless of schedule by midnight Thursday.
In other words, DOCCS' appeared to grant the strikers' core demands. But the strikers did not return to work.
(1) A small cabin at the field headquarters of guards striking at the Bare Hill, Franklin and Upstate Correctional facilities; (2) a pile of firewood to be burned in 55-gallon steel drums for warmth; (3-4) strikers at Franklin. Photo credits: JB Nicholas.
The three state prisons where the National Guard deployed to by helicopter in the Adirondacks on Thursday are clustered together, with an abandoned gas station serving as the strikers' field headquarters.
This reporter observed more cars and trucks parked along the roads surrounding the prisons and the HQ than he had all week. Strikers wore new t-shirts with protest slogans printed on them like “HOLD THE LINE” and ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.” They proudly wore the shirts standing or sitting around fires burning in 55-gallon steel drums—which have become a symbol of the winter strike.
Meanwhile, negotiations between the union and the state continue.
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