Month after ‘promotion,’ Molina remains DOC boss
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Louis Molina said in a sworn affidavit that he remains the Department of Correction commissioner on Tuesday. Mayor Eric Adams promoted him to an assistant deputy mayor position at the end of last month and Molina was supposed to make the transition from the DOC to City Hall in “mid-November.” File photo by John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
Louis Molina’s switch from Department of Correction commissioner to a new gig in City Hall appears to be delayed after the DOC head said in a sworn, undated affidavit Tuesday that he was still leading the agency and “not aware of a timeline for the appointment of a successor.”
Molina’s “promotion” to serve as the assistant deputy mayor of public safety, which Mayor Eric Adams first announced on Oct. 31, was supposed to take place in “mid-November,” a mayoral spokesperson told the Eagle shortly after Molina’s transition was announced.
But with December around the corner, it appears that Molina will helm the troubled agency for at least a little while longer – though just how long remains unclear.
City Hall repeatedly declined to answer the Eagle’s questions regarding Molina’s move on Wednesday.
The status of Molina’s job has confused at least one person – federal Judge Laura Swain, who will soon be asked to decide if the management of Rikers Island needs to, at least in part, be taken out of the hands of the city and given to a court-appointed receiver.
Earlier this month, Swain blasted the DOC in a judicial order after the agency allegedly opened up a unit meant to house detainees accused of arson without first consulting the federal monitor, who detailed the episode in a letter to the judge.
In her order, Swain said that the monitor’s letter raised “profound questions that demand answers about the management of the department…particularly in light of the current commissioner’s recent announcement of his intent to resign.”
Following the incident, the judge ordered the DOC provide her with the names of the people who authorized the opening of the unit, as well as the names of the people who were charged with telling the monitoring team about its opening. She also ordered the DOC to tell her the “names of the individuals who are currently functioning as commissioner and senior deputy commissioner of the department, as well as when — and what — changes in those personnel are contemplated.”
Swain also asked plainly why the DOC shouldn’t be held in contempt of court for its alleged failure to communicate with the monitor about the opening of the unit, which was shut down a day after the monitor raised concerns about it.
In their response filed late Tuesday, Molina attempted to assure Swain that he remained in charge of the agency, which he has led since the first day of the Adams administration in January 2021.
Despite leading the agency, the commissioner said that he bore no responsibility for the opening of the rogue Arson Reduction Housing unit and denied that he knew anything about its opening at the time.
Molina blamed the unit’s creation on his second-in-command, Senior Deputy Commissioner Charles Daniels, who would assume the commissioner’s role should Molina step down and no replacement be named.
“[Daniels] is developing a Violence Reduction Plan, which includes plans to reduce arson occurring in department facilities,” Molina wrote to the judge. “I have not discussed the specifics of the plan to reduce arson with him and I was not aware of the opening of the Arson Reduction Housing unit.”
For his part, Daniels chalked the whole incident up to a miscommunication.
In a separate affidavit – dated Nov. 28 – Daniels said that he authorized the opening of the unit on Nov. 9, “provided that the housing unit contained a fire suppression system.”
Daniels said that four days later, he learned that not every cell in the unit was equipped with a fire suppression system and told a deputy commissioner “not to go forward with the activation” of the unit.
However, the deputy commissioner, Ronald Brereton, didn’t pass the information along and the unit was opened inside the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island later that day.
According to the filing, Daniels learned about the unit’s opening the following day and immediately ordered that it be shut down.
For the brief period in which it was opened, the unit housed five detainees, who the federal monitor said earlier this month were placed there arbitrarily.
“If the department opens a similar such unit in the future, I will ensure that I or members of my team will confer with the monitoring team in accordance with the consent judgment and court orders before any such unit is opened,” Daniels said in his letter to the judge.
Daniels, who previously worked for – and sued – the city’s DOC during one chapter of his controversial career, was named senior deputy commissioner in September. His appointment came at a time when whispers of Molina’s departure from the DOC – which he frequently denied – began to circulate. Many saw Daniels’ appointment as further evidence that leadership changes at the agency were on the way.
Though Molina told PIX11 in early October that rumors of his resignation were “not true,” the mayor would announce four weeks later that Molina would be moved from his position at the agency to a new one within City Hall.
In his new role, Molina is expected to retain some oversight over the DOC. But much like the timeline for his transition, City Hall has been tight-lipped about the specifics of Molina’s new gig.
The first year of Molina’s tenure as DOC head was the deadliest on Rikers Island in the past decade.
Despite assurances from the Adams administration that Molina had brought the agency back from a moment of crisis, several indicators of violence remained this year as high or higher than they did in 2015, when the city first entered into a consent judgment with Swain’s court and was ordered to begin working the federal monitor to make the jails safer.
Several weeks after Molina’s impending move was announced, the Legal Aid Society, which represents the plaintiff class in the ongoing civil rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York, formally filed a contempt of court motion against the DOC and called for Swain to implement a federal receiver.
The journey toward the extreme request largely played out during Molina’s tenure.
The Legal Aid Society first asked Swain if they could call for receivership last summer but Swain denied the request, instead ordering the DOC to create and implement an “action plan” designed to reduce violence at Rikers Island.
Over a year later, the Legal Aid Society, the federal monitor and federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York’s office say the action plan has been a failure, in part because of Molina’s alleged unwillingness or inability to work with the monitor to implement it.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult for the monitor to do the work required of him by the Nunez Court Orders,” federal monitor Steve J. Martin said in the November court filing describing the opening of the arson unit. “Sustained and chronic institutional resistance and recalcitrance toward court ordered reform is an insurmountable impediment to any monitorship.”
