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Support SacBee's Accurate Portrayal of "Whining" Prison Guards

by A. Humann
(Graphic is from http://pacovilla.com/ , the unofficial site of the CCPOA. These are the people who are supposed be doing the rehabilitating???)

The prison guards unions are trying to put pressure on the Sac Bee to censor their coverage of prison-related issues. Be sure to tell the SacBee that you SUPPORT their responsibility to write editorials questioning the outrageous sums of money that California Prison Guards make and tell them that we want more investigative journalists dedicated to the subject of prison oversight.
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On Dec 22 the CCPOA ( California Correctional Peace Officers) Union as well as PPGU
(Powerful Prison Guards) Union and members of Pacovilla will be boycotting the Sacramento Bee Newspaper - their message is simple....

"Tell McClatchy News and the public that WE arent the bad guys and inmates are not VICTIMS...."

This event is to take place at 2100 Q Street (corner of 21st and Q streets) in Sacramento from 5pm to 6pm.


Why? because the Bee tells it like it is....

I feel that we should all be aware of what these organizations are doing- in a sense they are trying to censor the media...we cannot tolerate this! The media has a responsibility to report the goings on at our state prisons...WE have a right to know!!

send letters/emails of support to the Bee...Please speak up and speak out....



Bill Moore is the Editor- bmoore [at] sacbee.com


The postal address is:
P.O. Box 15779
Sacramento, CA 95852
Phone: (916) 321-1905

******************************************************************************

(Here is that "controversial" editorial. It seems to me that the CCPOA is only proving that they are a bunch of whiners by getting worked up about this. Perhaps what they are really upset about is the fact that the Bee's newspapers have been acting as a watchdog in general regarding California prisons for several years now.)



Editorial: The cloak of victimhood

Prison guards on the air? It's contract time

-
Published 12:00 am PST Saturday, November 18, 2006

If you've had your TV on lately, you know that the prison guards union is at it again.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is using its formidable political warchest to run ominous television ads to put pressure on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to do a repeat of the giveaway 2001-2006 prison guard contract.

In that last go-round, the union got a five-year deal (rather than the usual two-year contract) with excellent salary increases and enhanced retirement benefits, plus new limits on management control of sick leave, overtime and post assignments. The CCPOA boasts on its Web site that this was "without a doubt...the best contract ever signed by CCPOA." But you won't see that in the new media campaign.

Instead, the ads portray guards as victims. As in the union's previous media campaigns, the new ads feature pictures of Officer Suzi Jones shortly after she was beaten by an inmate at the New Folsom maximum security prison, video footage of riots and the line that "nine officers a day are being assaulted" in California prisons.

That "nine a day" figure appears to be drawn from state reports that include everything from spitting to throwing unidentified liquid to biting to scratching to punching to kicking to head-butting to attacks with weapons. There is no analysis of how many of these incidents are really serious assaults, but a 2001 examination of the Texas prison system by the Texas Office of the State Auditor may offer some perspective. Based on workers' compensation data, that study found that prison staff are hurt more often in slips, trips or falls than in an assault.

The contrast between the CCPOA image and that of other law enforcement organizations is striking. Working as a state trooper, police officer or sheriff's deputy is dangerous and can even mean death on the job, as these other law enforcement organizations accurately note. But these organizations portray their jobs as offering individuals with a high school diploma a lifetime of challenges and excellent compensation. The CCPOA portrays a guard's work life as one of unending suffering and victimization.

The reality is that a California prison guard can go to work every day for 20 years and never break up a fight and never get assaulted. What makes the job so stressful and dangerous is uncertainty -- the prospect that routine boredom could be broken at any time by violence. And as the state increasingly dumps the mentally ill in prisons and generally fails to manage the size of its prison population, guards have to be prepared for unpredictable outbursts from mentally disturbed inmates and incidents resulting from overcrowding.

Make no mistake: Prison work is tough and not for everybody. It should be well compensated -- and it is. Today, salary, benefits and overtime come close to $100,000 a year.

Perhaps that is why turnover is so low among California prison guards. In 2004, for example, only 1,000 of 36,000 officers left the department, an annual turnover rate of 3.6 percent. As University of California, Irvine, researcher Joan Petersilia notes, this is very low for public service in general and "quite unusual" for prisons, where turnover rates nationally hover around 20 percent. California, she notes, may have the lowest turnover rate of any state corrections department.

The public, legislators and the governor need to realize that the union's public cult of victimhood is itself part of the prison staffing problem. How can the California Department of Corrections recruit new guards if the union spends millions portraying a negative image of prison guards as victims? No wonder the department falls 2,000 to 4,000 officers short in filling vacancies.

If the CCPOA truly believes, as its President Mike Jimenez has said, the "biggest problem facing corrections in California today is understaffing," then the union needs to get out of its current "I am victim, hear me whine" mode. The public would be better served by ad campaigns suggesting real solutions to the current overcrowding mess. That's the key to improving conditions for those who work in California's prisons.


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