Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Carolyn Scruggs and Deputy Secretary for Administration Joseph Sedtal appear Thursday before a joint hearing of House and Senate committees on the death of Parole Agent Davis Martinez. Photo by Steve Crane.
House and Senate members grilled the secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services on Thursday over her department’s halting steps to ensure the safety of parole agents after one was killed May 31 in the line of duty.
The joint hearing by the budget and judicial committees of the House and Senate was the second on the subject, after an October hearing that Del. Ben Barnes (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel) called “woefully inadequate.” But lawmakers hoping for more substantive answers in this second hearing said they were disappointed.
“I’m hearing a lot of fluff, but not a lot of substance,” Sen. William Folden (R-Frederick) said to Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Carolyn J. Scruggs
“What I’m hearing is, you’ve got nothing,” Folden said later in the hearing. “This inaction by you ad your leadership is now becoming a public safety issue for the citizens, not just your agents, but for the citizens as a whole.”
But Scruggs outlined a series of “changes we have made, and our continued progress to ensure the safety of each and every employee within this department.” Those include hiring additional agents, a series of meetings and policy reviews with union leaders representing parole agents, procurement of new body armor effective against both bullets and knife attacks, and the reassignment of cases to better balance the caseload among agents — some of whom had no cases, but were assigned to be in court full-time for the Division of Parole and Probation.
The hearing came almost seven months after the killing of Parole Agent Davis Martinez, who became the first Maryland parole agent killed in the line of duty when he was brutally slain by a parolee he was visiting on the morning of May 31 in Silver Spring.
Martinez, 33, told his supervisor that morning that he was going to check on Emanuel Edward Sewell, who was out on parole after serving 21 years of a 40-year sentence for sex assaults and burglary.
Martinez, a six-year veteran of the agency, said he expected to be done with the visit by midday. It would be the last time he was seen alive.
His supervisors did not check up on him when he failed to return. It was only after co-workers became concerned later in the day that they called Montgomery County Police, who went to Sewell’s home in the 2800 block of Terrace Drive. Martinez’s car was still in the parking lot, and they found his body inside the home, wrapped in plastic and shoved under a bed. He had been beaten and repeatedly stabbed.
Sewell was arrested a day later in West Virginia and was returned to Montgomery County, where he was being held without bond.
In the wake of the killing, three top officers of the Division of Parole and Probation were ousted and the department immediately canceled home visits by parole agents, among other changes.
Lawmakers pressed Scruggs when they learned that, except in specific cases where home visits are required, in-person checks on parolees by parole agents have not resumed after almost seven months, although some are done virtually or over the phone.
Lawmakers also appeared irritated by Scruggs’ refusal to say how many additional parole agents her department might need, saying that was an issue currently under discussion with the administration of Gov. Wes Moore (D), as the executive prepares his budget request for the next fiscal year.
Scruggs did say that the department will add 15 new agents in January and that another 21 are currently undergoing background checks in preparation for being hired as agents.
Scruggs touted the fact that the department has agreed to by new vests for agents that protect against both shooting and stabbings and that 600 of the current 648 agents in the division had been fitted for the “multithreat vests,” which will be should be delivered by March.
Officials with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union representing parole agents, did credit the administration for buying the new vests, meeting with workers and reviewing policies, ordering Tasers and undertaking a pilot use of body cameras. But more needs to be done, said Rayneika Robinson, president of AFSCME Local 3661, who called the actions so far “baby steps.”
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“These steps are important, but fall woefully short,” said Robinson, adding that the union is eager to work with the department on possible solutions. “We are overwhelmed and struggling to actively engage with cllients.”
Folden suggested that the department has made little progress in the seven months since the killing, noting that a number of the solutions presented Thursday appear to have developed over just the last few days, and that many are still far from being implemented. That was echoed by Barnes, who said in October that he hoped the department would have more answers in this next hearing of the House Judiciary and Appropriations committees and the Senate Judicial Proceedings and Budget and Taxation committees.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve moved the ball forward today,” Barnes said.