By ESTEBAN PARRA
Staff reporter
08/18/2004
The Department of Correction is using training officers for the remainder of the week to fill shifts left vacant by corrections officers now in their fourth week of protesting low pay and poor working conditions by refusing some voluntary overtime.
On Monday, corrections officials assigned members of its Staff Training Relief Officers unit to fill vacant overtime shifts in the department's Court and Transportation unit, which has been hit hardest by the protest. Officers have not refused to work forced overtime.
The lack of officers volunteering to work Court and Transportation shifts has made it difficult to transport inmates, particularly to mandatory court hearings. At times, more than half of the inmates supposed to be taken to hearings were not.
Since training officers were assigned to the unit, the number of inmates not transported dropped to about 19 percent on Monday and about 12 percent on Tuesday.
"We thought that would be a good fit temporarily," said Beth Welch, corrections spokeswoman. She said officials will decide on a weekly basis whether to use training officers in the transportation unit.
In addition to providing ongoing training to prison guards, training officers fill the positions of guards who are being trained. Because there was no training scheduled this week, the officers were available, Welch said.
It was not the first time other units have been assigned to fill transportation unit positions.
Earlier this month prison officials assigned members of the Correction Emergency Response Team, the department's in-house SWAT unit, to take inmates to and from court appearances.
Using members of the response team, however, left vacancies in departments where they normally work, meaning other officers were forced to work overtime to fill those shifts, Welch said.
Since last month, corrections officers have refused voluntary overtime to protest working conditions including vacancies that require the use of forced and voluntary overtime. Of the 1,830 corrections officer positions in Delaware's penal system, 285 were vacant, officials said. Those vacancies include posts held by officers away on military duty.
A union official has claimed that staff shortages contributed to several security lapses in recent months, including a serial rapist taking a counselor hostage in July and raping her during a nearly seven-hour standoff. The incident ended when he was shot to death by a corrections officer.
State police concluded its investigation of the inmate shooting and turned it over to the state Attorney General's Office for review.
The correction department is still continuing its investigation of how the hostage situation occurred and is waiting to speak to the counselor, whose doctor allowed her to speak to investigators under certain conditions.
"We expect a meeting imminently," said Jeffrey K. Martin, the counselor's attorney.
Reach Esteban Parra at 324-2299 or eparra@delawareonline.com.
