Unit on Rikers will reopen
Effort aimed at speeding intake amid heavy criticism
In a move meant to address long delays in finding beds for detainees, the city Correction Department plans to reopen a shuttered jail on Rikers Island, the Daily News has learned.
Personnel orders went out late Monday transferring more than 100 correction officers, captains and assistant deputy wardens to the Eric M. Taylor Center, which was closed in March 2020, partly reopened as a COVID quarantine facility at the height of the pandemic, and then closed again.
The Eric M. Taylor Center was built in 1964 and expanded in 1973. It has a capacity of 1,851 detainees.
The Rikers Island intake process has been centered in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, where detainees have told The News they languish in crowded bullpens for six days or longer while waiting to be assigned a bed.
Detainees are required to be housed in 24 hours or less.
State legislators who visited Rikers Island Sept. 14 said they encountered detainees in intake for well over a week.
“It was not acceptable what was going on. It is not going to continue. It is being changed right as we speak,” Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday. “Everyone must go through intake in less than 24 hours, the faster the better, but certainly less than 24 hours. That is the commitment.”
The reopening of the Taylor center is one of a series meant to address concerns over conditions and staffing on Rikers Island which have led to sharp criticism from legislators, legal advocates and detainees and correction officers themselves.
Attorney General Letitia James toured Rikers on Tuesday with Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, Queens DA Melinda Katz and Bronx DA Darcel Clark.
“I was deeply disturbed by what we saw,” James said. “For years, Rikers has been plagued by dysfunction, neglect and
violence, and it’s clear we’ve reached a breaking point.”
James said she is “examining all of my office’s legal options” to deal with the situation.
The situation has sparked a battle between the de Blasio administration and the correction unions over a wave of absenteeism in the ranks.
De Blasio slammed the
Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association on Tuesday, one day after the city sued the union over the workers’ absences. “The union leadership must stop engaging in causing, instigating, encouraging or condoning mass absenteeism,” the mayor said. “This is just common sense. If the workers aren’t there, everyone is made less safe.”
Union President Benny Boscio retorted that the mayor ignored the crisis by refusing to hire new correction officers for three years as jail violence rose and the detainee population doubled.
“He is the one as a public employer who failed to meet his obligation to maintain safe staffing levels,” Boscio said. “His negligence has created a humanitarian crisis that the whole world is now witnessing. He should be focusing on fixing this humanitarian crisis in our jails instead of preparing to run for governor.”
Meanwhile, the first wave of NYPD cops have been reassigned to the courts to handle duties normally done by correction officers. Correction staffers normally assigned to the courts will be reassigned to the jails to relieve their overworked brethren.
About 100 cops will be deployed to those posts, the mayor said. An initial group of 23 have been ordered to report to Manhattan and Bronx courts through Dec. 19.