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ALBANY — Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman promised he’d ease restrictions on solitary confinement Tuesday — as he picked up the endorsement of the correction officers union.
Blakeman joined with members of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association outside the state Capitol, with the labor group’s leader saying members were rejecting Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul over an ongoing crisis in state prisons.
“They’ve been speaking for the last three years, screaming at the top of their lungs that they need help,” COPBA President Chris Summers said, adding members voted 1,380-78 to back Blakeman over Hochul.
“When we sent out this endorsement, they spoke loud and clear, and the vote was overwhelming,” Summers said.
Blakeman told the president “help is on the way” as he pledged to scrap solitary restrictions, which correction officers say is contributing to escalating violence within the understaffed state system.
He said Hochul’s handling of the prison system is “an insult to the hardworking men and women who serve in our corrections department.”
“It’s a burden on the taxpayers,” Blakeman said. “It’s unsafe to the members of our National Guard. It’s a security breach in our prisons to have people who are untrained serving as corrections officers.”
The candidate, who is no serving as elected Nassau County executive, said in addition to rolling back the so-called HALT Act restrictions as governor, he thinks bumping pay for correction officers is reasonable.
“I would not close any more prisons,” he also said, alluding to the shuttering of several facilities during Hochul’s time in office.
According to the mayor’s management report released last week, the average stay on the city’s troubled Rikers Island jail complex increased from 87 days to 116, nearly an additional month that the corrections union blames on administration policy.
The governor fired roughly 2,000 corrections officers in spring 2025, ending a nearly month’s long illegal strike.
A spokesperson for DOCCS confirmed Tuesday that 3,000 National Guard troops were still assigned to the prisons.
Full time staffing continues to decline, almost returning to its all time low of around 11,000 after last year’s strike.
Union members said the crisis is putting their lives in danger.
Kim Strawbrich, a corrections officer from Hamburg, New York, was forced into retirement after she was viciously attacked by three inmates at Groveland Correctional Facility, including one who repeatedly bludgeoned her with a metal lock in a sock.
“They pinned me to the ground, started beating, kicking, lock in a sock, choking me unconscious. They wanted to kill me. They told [investigators] that I was going to die,” Strawbrich said.
Doctors told her one blow that left her with a traumatic brain injury was centimeters away from killing her, she said.
Strawbrich noted that she was working the end of a 24-hour shift when she was attacked, after working seven consecutive days with 16-hour shifts prior.
“Someone is going to get killed,” she added.
Hochul, responding to Blakeman’s event Tuesday, doubled down blaming corrections officers for last year’s extended standoff.
Correction officers broke the law and “abandoned their posts,” campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said in a statement. The Hochul rep bashed Blakeman’s deputizing of local police to assist federal immigration officials, calling them “an untrained, armed MAGA militia.”
The corrections department said in a statement that it’s working to “strengthen staffing and facility operations and support the remaining correction officers, civilian staff, and National Guard members working tirelessly to keep facilities safe.”
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