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Much ‘concern,’ but no action at federal court hearing on Rikers
By
Matt Katz
Published Apr 28, 2023
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Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images
By
Matt Katz
Published Apr 28, 2023
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan is “extremely concerned” over the “volatile and deeply dysfunctional jails” on Rikers Island, a federal prosecutor told a judge on Thursday. Still, the government will not pursue any immediate new action to stop the myriad humanitarian crises there.
After a nearly 2.5 hour court hearing centered on problems at Rikers Island, no new plans were made about how to improve the situation there. U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain even declined to formally order the city Department of Correction to take multiple actions that it had promised but failed to take last year.
“The conditions remain deeply disturbing,” Swain said, citing an “exorbitant rise” in stabbings and slashings.
The regularly scheduled hearing was part of a federal consent decree stemming from a 2011 lawsuit over violence and correction officers’ deadly use of force. The consent decree, now nearly eight years old, led to the installation of a federal monitoring team. Since then, rates of violence and use of force have dramatically increased, while the monitoring team tasked with improving things collected nearly $20 million in fees and expenses.
At the prior hearing on this case, one of the parties that brought the original suit, the Legal Aid Society, requested permission to strengthen federal oversight with a federal receiver, who would essentially supplant the city as the decision-making power at Rikers. But no one resurrected that idea at Thursday’s hearing.
Federal monitor Steve Martin began his remarks by quoting “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That was because he said he had “cautious optimism” in some areas of Rikers operations but “ample concerns” about others.
Advocates for reform who attended the hearing were more curious whether the federal government, which was also party to the original lawsuit that brought about the consent decree, would finally throw its weight behind the appointment of a federal receiver to run the jail complex. But that did not happen.
“The government remains extremely concerned about the conditions on Rikers Island and the department’s failures,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Powell of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. “While the department has made some progress … the jails remain volatile and deeply dysfunctional. In short, the pace of reform must be accelerated.”
He cited a statistic showing there were 434 incidents last year involving use of force by officers that led to “serious injuries.” And he said the Adams administration was “non-compliant” on “core provisions” of the consent decree — particularly in regards to the conduct of the Emergency Services Unit, whose officers chemically sprayed, choked and beat several detainees just a few months ago.
Powell also said that Correction Commissioner Louis Molina recently promoted 12 people to assistant deputy wardens even though they had documented disciplinary problems and “checkered histories.” Molina also reinstated 16 officers to the Emergency Services Unit, which is deployed to quell violence, even though they had been removed for problematic behavior just two years earlier.
Before setting a date for the next hearing — August 10 — Swain said she hoped that this time, the Department of Correction actually followed the monitoring team’s recommendations for improving operations.
“I will be very unpleasantly surprised if I hear from the monitoring team that their recommendations are not being taken seriously and moving forward at a rapid pace,” she said.
She did not say what she would do if the corrections department again did not follow those recommendations.
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Rikers Island
department of correction
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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