The hysterical ninny protocol

The hysterical ninny protocol

by digby

So I'm sure you recall Chris Christie's hysterical reaction to the ebola threat a few weeks back. He ordered Nurse Kaci Hickox into isolation and lectured her to stop whining about being inconvenienced. Eventually she went to Maine where she lived and that was that.

But Josh Marshall at TPMs wondered what happened to Christie's plan to isolate anyone who had been in the affected countries and found out that it doesn't exist. In fact, the state public health official are monitoring over 70 people for symptoms and they are all at home doing their normal thing and just taking their temperature twice a day. You know, the scientific protocol as opposed to the hysterical ninny protocol.

But get a load of this:

The state paid more than 500 hours of overtime during a three-week period to Human Services police officers who were stationed around the clock at a former psychiatric hospital in Hunterdon County after it was identified as a location to quarantine West African travelers who had contact with Ebola patients, NJ Advance Media has learned.

So far, Gov. Chris Christie's administration has not needed to use the former Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township as a quarantine area. Only Doctors Without Borders Nurse Kaci Hickox has been quarantined in New Jersey after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, and she was held at an isolated tent at University Hospital in Newark from Oct. 24-27.

But once the state Department of Human Services decided to use Hagedorn to temporarily house “asymptomatic” travelers, department officials decided to deploy police to the location, Human Services spokeswoman Nicole Brossoie said.

“As we were surveying the building for appropriateness, there was media and community interest/trespassing so we did have two officers on rotating shifts to provide perimeter and building security,” Brossoie said in a email.

The number of officers who were assigned — and how many were paid at the overtime rate — is in dispute.

Brossoie said the payroll office logged 1,080 hours at Hagedorn, with 557 of them paid at the time-and-a-half overtime rate. The 23-day assignment ended Wednesday. She said she did not have an accounting of the labor costs.

PBA Local 113 Attorney Stuart Alterman said two officers and a supervisor were assigned to Hagedorn, and they were all paid at the overtime rate.

Human Services police officers on average earn in the high-$70,000 range and sergeants in the $80,000 range, according to state payroll records.

Alterman called the Hagedorn assignment “an impulsive way to deal with an acute situation that was neither planned very well or executed very well.” He said officers in the 94-member police force were concerned and frustrated they were provided no training to respond in the event a quarantined person become ill.

Yes, it was impulsive allright. And a good test of leadership for the macho Christie as he runs for president. If you want a panic artist at a time of crisis, he's your man.

Oh, and just to make sure you understand the totality of the fuck-up-edness, Christie was going to lock up people who were not sick in an old psychiatric hospital. Talk about optics ...

Meanwhile, at least his priorities are straight:

T

he security detail at Hagedorn coincided with the Nov. 15 disbanding of a 23-member unit within the 92-member Human Services police department whose officers accompanied child welfare workers to dangerous neighborhoods and to search for missing children. The unit was disbanded to cut down on runaway overtime expenses.