NYC Correction Dept. is concealing records related to heat wave safety, lawsuit charges
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Rikers Island. AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File
By David Brand
The New York City Department of Correction is concealing information about its response to an extreme heat wave that threatened Rikers Island inmates last year, a lawsuit filed Monday in Queens Supreme Court charges.
The complaint, filed by attorneys from the Legal Aid Society and the firm Crowell Moring LLP, claims the city jails agency has violated Freedom of Information Law by refusing to turn over forms documenting instances when inmates refused to be transferred to air-conditioned housing units between July 19 to 21, 2019.
The Department of Correction has also declined to turn over logbooks detailing the distribution of ice to inmates as temperatures reached the high 90s in New York City, the lawsuit states.
The heat forced the cancellation of an outdoor festival in Central Park and an annual triathlon. Conditions also left “inmates in DOC custody at risk of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and other heat related ailments if appropriate measures in accordance with DOC’s policies and procedures were not taken,” the complaint states.
The public defender group says it has been unable to assess whether heat safety steps were indeed taken.
During that period, at least a dozen detainees represented by Legal Aid called their attorneys and said correction officers failed to give them ice or move them from their scorching hot cells as per jail policy, said attorney Robert Quackenbush. Correction officials later explained that the inmates had asked not to change units, a claim that inmates have denied, he said.
While inmates may decline to be moved for safety or other reasons, DOC’s account doesn’t jibe with what the defendants told their attorneys last year, Quackenbush said.
The department readily turned over other pieces of information in response to heatwave FOIL requests, the lawsuit states.
“They have given us records about the 2019 heat emergency and are still giving us records, but the two categories that they’re refusing to give us match up pretty well with the kinds of complaints that we got in that period,” Quackenbush said.
According to the lawsuit, Correction officials told Legal Aid that the documents “are not organized in a manner that would allow us to search for the requested records.”
But the lawsuit states that the request should be easy to complete based on department record-keeping policy. A rule known as Operations Order 07/15 indicates "exactly where" the records are kept, the lawsuit states.
“It’s right in the policy itself so if [the documents] aren’t in there then something went wrong,” Quackenbush said.
The regulations instruct staff to provide inmates with an extra cup of ice when the temperature exceeds 85 degrees and to document any refusal to change housing units in a heat emergency.
He said he worries about the city withholding information about one emergency as it contends with another, the COVID crisis.
A Department of Correction spokesperson referred questions to the city Law Department.
“We’ll review the complaint once we are served,” Law Department spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci said.
