U.S. attorney threatens federal takeover of Rikers
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United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams threatened a federal takeover of Rikers Island in a letter to a federal judge on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. AP file photo by Jeenah Moon
By Jacob Kaye
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York threatened a federal takeover of Rikers Island in a letter to a federal judge Tuesday.
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a letter to Judge Laura Swain that should new Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration not present a plan to address the myriad issues in the jail complex, he’d formally seek a change in leadership.
Williams’ letter comes about a week before a scheduled conference in the Nunez monitorship case, the class action lawsuit that led to the creation of the federal monitor.
“We remain alarmed by the extraordinary level of violence and disorder at the jails and the ongoing imminent risk of harm that inmates and correction officers face every day,” Williams wrote.
“The continuing failure to follow basic security protocols, dysfunctional staff deployment practices, inexplicably high staff absenteeism levels, deficient management and supervision of frontline officers, and the failure to hold staff timely accountable for the use of excessive and unnecessary force against inmates have resulted in an unsafe environment and non-compliance with the core provisions of the Consent Judgment and the three Remedial Orders entered by this Court,” he added.
In his letter, Williams cites the most recent status report filed by Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor, concerning the conditions on Rikers Island.
In the status report, filed in March, Martin said that the poor conditions on Rikers, which saw more deaths last year than it has in any single year dating back to 2013, have shown little sign of improving.
He also noted four major problem areas in the city’s jail complex – ineffective staff management, supervision, and deployment; poor security practices; inadequate management of incarcerated people; and limited and protracted discipline for staff misconduct.
Additionally, the monitor accused Molina and the Adams administration of being less forthcoming with documents and data about the jail than their predecessors. In one of his first acts as commissioner, Molina asked former Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Investigation Sarena Townsend to step down. Townsend was responsible for investigating the rising number of use-of-force incidents committed by correctional officers and for communicating with the monitor.
In the Tuesday letter, Williams said that while his office, the city and the monitor agree generally on the direction the jail’s reform needs to take, the monitor’s recommendations are vague and it’s the city’s responsibility to come up with specifics – something he says they have not done.
“At this point — more than six years after the consent judgment and after the issuance of three remedial orders designed to remedy the department’s ongoing noncompliance with court-ordered relief—the department and city must commit to taking specific and concrete operational steps and instituting dramatic systemic changes to actually implement the monitor recommendations on an expeditious timeline,” Williams said.
“Further, the department and city ought to be required to explain how these efforts will differ from, and are likely to be more fruitful than, the many iterations of prior failed reform initiatives,” he added.
The U.S. attorney asked for specific DOC plans to address staffing shortages, staff allocation and staff punishment in cases where they’re found to have violated use-of-force rules.
Currently, DOC leadership is unable to locate where staff are assigned at any given time, and officers can bid on posts, a practice that leads to the most experienced staff members serving outside of the jails, according to the monitor.
“Thus far, the Department and City have failed to explicitly articulate the concrete operational measures and changes that will be put in place to remedy the pervasive systemic failures described in the Special Report,” the letter reads. “Moreover, the City’s position with respect to some of the core, and possibly most contentious reforms supported by the Monitor, remains unclear.”
Williams asked that the DOC and city submit specific plans to address the staffing issues before the April 26 conference.
Should they be unable to, the U.S. attorney said he’d seek to bring in new federal leadership of the jail. He questioned whether or not the DOC has the “ability, expertise, and will to swiftly make the changes necessary to bring true reform to this deeply troubled agency.”
“Absent a commitment to expeditiously make the dramatic systemic reforms identified by the Monitor and to bring in corrections experts from outside the Department to revamp the agency’s operations and staffing practices, we will be left with no other option but to seek more aggressive relief, which could involve seeking the appointment of a receiver with independent authority to implement sweeping reforms and to take all necessary actions to comply with the Consent Judgment and Remedial Orders and implement the Monitor Recommendations,” he wrote.
The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York called on the Department of Correction to issue detailed plans on how it aims to address staff absenteeism prior to a conference on the Nunez monitorship next week. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
In a statement to the Eagle, a DOC spokesperson said the agency is taking the concerns “seriously.”
“We remain deeply committed to the idea of reform and to working with all stakeholders to improve conditions,” the spokesperson said. “We take the Monitor’s and U.S. Attorney’s concerns seriously and are working hard to address their concerns. We are reviewing the letter and will respond accordingly.”
During an unrelated press conference Tuesday morning, Adams said that he had yet to read the letter. However, he added that the city is fit to continue running the jail experiencing a crisis “that did not start in January 2022,” when he first took office.
“We could run our jails, we could run a jail system that has been a mess for decades,” Adams said. “Eric Adams, I know it's hard to believe, but I’ve been the mayor for four months now and I believe we are going to do a far better job than a generational problem on Rikers Island.”
“We’re going to look over the letter and find out what are the concerns,” Adams added. “I feel that Commissioner Molina is moving in the right direction. I’m really proud of what he’s doing and he’s the best person to be there.”
According to the monitor, despite some improvements, staff absenteeism has remained an issue on Rikers. As of the monitor’s last report, around 30 percent of staff was unavailable in January.
The high rate of absenteeism has led to increased violence in the jail, Martin said.
Sixteen people died in DOC custody last year, and three have died in the first three and a half months of 2022.
Though Adams has yet to clearly articulate the city’s plan introduced during former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration to close Rikers Island and build borough-based jails, the jails closure is scheduled for 2027.
