Yesterday I recounted the Bristol County Sheriff’s spending county funds on and then giving away a totally unnecessary and useless boat.
What follows are some other expenses beyond his budget that he has laid on the county that he now wants to impress with his support of Trump’s wall. While having its taxpayers pay for his scheme with funds and resources that should stay in the county, he intends to take the bows for being such a great American.
The sheriff of Bristol County seems to love law suits, and is even fond of recreating the circumstances that brought about a previous suit.
During his swearing-in speech in January the sheriff stated that he would once again institute his idea to charge inmates $5 a day while they are incarcerated at the Bristol County House of Correction in Dartmouth and the Ash Street Jail in New Bedford.
In 2010 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had struck down this practice in ruling that the sheriff did not have the legal authority to charge inmates that daily fee. He charged those fees for room and board, as well as for medical care and other services. He also charged a $5 “cost-of-care” fee, $5 medical appointments, $5 for an eyeglasses prescription, $3 per pharmaceutical prescription, $5 per haircut or beard trim. and $12.50 for GED testing
Considering that many people incarcerated in the county jail may be poor, this is an unnecessary financial burden placed on the families of the incarcerated who already pay for the jails through taxes.
The Special Commission to Study the Feasibility of Establishing Inmate Fees had concluded in July 2011 report that the fees would lead to negative and unintended consequences including inmates becoming indigent, creating financial strain on their relatives, and compromising the inmates’ ability to successfully reintegrate into society because they would leave the jail in debt. The fee would have to be collected and managed, and that would create additional costs to taxpayers.
He cost Bristol County around $1 million when five corrections officers filed asuit against him for violating their free speech rights under the First Amendment, disciplining the officers for union talk on the job.
After the officers had won, the sheriff appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court having lost his appeals at each preceding step, and then lost there because the Court refused to review his case.
This left the county with his legal bills, the plaintiff’s bills, and the court judgment, and although the total cost is murky, the sheriff did not dispute the estimate was well above $500,000 for his own representation.
Included in the cost were $45,535 to the guards’ attorneys, $220,000 to the guards’ lawyers, and $17,980 to the guards for their unjust suspensions.
Hodgson lost a case against him for triple-bunking inmates, using portable bunks or floor mattresses, and requiring some inmates to sleep in common areas at New Bedford’s Ash Street facility. He was housing inmates in “dry cells” that did not have toilets at the Dartmouth House of Correction.
It was determined that these practices violated the rights of inmates.
According to the lawyer for the inmates, every time a specific complaint was brought to the sheriff he would address it, but then he would start another violation in its place.
This case took 11 years to resolve, and that cost Bristol County taxpayers money.
In a ten year period, the sheriff spent $4.7 million on legal suits in Bristol County paid for with the money of Bristol County taxpayers.
During that time the sheriff paid $1.3 million to one Fall River law firm and an estimated $1.3 million to another there.
Check out the two and compare the cialis online overnight rates. Thus levitra 40 mg it makes no sense to use the benchmarks of spam filters. For the old men it is advisable tadalafil cheap prices to take this drug only under the advice of a doctor. It is really important for you to get hard and stay hard for as long as you want to have sex and give your partner generic cialis professional a big treat. Hodgson’s campaign in 2004 was cited for wrongly accepting more money than is allowed in a calendar year from eight members of the family of one of those firms in 2003, and Hodgson said the appearance of the violation resulted from receipts simply misplaced when the calendar year ran out.
Interestingly, when The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice filed suit against Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson this past January to obtain public records about his participating in a program to allow his staff to identify and detain inmates who may have entered the country illegally, Hodgson violated the state’s public records law by refusing to release documents in response to its request, and then apologizing four months later that his office was just so inundated by the many requests for public records, the request was unfortunately unable to be fulfilled in a timely manner.
Just as this recent violation of state law dealing with the time limit to produce the requested public records that would have been damaging to the sheriff if they had been given as they should have, and with the sheriff apologizing that his office was just so inundated with requests for records making it impossible to meet the deadline, and not over three month past the due date, in that earlier case, although the law requires that all receipts be listed within seven days, the receipts in question were filed months past the timeline.
Apparently avoiding handing over damning documents in accordance with state law in the hope of covering up missteps is not a one-time thing, or a rare one either.
Getting back to his Fall River law firm involvement, the sheriff hired one of the firm’s associates as a 20-hour-per-week, $70,000 part-time in-house lawyer who could receive a state retirement package and state health insurance, after the firm had made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sheriff’s various law suits. That lawyer was, by the way, cited by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance for making a $2,000 contribution to one of the sheriff’s campaigns which violated the $500 maximum.
In that same ten year period, the sheriff spent $1 million in bills for contracted lawyers from a Boston firm and another $1 million on in-house lawyers.
While spending money on losing legal cases, the sheriff failed to pay several million dollars in inmate medical bills because of alleged lack of funding. This lack of funding also resulted in not keeping an appropriate inventory, and the sheriff at one time alerting the governor that he might have to send in the National Guard to run the Bristol County House of Corrections.
Boats and law suits are eating into the County sheriff’s budget and have been doing so for years, and then there’s this.
Since 2006, the Bristol County jail has had 50% more suicides than Suffolk County and more than twice as many as Essex and Worcester Counties.
The Bristol County jail is at 300% of design capacity, and overcrowded jails can set the stage for suicide by increasing stress on inmates and correctional officers, yet the sheriff says that overcrowding is not the problem, but social problems like the opioid addiction crisis in the county is.
But because his jail doesn’t track it, he can’t possibly know how many of the recent inmates who have killed themselves were drug addicts.
The excuse sounds good, so he advances that instead of addressing the problem, even as he ignores official warnings from local courts about inmates at immediate risk of suicide.
In one case, even though the inmate told a court psychologist of his desire to kill himself, and the doctors, the lawyer, and the judge took it seriously, nothing was done. After a fight in the jail, that inmate was sent to a segregated unit, a solo cell used to discipline inmates, where inmates are under a 23 hour lock down and meals are slid under the door.
The inmate hanged himself.
There is one counselor to about 100 people. Other county jails have up to 10 Counselors for the number of prisoners Bristol County Jail has.
But Sheriff Hodgson believes the mental health program that costs the county $8.2 million is doing just fine.
Hodgson believes it’s hard to predict all suicides, so, I guess, why take the proper steps when someone says they are considering it,
Hodgson says if there’s anything that needs changing in the county jail, it’s state funding.
Perhaps what needs fixing is the desire to make a name for himself at the county’s expense, and ending the hare brained actions that cause losing law suits or misspending available funds.