CORRECTIONS REPORT
Make the streets safer for corrections officers
If we do our jobs on the inside, it shouldn’t put us in
danger on the outside.
The New Jersey State Senate has taken the first steps
to pass a law that will promote our safety when we are
off duty, in our communities and might be subject to
assault from inmates we guarded when they were in
prison. It’s a good sign that on May 18, the State Senate
RICHARD passed S-2583, a bill that allows for the charge of simple
BROWN assault to be upgraded to aggravated assault if the act
was committed against the corrections officers because
of their job status.
If you recall, Cumberland County Corrections Local 231 State Delegate Victor Bermudez spearheaded the effort to introduce the bill in
December of last year. In August 2012, three assailants assaulted a
Cumberland County corrections officer inside a 7-Eleven in Bridgeton
whom they had recognized from the jail. The three assailants were not
prosecuted on the aggravated assault charges because the corrections
officer had not been in the performance of his duty, and when it got
sent to court, the charge was downgraded from simple assault to a city
ordinance.
But if this bill passes the legislature, it will provide the same protection to corrections officers that all other cops have. We need to make
sure that if anybody thinks they can jump one of our officers out in the
streets, they will be held accountable for their actions.
Corrections officers have to be law enforcement officers 24 hours a
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NEW JERSEY COPS
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JUNE 2015
day, seven days a week. We have a job to do inside the institution, and
we need this protection so the job inside can’t reflect what could happen outside.
We know when we walk through those doors we have to be focused
on what could happen at any given moment. We know that we could
get assaulted inside, thrown in a cell, beaten and your career is over.
We shouldn’t have to face the same threat on the outside.
I can tell you that speaking with wardens and some of the sheriffs
that they are all for it. ]8