No sprinklers or guards as detainees were trapped during Rikers fire, report says
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The Board of Correction recently issued a report issuing a dozen recommendations to correct “concerning” Department of Correction practices that were exposed after an April fire. File photo via the Office of Compliance Consultants
By Jacob Kaye
Detainees were held in locked cells that were filling up with smoke for nearly a half hour as a fire spread through a Rikers Island facility in April, a new report from the city’s Board of Correction found.
According to the Board of Correction, the citizen watchdog board charged with keeping tabs on the city’s Department of Correction, the DOC didn’t follow a number of rules and procedures leading up to and during an April 6, 2023 fire in the North Infirmary Command building that sent nine correction officers and four detainees to the hospital.
While the report from the oversight body on the fire didn’t find any criminal wrongdoing, the board made a dozen recommendations for changes to “concerning” DOC policies and practices.
Among those practices, the BOC found that staff at the North Infirmary Command had shut off the building’s sprinkler system water supply in the housing area at some point between April 1 and the day of the fire.
According to the BOC, correctional staff were “unable to locate weekly and monthly fire safety reports for that period, therefore DOC records do not reflect when DOC shut off the sprinkler system water supply to this particular area or how long the water had been shut off prior to April 6, 2023.”
Also leading up to the fire, staff at the North Infirmary Command didn’t conduct weekly or monthly fire audits of the building, in alleged defiance of State Commission of Correction minimum standards.
In the hours before the fire, no “B” post officer took a tour of the housing area at the direction of a captain, according to the BOC.
The BOC also found concerning practices as the fire, which was ignited by a 38-year-old detainee who had been held in restrictive units at the NIC for 584 consecutive days, ripped its way through the jail. It took officers 27 minutes after the start of the fire to get detainees locked in segregated housing cells out of their cells and away from danger, according to the report.
A spokesperson for the DOC said the agency was reviewing the report and the BOC’s recommendations made within it.
Advocates pointed to the report on Friday as further evidence that the DOC, which is currently facing the prospect of its main jail complex, Rikers Island, being taken over by a court-appointed authority, is ill-equipped to handle running the failing jail.
“The Board of Correction’s special investigation report released [Friday] describes such egregious mismanagement by multiple entities within the Department of Correction that the department should no longer be trusted to hold people in custody,” a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society, which recently asked a judge to consider a federal takeover of Rikers, said in a statement.
The public defense firm also called on City Hall to hold the agency to account for the fire and answer for the recent promotion of former DOC Commissioner Louis Molina, who now serves as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety but served as DOC head at the time of the fire.
“It is hard to imagine any institution in our city where such compounding and colossal failures to prevent and contain a catastrophic fire would not result in immediate accountability by leadership,” they added. “We demand answers from City Hall about how Assistant Deputy Mayor Louis Molina can be trusted to maintain public safety and what the new leadership in DOC has done to prevent further catastrophe.”
The report comes not long after federal Judge Laura Swain held the DOC in contempt of court for opening a segregated housing unit to keep detainees accused of arson without first consulting the federal monitoring team tasked with tracking conditions in the jails.
According to federal monitor Steve J. Martin, the monitoring team received on Nov. 14 an anonymous tip regarding the opening of the new restrictive housing unit the day prior.
Less than a week prior, the DOC told the monitor that the unit was still in the “early planning stages” and “assured the monitor that he would be consulted prior to the opening of the unit.” Nonetheless, five detainees were housed in the unit days later.
The unit was shut down a day after the monitor raised concerns about it.
The DOC later chalked the incident up to a simple miscommunication, a defense Swain called “preposterous.” Molina, who was commissioner when the unit was opened, claimed in a sworn affidavit that he had no knowledge of the unit’s opening.
In a court hearing earlier this month, the federal judge, who is separately weighing the extreme request for federal receivership, ordered the DOC to elevate the role of the current DOC staffer charged with coordinating communication with the monitor, to create a “high-profile communication program” that makes clear to staff and DOC leadership that they must cooperate with the monitoring team and to develop a set of data and metrics to accurately evaluate use of force incidents, violence and security in the jails.
Should the city fail to meet her orders, Swain said that she would “not hesitate to consider the very serious imposition of a heavy fine” of at least “four figures a day.”
The DOC has until February to purge itself of the contempt order and prove that it is in compliance with Swain’s orders.
The report from the BOC also comes on the heels of the passage of a bill by the City Council that would essentially ban solitary confinement in the city’s jails. Mayor Eric Adams has said he’s opposed to the bill, despite its veto-proof majority support in the Council.
Advocates on Friday said that the details of the BOC’s report further drive home the need for the mayor to sign the solitary confinement ban bill into law.
“This new report provides yet another reason why New York City must end the harmful, dangerous, and deadly practice of solitary confinement,” said Anisah Sabur, an organizer with the #HALTsolitary Campaign. “Solitary confinement leads people to deteriorate to the point of even taking desperate measures like setting fires to try to get some reprieve from the torture they are experiencing. At the same time, especially because of the mismanagement of the jails, people locked in solitary have no way to protect themselves or save themselves or each other when an emergency like a fire takes place – in this instance people were left locked in solitary for 27 minutes while the fire blazed and smoke filled the unit.”
“Now that a veto-proof supermajority has passed Int. 549A to end solitary confinement and utilize alternative forms of separation proven to better protect people’s health and safety, Mayor Adams must sign it into law,” Sabur added.
According to the BOC, the fire in the NIC was started by Marvens Thomas, who had been held in restrictive housing for nearly three years when he started the fire. Thomas allegedly set the unit ablaze because he was upset that the DOC had confiscated his non-DOC issued shoes during a search of the housing unit on April 6.
