NYC DOC head tried to get federal monitor to shelve damning report on jail incidents
The head of the city’s Department of Correction tried — in vain — to get the federal monitor overseeing local jails to shelve a damning report about five disturbing incidents that took place behind bars over a six-day span this month.
DOC Commissioner Louis Molina claimed the special report would cause “great harm [to the department] at a time when we are making great strides” — writing in emails to the court-appointed monitor last week that he was “suggesting” it not be made public.
The report “will fuel the flames of those who believe that we cannot govern ourselves,” Molina wrote.
But the monitor declined, filing in Manhattan federal court on Friday the scorching report that included parts of Molina’s pleas and lambasted the commissioner and his agency.
The shocking, one-off report paints a grim picture of the current state of Big Apple correctional facilities — even as Mayor Eric Adams’ pick to run the jails tried to downplay the incidents detailed within, and wrote off some of the monitor’s assessments as “hyperbole.”
In all five of the cases — involving in-custody deaths or injuries — the monitor said the DOC had failed to alert it promptly as required by a court order.
In one of the instances, the monitor raised concerns about not being notified of the May 14 death of Rubu Zhao, 52, who jumped from the top of stairs in a mental health unit at the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island.
The federal oversight team first learned of the inmate’s death through media reports.
DOC officials claimed the agency had not seen the monitor’s request for additional information on the fatal incident because it got caught in a “spam folder.”
Molina also claimed the DOC did not have to report all in-custody deaths to the monitor. But the report cites court-orders mandating that the DOC report all such fatalities to the monitor within 24 hours.
“[T]he Commissioner’s letter suggests that the Commissioner does not fully appreciate the significance of these incidents,” the monitor wrote, adding, “it is disturbing that the Monitoring Team, and consequently the Court, would have been unaware that the incidents had occurred but for the allegations received from external stakeholders and/or media reports.”
In another instance, a 39-year-old inmate, James Carlton, was left paralyzed on May 11 after correction officers at the Vernon C. Bain Center — the jail barge anchored off the Bronx’s southern shore — tackled him when he ran out of an elevator.
The officers claimed the injuries, which required three surgeries, stemmed from pre-existing conditions that were “exacerbated when [Carlton] fell” — an assertion the monitor said was “questionable at best.”
Once again, the monitor said the DOC did not notify it of the incident.
The other serious incidents detailed in the report included: an inmate who was gravely injured after being jumped in Rikers’ Eric M. Taylor Center facility on May 17; one who was left on life support after being hospitalized at the jail complex’s Anna M. Kross Center for unknown reasons on May 20 and an 80-year-old man with possible cognitive impairment and mental illness who was sent to the hospital after being restrained alone for four hours at the Taylor Center on May 20.
Molina defended the DOC, saying the agency did not have enough “adequate time” to respond to requests from the monitor.
But the monitor said, “these issues, and the lack of information provided to the Monitoring Team, are problems of the Department’s own making.”
“Claims from the Department that they were given insufficient time to address these requirements are misplaced,” the monitor continued.
The scathing report said that in one instance, the DOC said it needed extra time to respond to requests from the monitoring team “because certain officials were unavailable because they were out of the office at a ribbon cutting ceremony.”
“Had the Department provided the information when requested or, better still, had they proactively informed the Monitoring Team about these incidents, as has been the consistent practice until recently, this last-minute push to provide information to the Monitoring Team would be unnecessary,” the report states.
The monitor added that the “gravity of this situation” had spurred it to file the special report so that the court could suggest or order additional steps to make sure the DOC “addresses, recognizes and moves to abate these serious, dangerous, and, in some cases, life-altering incidents of abject harm with the full transparency required of an agency charged with the safekeeping of incarcerated persons.”
“This current dynamic is simply unsustainable,” the monitor said.
Asked for comment Tuesday, Molina asserted in a statement that the DOC “is in a much better place today than it was during the last administration” — but did not address issues raised in the monitor’s report.
“Over the last 18 months, we have dramatically reduced violence, eliminated rampant absenteeism, improved critical aspects of our training, infused outside correctional expertise into our ranks, significantly improved court production, and made Rikers Island safer for every person in our custody and every single officer,” the statement said. “We have brought this organization back from the brink of collapse and we will not be deterred in continuing our good work.”
