The Monroe County Prison Board took 15 minutes out of its monthly meeting to allow Office Don Kubik, Teamsters union shop steward, to speak.

Kubik attended the prison board meeting to speak about conditions for officers.

He has been speaking at the Monroe County Commissioners’ meetings but was told the prison board has the control over conditions.

“I guess the first issue I want to address where we are at with the missing items from the kitchen?” Kubik asked. He said he was told the facility was searched.

“The warden had addressed the media and told the media that he has no knowledge of the weapons so I’m curious as to where we’re at with that,” Kubik said.

“All the missing items are accounted for. I think I won’t go into much detail because it is a security measure, the way we do it,” Haidle said, adding he would not release information at a public meeting.

There’s nothing missing at this time and they do conduct searches on a regular basis, Haidle said.

“I mean, these inmates will, you know, make weapons out of anything. They’ll make weapons out of anything that’s given to them, so we do searches continuously,” he said.

Two flat-top choppers are missing, Kubik said, but kitchen staff said that they could have accidentally been thrown in the garbage.

Warden Haidle said he talked to their supervisors and he was told otherwise. “Stuff is accounted for and there’s nothing missing,” he said.

Kubik said, “Once something goes missing or is potentially missing, the entire facility should be searched before that weapon ends up in somebody’s neck.”

Hirings

“Due to the warden’s, diligent efforts to change the staffing of the correctional positions here at the facility, we more than doubled the applicant pool this past testing hiring cycle so we were up from 10 applicants last time to 21 applicants, 17 of which passed and are going to be interviewed on the Oct. 13,” said Deborah Thompson, the assistant human resources manager at the correctional facility.

She also explained that if all 70 applicants move forward, the complement would be at 118. They currently have 101 correctional staff and right now the complement is 122, and that would only allow three more vacancies to be filled.

Another testing day is scheduled Oct. 26.

Commissioner Sharon Laverdure asked about shortened training time because of the lack of officers.

She asked if more than the two-and-a-half week training is needed.

Haidle said he hopes to get back to the normal five-and-a-half weeks.

“This way we can catch up by the beginning of the year,” Haidle said, added that the goal is to do the other two weeks from the training for the classes that didn’t get the full training.