After a series of reported abuses and high-profile arrests of jail guards in New York City, the local correction officer union wants to train its members to be more tolerant, which could cost the city millions of dollars, reports DNAInfo New York. The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association recently paid to train 70 of its senior officers at the Museum of Tolerance in New York, and now the union is calling on the city to pay as much as several million dollars to train all 10,000 correction officers.
The senior officers attended a one-day training session at the museum that focused on “the role that dignity plays in redefining the environment that correction officers work in,” according to an online description. Rabbi Steven Burg, a director of the museum, said, “A lot of what we teach them is keeping their cool, not losing their temper, being able to talk through and de-escalate a situation.” The initial training was a joint partnership between the union and newly appointed Department of Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte, who toured the museum with union head Norman Seabrook earlier this month.