Federal prosecutor joins call for Rikers receivership
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U.S. Attorney Damian Willaims said that his office would seek a federal receivership for Rikers Island in the coming weeks. AP file photo by Carolyn Kaster
By Jacob Kaye
The city’s grip over Rikers Island appeared to slip further earlier this week as the federal prosecutor for New York’s Southern District called on the notorious jail complex be turned over to a court-appointed receiver.
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that his office would soon be formally asking a federal judge to consider putting Rikers Island into a federal receivership – a judicial order that could potentially see the jail complex completely turned over to a court-appointed authority.
Behind Williams’ call is what he said is a lack of change in the violent conditions in Rikers Island, where over two dozen people have died in the past year and a half. Williams’ announcement is only the latest domino in what has recently appeared to be a march toward the city’s loss of control over Rikers.
“Rikers Island has been in crisis for years,” Williams said in a statement. “This is a collective failure with deep roots, spanning multiple mayoral administrations and DOC commissioners.”
“But after eight years of trying every tool in the toolkit, we cannot wait any longer for substantial progress to materialize,” Williams added. “That is why my office will seek a court-appointed receiver to address the conditions on Rikers Island.”
The U.S. attorney’s call for receivership is yet another extraordinary recent rebuke of the city’s and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration’s handling of the myriad crises on Rikers Island.
In June, federal Judge Laura Swain said that she would allow the first steps toward receivership to be taken come the next appearance in the decade-old civil rights case Nunez v the City of New York – the U.S. attorney’s office came on as a plaintiff in the case, which resulted in the creation of a federal monitor, in 2014.
The Legal Aid Society, which first brought the case and represents the case’s plaintiff class, has vowed to begin receivership proceedings come Aug. 10, the next scheduled appearance in the case. The public defense firm celebrated Williams’ announcement on Tuesday.
“We applaud the federal government's statement calling for appointment of an independent receiver to bring the city jails into compliance with the law,” a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society said.
“Too many lives have been lost and damaged due to the city's inability to manage the jails humanely,” they added. “We look forward to working together to seek the relief necessary to end this culture of brutality.”
It’s not the first time Williams has suggested that he may be supportive of a receivership order.
In April 2022, Williams said in a letter to Swain that he was not confident that Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina and Adams would be able to ameliorate the violent conditions in the notorious jail complex. In the letter, Williams said that should conditions not change, he’d seek some form of extreme judicial intervention.
“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,” Williams wrote.
“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 added.
However, both Williams and Swain voiced support for the “action plan” the DOC and Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor, crafted several months later and began to implement during the summer of 2022.
But in recent weeks, Williams, Swain and Martin have begun to doubt whether or not the action plan has not only been effective but if it’s being followed.
In June, Martin accused the DOC of failing to properly report five serious incidents, two of which resulted in a detainee’s death. In Martin’s June report, he said that Molina had actively asked the monitoring team not to share information about at least one of the incidents with the court or the public out of fear that it would undermine the improvements made in the jail complex.
The June report was enough to rile Swain, who said during a court appearance later that month that she had begun to doubt the abilities of the agency and its commitment to change.
“My confidence in the commitment of the city leadership to be all in on recognizing the need and in working with the monitoring structure that the court has imposed in good faith and candor has been shaken by the incidents of the past few weeks,” Swain said.
Last week, Martin filed a report calling on Swain to initiate contempt proceedings against the city.
“The ongoing harm and lack of safety in the facilities cannot continue unabated,” the report read. “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.”
Mayor Eric Adams defended his administration’s handling of the multitude of crises on Rikers Island on Tuesday as threats of a federal takeover loom. Photo by Caroline Rubinstein-Willis/Mayoral Photography Office
“Real people are experiencing real trauma and pain and, in some cases, are suffering irreparable injuries and death,” the monitor added.
In response to Williams’ call for receivership, a spokesperson for the mayor defended the work Molina has done in an effort to improve conditions on the island.
“Over the last six months, our efforts have led to double digit reductions in a number of areas, and just three months ago, the federal monitor stated that ‘real change has occurred’ on Rikers Island,” the spokesperson said. “So, what’s changed?”
The mayor repeated his spokesperson’s defense of the DOC during an unrelated press conference on Tuesday.
“The numbers are showing that we are moving this in the right direction,” Adams said. “In April, we were told we were in the direction of [turning Rikers around].”
“I respect the U.S. attorney in the Southern District, I know that his goals are the same as mine to make sure Rikers is functioning, and I believe that I'm the best person to make the Rikers that we all desire,” the mayor added.
Since the monitor’s April report in which he said that “real change has occurred since the action plan was ordered by the court,” three detainees have died and another was paralyzed from the neck down after being beaten by a number of correctional officers.
Also since the report, Adams has called into question Martin’s understanding of the monitor’s authority – Martin was appointed by a federal judge and acts on behalf of the court.
Despite his desire to remain in control of Rikers, Adams said on Tuesday that he would “abide by the law,” if Swain were to order Rikers enter into a receivership.
“That's one thing that we're going to do, we're going to always do that,” he said. “But I just can't find the logic.”
