Rikers correction officers sue city over return of 12-hour shifts
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Benny Boscio, the president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association. The union sued the city last week over the reintroduction of 12-hour shifts. AP file photo by Jeenah Moon
By Jacob Kaye
The union representing Rikers Island’s correction officers is suing the city for reinstating forced 12-hour shifts, arguing officials illegally used an emergency order to revive the longer tours.
The Correction Officers Benevolent Association said the city and its Department of Correction illegally launched a pilot program to revive the lengthy shifts at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Rikers last month.
The suit, which was filed last week, claims that the city’s use of a long-standing mayoral executive order declaring a state of emergency in the jails to make the change was illegal. While the order, which has been in place for more than four years, suspends a number of rules and regulations surrounding the city’s management of the jails and the treatment of detainees, COBA said it doesn’t give the city the power to alter officers’ shifts without first getting approval from the union.
“DOC reliance upon the general state of emergency declared at DOC facilities is acting illegally, arbitrarily, and capriciously,” the lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan reads. “DOC’s alleged emergency for the implementation of these illegal 12 hour tours of duty is not a true emergency.”
A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department said the agency “will review the case and respond in the litigation” and declined to comment further.
The lawsuit comes after years of staffing troubles on Rikers Island. Though Rikers Island has one of the highest staff-to-detainee ratios in the country, it has lost around 4,000 officers since the start of the pandemic – while the city currently has around 5,770 uniformed officers on staff, there were around 9,700 officers in March 2020, according to city data. During that same period, it gained around 2,000 detainees, going from around 5,200 detainees in March 2020 to 7,000 detainees in October.
Without staff to escort them, detainees often get stuck in their cells or housing areas, which can sometimes lead to violence.
Staffing shortages in recent years have resulted in a large number of detainees missing court appearances and medical appointments. Staffing issues have also been cited by jail watchdogs and judges as contributing factors to a number of deaths in the city’s jails.
While the city forced officers to work 12-hour shifts during the height of the pandemic when thousands of officers were missing work each day, officers typically work eight-hour shifts that begin at either midnight, 8 a.m. or 4 p.m.
But the DOC has attempted to revive the 12-hour shift over the past year.
It first proposed bringing the shift back in February but backtracked after COBA opposed the plan. The DOC again floated the proposal in the fall, leading to the implementation of the 12-hour shift pilot at RNDC, which went into effect on Nov. 30.
The DOC, which announced the plan in October, held seven town halls on the change in November prior to the start of the pilot, according to a written communication sent from DOC leadership to staff.
But the feedback sessions didn’t appear to win over many officers.
“We are being experimented on,” Benny Boscio, COBA’s president, told the Eagle in regard to the pilot program.
The union accused the DOC in the suit of behaving in a particularly "heartless fashion” by instituting the pilot “around the holidays and in the middle of a school year leaving correction officers only a few days to sort out childcare and personal life issues before either needing to come to work for 12 consecutive hours.”
Unlike previous 12-hour tours, the current pilot requires officers to work eight hours and then an additional four hours of overtime. While officers previously had extended time off if they worked 12-hour shifts, the perk doesn’t apply under the new system, according to COBA.
The executive order at the center of the suit was first passed by Mayor Bill de Blasio as his final term as mayor came to an end. The September 2021 order – Executive Order 241 – declared a state of emergency in the jails as a result of the staffing crisis that reached its peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. The order allowed the city to replace DOC officers with NYPD officers at court proceedings, suspend officers who went AWOL, and also required officers to get a doctor’s note whenever they went on sick leave. The order also allowed the DOC to close down law libraries, visits and recreational time for a number of detainees.
Two months later, de Blasio issued Executive Order 304, a separate order declaring a state of emergency in the jails. The new order, which came a day before the city’s vaccine mandate went into effect, explicitly allowed then-DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi to assign officers to 12-hour shifts.
While Mayor Eric Adams has continued to renew the September 2021 order every five days for the entirety of his time in office, the union claimed in its lawsuit that EO 304 came to an end during Adams’ first month in office, when then-DOC Commissioner Louis Molina ended 12-hour shifts on Rikers.
“DOC’s unilateral implementation of 12-hour tours in four facilities in 2021, was voluntarily discontinued under new DOC management on January 31, 2022,” the lawsuit reads. “Furthermore, even former Commissioner Schiraldi’s original justification for the 12 hour tours in 2021 has long since been rendered moot because the NYC vaccine mandate for public sector workers was repealed by Mayor Eric Adams back in February 2023.”
COBA also questioned the timing of the new 12-hour shift pilot, which comes a month before Adams is set to leave office and as a federal judge is preparing to appoint an independent receiver, who will assume a number of powers over the day-to-day management of Rikers.
“DOC’s decision to commence this 12 hour tour pilot with less than 30 days left in the Adams administration begs the question – what exactly was this pilot program necessary to achieve?” the lawsuit reads. “While the timing of this pilot program may be convenient for current DOC management attempting to endear themselves to a new mayor and an incoming [receiver], the timing could not be less convenient for correction officers.”
Boscio doubled down on the accusation, claiming DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who was appointed by Adams at the end of 2023, was pushing the pilot in an effort to ingratiate herself to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who has yet to announce a pick for the job.
“This is her auditioning to the new administration to keep her job,” the union head said.
The DOC declined to comment on the suit, referring the Eagle to the Law Department.
