Scramble On To Iron Out Lock-Up Plan

In about 30 days, judicial marshals will stop staffing the lock-up at 1 Union Ave. But whether the lock-up will close and arrestees will go to the New Haven Correctional Center instead remains up in the air.

Assistant New Haven Police Chiefs Al Vazquez, Achilles ​“Archie” Generoso and Anthony Campbell are scheduled to meet Thursday morning with state Department of Corrections officials to find out — they hope — whether the city can strike a deal that will enable cops to hold arrestees at the Whalley Avenue center.

DOC could say yes. It could say no. Or some combination of the two.

Campbell, who heads the police department’s administrative bureau, said what is certain is that judicial marshals will no longer run the 1 Union Ave. lock up come July 1. In fact, according to State Judicial Branch spokeswoman Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, marshals will vacate the lock-up at midnight June 30.

So the department has to figure out what to do with the on average 660 people that flow through the existing lock-up each month.

The judicial marshals are among the victims of the budget cuts that have been made by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the legislature to close a $930 million state budget gap. City officials were notified April 14 that marshals will no longer staff the detainee lock-up currently at 1 Union Ave. Losing the marshals could be a significant loss to the city because the marshals currently run the lock-up, provide equipment for monitoring the arrestees and make sure that they are fed. The police department provides the space for the lock-up, an officer and a records clerk who work in tandem to process the arrestee.

Stearley-Hebert said that in fiscal 2015 it cost the judicial branch nearly $1.7 million to staff and equip the lock-up; projected costs for fiscal 2016 is nearly $2 million. But she said any savings to the branch by removing the marshals aren’t directly related to 1 Union Ave. ​“If the judicial marshals are not on the layoff list, they will be relocated to fill vacant positions in the branch as a result of layoffs, attrition and other types of vacancies,” she said in an email.

But she said the judicial branch isn’t trying to leave the police department high and dry. ​“The Judicial Branch is eager to work with the city on a plan to assure an orderly transition of operations to the city.”

The worst-case scenario is that the police department can’t strike a deal with the DOC, Campbell said, and has to absorb the cost of staffing and running the existing lock-up. That could mean anything from the department covering the costs through its operating funds and being reimbursed. Or a possibly even harder scenario — getting the Board of Alders to fund the lock-up as a line item in the department’s budget. Campbell doesn’t yet know how much that cost would be, or when that ask might have to happen.

The urgency of the situation came to light at a recent Board of Alders Finance Committee meeting, where city Budget Director Joe Clerkin was pressed about whether the city has a financial contingency plan if it can’t strike a deal with the DOC to detain arrestees at the Whalley Avenue center. Clerkin said it does not.

Campbell said he is working on that contingency plan even as the assistant chiefs meet with DOC officials.

“If worst comes to worst and the DOC can’t do it, we will need anywhere from one supervisor per shift to four to six officers per shift,” he said. ​“If everything doesn’t work out, we will have to staff it.”

Police union attorney Marshall Segar said if the city can strike a deal with DOC, the union has some significant concerns about what working conditions would be like for any police officer placed in the corrections facility.

“What I think it is important to recognize is that not having the lock-up facility at 1 Union is a fast departure in how the city has delivered policing services,” he said.

Segar said of immediate concern is that the lock-up function, which is a short-term process, would be moved off site, and the officer who staffs it would be working in a prison, which is a very different work environment from working in the police department. That officer would need to be able to move between police headquarters and any off-site detention facility to transport arrestees for signatures and to review paperwork with supervisors. There also is no lock-up for women at the Whalley Avenue center.

A commenter to a previous Independent article on the subject with extensive experience in local law enforcement, pointed out other unanswered questions.

“The current booking process requires getting warrants and other paperwork from Records at 1 Union Ave,” the commenter wrote. ​“That paperwork is then sent with the completed Uniform Arrest Report to the front desk at 1 Union Ave. to then be transmitted to court. Does this mean that an officer will now have to shuttle the paperwork back and forth from 1 Union to Whalley Ave. and back? That could occupy an officer for an entire shift. Also, will the Livescan fingerprint machine and photo imaging equipment also be moved to Whalley Ave.? Will they function if not connected to the City IT network? If not, how will the booking info be downloaded to the NHPD records system? Might it be easier to continue booking arrestees at 1 Union and then transport them to Whalley?”

“At the DOC facility, the police officer would basically be an invited guest and subject to DOC policies and procedures,” Segar said. The union is working cooperatively with the police department, Segar said, but until police officials get the word from DOC any negotiations around next steps are on hold.

Given the state’s budgetary concerns, Segar expressed some doubt about whether the city could get the DOC to take on the department’s arrestees.

“I don’t know how flexible the DOC can be from a financial and policy standpoint,” he said. ​“The departure of the judicial marshals is going to impact everyone. Nobody can put their finger on it. There haven’t been any hard and fast negotiations between the city and the union, and that’s nobody’s fault.”

Campbell said the union’s concerns are real and would have to be worked out.

“We could always use our general funds as a stopgap measure” to staff the lock up at 1 Union Ave. and keep it running, Campbell said. ​“It’s not what we want to do.”

He said if the department has to take on the lock-up, ideally the Board of Alders would approve a line item in the budget for the facility on an emergency basis. ​“I would call this an emergency,” he said. ​“The money definitely has to come from somewhere, and it’s going to come for us. They’re our prisoners, so the responsibility ultimately falls on us.”