Rikers monitor says city should be held in contempt
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A screenshot of the use of force incident that left 40-year-old James Carlton paralyzed from the neck down. Photo via monitor’s report
By Jacob Kaye
The Department of Correction should be held in contempt of court for its inability to keep the people who are held and who work at Rikers Island safe, the court-appointed federal monitor said in a damning report released Monday.
The report from Steve J. Martin, the monitor appointed to track conditions in the city’s notorious jail complex in 2015, outlines a general distrust of the Department of Correction’s ability and willingness to improve conditions in the jail where over three dozen people have died in the past three years.
As such, the monitor suggests in the report that federal Judge Laura Swain should consider initiating contempt proceedings in the decade-old case, Nunez v. the City of New York.
“The ongoing harm and lack of safety in the facilities cannot continue unabated,” the report reads. “The city’s and department’s on-going failure to implement initiatives to improve the underlying security deficiencies and failed operational practices, coupled with the city and department’s unwillingness and inability to acknowledge the myriad of issues, disturbing regression to address core issues of the Nunez Court Orders, and the lack of urgency to address these matters has become normalized.”
“Real people are experiencing real trauma and pain and, in some cases, are suffering irreparable injuries and death,” the monitor added.
The monitor’s report could serve as another argument in favor of federal receivership, a court order that could result in the management of Rikers Island being stripped from the city and be handed over to a court-appointed authority.
In addition to the contempt proceedings, Martin makes reference to “additional remedial relief,” which he said “is necessary in order to implement the requirements of the Nunez Court Orders and catalyze the substantive changes required to protect the safety and welfare of the many people held in custody and who work in the jails.”
Less than a month ago, Swain said that she would allow for steps to be taken toward receivership beginning in August, the next scheduled conference in the Nunez case. The extraordinary ruling is supported by the Legal Aid Society, which represents the plaintiff class in the case.
“While we are still reviewing the intensively detailed report, it makes clear that all efforts to date to change the New York City Department of Correction's pattern of brutality have failed,” the public defense firm said in a statement on Monday. “Continuing down the same path — promises of change, Monitor's reports that lead nowhere, court orders that get ignored — will merely cause more injuries and death.”
“These are the reasons we have argued that receivership is necessary, and today the need for an independent authority over the jails is clearer than ever,” the Legal Aid Society added. “As the court has ordered, we will be meeting with the city and the United States Attorney’s Office over the next few weeks to devise a solution to this decades-long failure.”
Citing continued high rates of violence and death on Rikers Island, the federal monitor said that the city should be held in contempt of court for its inability and unwillingness to make major changes. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction declined to comment on the monitor’s report on Monday. The spokesperson instead directed the Eagle to the mayor’s office, who defended the agency.
“We take our obligation to keep people in our charge very seriously and remain committed to continued reform and working with the monitor,” a City Hall spokesperson told the Eagle.
“While we are still reviewing this recently released report, we are prepared to fully defend against any contempt motion and the record will reflect the important and necessary steps New York City has taken to make continued progress,” the spokesperson added.
It is not the first time federal receivership has made its way into the case – but it has yet to be as seriously considered as it appears to be being considered now. Last year, attorneys with the Legal Aid Society attempted to begin receivership proceedings, only to be rejected by Swain, who instead ordered the DOC and monitor to craft and implement an “action plan” to improve conditions on Rikers Island.
Though Martin was supportive of the plan after it was crafted and at several points last year during its implementation, the monitor said in Monday’s report that the plan hasn’t been nearly as effective as anticipated.
“The monitor’s assessment is that there has not been a substantial reduction in the risk of harm currently facing incarcerated individuals and department staff,” the monitor said in the report, issued around a year after the action plan’s implementation.
“An assessment of the totality of the circumstances after eight years of monitoring and after one year of the action plan’s implementation is such that the cautious optimism that characterized prior reports and testimony can no longer be maintained,” the monitor added.
Though Martin said in the report that the action plan had led to some improvements, including boosted staffing numbers, modernized staff scheduling systems and a reduced disciplinary backlog, a number of troubling conditions in the jail complex remain.
“Many initiatives remain incomplete, many gaps remain, and worse, there has been a disturbing level of regression in a number of critical areas and essential practices during the past year,” Martin wrote in the report. “Accordingly, the monitor’s assessment is that the city and department have not made substantial and demonstrable progress in implementing the reforms, initiatives, plans, systems, and practices outlined in the action plan.”
Among the troubling trends Martin listed, was the number of use of force incidents committed by officers against detainees.
From January 2023 through May, the use of force rate was 25 percent lower than it was in 2021, the climax of the jail crisis, but it was also 131 percent higher than the rate at the start of the consent judgment in the Nunez case in 2016 – the case was originally brought alleging abusive officer practices and unnecessary use of force.
“A pattern and practice of the excessive and unnecessary use of force remains clearly evident in this system,” Martin said.
Among the evidence Martin presented in the report to illustrate the DOC’s violent use of force practices was a May incident that left 40-year-old detainee James Carlton paralyzed. The incident also highlighted the way DOC Commissioner Louis Molina was less than forthcoming about the serious incident, according to Martin.
On May 11, Carlton was in an elevator with over 10 officers after he had previously wandered off an elevator after being left alone by another guard. At one point, Carlton “stepped forward” and was then tackled by the officers.
After getting off the elevator, an officer in full riot gear was helping Carlton, who was in rear cuffs and shackles, put on his shoes. Carlton’s “leg jerked towards the helmet of one of the officers,” according to the monitor. That’s when multiple officers tackled Carlton to the ground, slamming his head on a plastic container, the leg of a partition and the concrete floor.
According to the monitor, “he appeared unable to support his own body weight,” after the incident.
Martin condemned the incident and Molina’s response to it, which Martin said downplayed its severity and distorted the facts.
“This case involves numerous reporting, security and operational failures including use of force tactics that were excessive given the extant threat,” Martin wrote in the report. “Further, the commissioner’s and other department leaders’ assessments of this incident are emblematic of the pretextual claims about the appropriateness of staff’s behavior that brought about this case to begin with and are at the heart of the culture of impunity that Nunez intends to address.”
The next appearance in the Nunez case is scheduled to take place in early August.
Though the monitor has previously expressed faith in the DOC’s ability to reform the jail complex as well as its own internal practices, Martin appeared to suggest that little has changed over the past eight years.
“The department operates in a near-constant state of crisis such that the concentrated attention and effort needed to reform core practices is constantly being diverted to other issues,” the monitor said. “Rather than focusing the necessary attention on building strong foundational structures, the Department continues to veer from one crisis to another. Over the last eight years, the monitoring team has observed this cycle repeatedly.”
