State ignoring

plight of officers

Editor, OBSERVER:

The hard-working men and women who work in the New York state Corrections system have given their all. Due to the recruitment shortage and poor public policy nobody wants to start a career in corrections.

Recently, these officers have been asked to work an obscene amount of overtime. They have been asked to work their regular days off and now mandatory 24 shifts in many cases. This is not good practice. If this was happening in the private sector people would be crying for change. When the employer is the government, it seems to fall on deaf ears.

What makes it worse is when you have bad managers at the local prisons. Look at all the issues recently at the Collins Correctional Facility.

We have seen inmate deaths, inmates biting the fingertip off a correction officer, and just earlier this month we have seen 11 correction officers carried out by ambulance and taken to ECMC for a possible fentanyl exposure.

The local administration at the facility did not even take the time to visit the officers while they were seeking treatment at ECMC. This is unacceptable.

The local policies I would argue have emboldened the inmates and have a direct correlation to the high number of unfortunate events at the facility, let alone the downward spiraling morale of employees at the facility.

If this was a private employer, the local management team would be replaced. What is it going to take for change? The death of an employee? We almost had that on a recent weekend!

VINCENT BLASIO,

West Seneca

Dictator making Venezuela a mess

Editor, OBSERVER:

Venezuela is floating on a sea of oil. But the socialist government’s corruption and mismanagement has forced most of the population into poverty.

Venezuelan dictator / president Nicholas Maduro ran against Edmunado Urrutia for President of Venezuela. Maduro formally announced he had won the election with more than 51% of the vote. His opponent’s party claimed Urrutia won with more than 73% of the vote.

Trying to assure his win and not lose to opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, Maduro sent armed government thugs into polling places with orders to stop voting. Vice President Kamala Harris issued this statement supporting Maduro. “The United States stands with the people of Venezuela who expressed their voice in this historic presidential election. The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.”

Other leaders were not as accommodating as Kamala Harris. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has acknowledged Gonzalez has won “the most votes” in the presidential election. So now, Harris may be on the wrong side of the Biden administration.

Maduro has bowed to pressure from neighboring countries and called for an audit. (The audit will probably be as accurate as any audit of New York City voting.) How are Venezuelans protesting? Across the country, videos show crowds banging pots.

CNN reports witnessing dozens of national guard soldiers in riot gear repressing the pot wielding protesters with tear gas and batons. Pots are all Venezuelans have with which to protest. Venezuela has banned private sales of firearms and ammunition and closed private gun shops. Venezuela stopped issuing new firearm licenses and the government banned the carrying of firearms in public places. (Inspiration for Kathy Hochul and the Concealed Carry Improvement Act.)

The penalty for illegal firearm possession is twenty years imprisonment. Every dictator knows that the first thing they must do to maintain their grip on power is ban civilian firearm ownership and then confiscate all the guns.

If faced with six more years of Maduro, we should see increased pressure on our southern border, to which “Border Czar” Kamala Harris will have to respond. (Or not… based on previous experience.) Venezuela is the latest example of the need to protect and defend our Second Amendment rights.

We should focus on why our politicians – including anti-Second Amendment Harris – want a disarmed populace. It is a question worthy of a response.

Socialist politicians fear an armed populace. Guns are like a nuclear deterrence; you never want to use them but having them keeps the bad guys and gals at bay.

RICHARD LANCASTER,

Westfield