Correction officers at Cape Vincent Correctional Facility recovered 12 homemade weapons and about 65 gallons of homemade alcohol during a four-month period in which eight staff members were injured, according to the officers’ union.
The New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association said the seizures and injuries occurred between July and October. Its Nov. 2 account also described an assault that sent an incarcerated person to an outside hospital and another incident in which an officer was struck in the head.
Officers found the weapons during routine and targeted pat searches of incarcerated people and searches of prison dormitories, the union said.
They also confiscated multiple pieces of paper saturated with synthetic marijuana, commonly known as K2.
Six officers and two sergeants were injured while breaking up fights between incarcerated people or trying to subdue intoxicated people who became combative, according to the union.
On Aug. 9, an officer heard someone screaming in a bathroom and found an incarcerated person with burns on his back after another person threw hot liquid on him, the union said.
The burns required treatment at an outside hospital.
On Aug. 20, an incarcerated person approached an officer, jumped onto the officer’s podium and hit him in the side of the head, injuring him, according to the union.
The person then threw a chair that narrowly missed the officer.
On Sept. 29, officers intervened in a suicide attempt in a cell and brought the person to the prison’s medical facility for treatment, the union said.
Jason Whitehead, the union’s Central Region vice president, said the volume of weapons, alcohol and drug-soaked paper recovered raised concerns about staff and inmate safety.
“Every weapon recovered represents a potentially serious assault that may have been prevented,” Whitehead said.
He called for more staffing, resources and support, saying officers were continuing to work under increasingly dangerous conditions.
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