Rikers monitor says relationship with DOC has ‘eroded’
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Federal monitor Steve J. Martin said in a report last week that the relationship between the Department of Correction and the monitoring team has deteriorated under the Adams administration. AP file photo by Bebeto Mathews
By Jacob Kaye
With his days as Department of Correction commission numbered, Louis Molina was given a scathing review by the federal monitor charged with keeping track of violence on Rikers Island.
Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor appointed in the ongoing civil rights case Nunez v. the City of New York in 2015, said in a report released late last week that Molina and the Adams administration have not only been harder to work with than past jail leadership regimes, but that they’ve deliberately attempted to “interfere and obfuscate” efforts to create safer conditions on Rikers Island, the jail complex where over two dozen people have died in the 23 months that the mayor has been in office.
The crumbling relationship between Molina and Martin has been well documented in reports issued by the monitor over the past year. And with Molina possibly exiting his role as commissioner soon – City Hall said on Oct. 31 that Molina, who remains the commissioner, was going to leave in “mid-November” but has yet to account for the delay or announce a new departure date – it seems their relationship has hit a new low.
“Over the past two years, the city’s and department’s approach to the Nunez court orders has not reflected a strong commitment to [transparency regarding the agency’s processes and outcomes, realistic assessments of the size and scope of the agency’s problems, accepting ownership of the solutions, and embracing and actively engaging in functional collaboration and candid communication with the monitor],” Martin said in the Nov. 30 court filing. “Interference, obfuscation, and deflection have become normalized, and yet another imminent leadership transition is expected to further impact an already unstable, erratic, and chaotic environment.”
“This has exacerbated the monitoring team’s concerns about the elevated risk of harm faced by those in custody and the staff who work in the jails on a daily basis,” the monitor added.
The filing from Martin comes after top officials in the DOC opened up a unit meant to house detainees accused of habitually setting fires without first consulting the monitoring team, as required by the consent judgment reached in the case nearly a decade ago.
Initially, the city told Martin and federal judge Laura Swain that they were only trying to be proactive in making the jails safer and didn’t intentionally mean to keep the monitor out of the loop about the unit’s opening. However, in a filing submitted last week, Molina said that he had no knowledge of the unit’s creation, and blamed the entire episode on his second-in-command, Senior Deputy Commissioner Charles Daniels.
But Daniels also deflected blame for the unit’s opening, saying in a separate affidavit that he had authorized the opening of the unit on Nov. 9, “provided that the housing unit contained a fire suppression system,” but after learning that such systems were not in place, 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 Daniels. According to the filing, Daniels learned about the unit’s opening the following day and immediately ordered that it be shut down.
In his filing on Thursday, Martin said that he was entirely unconvinced by the explanation given by the DOC’s top officials.
“These are serious breaches in management that cannot simply be excused by apparent miscommunications by and/or to subordinates and distortion of the facts reported to both the monitor and the court,” Martin said.
Martin went on to say that the DOC’s “failure to consult…cannot be viewed in a vacuum.”
“It comes after a long record of consultation failures and repeated commitments from the city and department that things would improve,” he said. “The failure to consult in this case was not just a bureaucratic failure.”
The monitor said that Molina’s tenure has largely been one in which communication between the two has eroded. According to the monitor, Molina and his senior leadership have made a habit of failing to comply with the monitor’s request and then submitting mountains of data and documents in response to a court order or just ahead of a report.
“The production of a large volume of information does not excuse the regression that has occurred in the quality of collaboration, the provision of timely and reliable information, and agency leaderships’ stance on engaging with and consulting the monitor on all Nunez related matters,” Martin said. “However, defendants have not demonstrated any material change in their everyday practice.”
“The current dynamics characterizing defendant’s approach to working with the monitor are a distraction for all stakeholders who must divert finite resources to address issues related to transparency and consultation rather than focusing those resources on improving safety for people in custody and the staff who work in the jails,” he added. “The imminent risk of harm remains both very real and very high, and all parties must refocus squarely on addressing this issue.”
Hovering over Martin’s Thursday report is Molina’s alleged departure from his role as DOC head and eventual “promotion” to serve as the assistant deputy mayor for public safety.
Mayor Eric Adams announced the promotion on Oct. 31. Though the press release detailing the promotion did not make clear when Molina would assume the role – or if he already had – a mayoral spokesperson later told members of the media that the change would be made in “mid-October.”
Though that window has come and passed, City Hall has declined to give any accounting of the delay.
Molina said in a court filing earlier in the week that he had been told that he would not be leaving the commissioner’s position until a replacement had been found, and that he was unaware of the timeline regarding that search.
According to Martin, DOC staff has not been given any communication regarding Molina’s departure, his successor or how his responsibilities will be transferred between the two roles.
“This has infused both speculation and confusion in an agency that is already struggling with adequate management and leadership,” Martin said.
City Hall did not respond to requests for comment regarding the monitor’s report on Friday.
The filing also comes as Swain continues to consider whether or not to implement a federal receivership on Rikers Island. The extreme judicial order would see major aspects of management of the jail complex be handed over to a third-party receiver and stripped away from the DOC, including whoever may be the commissioner at the time.
