$1M tab settles county suits
Larger of 2 actions relates to claims of brutality at jail
Albany County is preparing to pay more than $1 million to settle two separate lawsuits, including a second payment over allegations of brutality at the county jail.
The County Legislature is expected to approve the payments at its Monday meeting.
The larger of the two settlements will pay $750,000 to 11 New York City men to settle claims that county jail employees beat and abused the men who were transferred to the jail from Rikers Island in early 2018.
Representatives for the county and the legislature declined to comment ahead of the settlements being approved. An attorney for the 11 men and Sheriff Craig Apple did not return a request for comment on the jail lawsuit.
The settlement for former Rikers Island inmates is the second time in two years the county has agreed to pay out over the practice of accepting allegedly violent and problematic inmates from the New York City corrections system. In August 2019, the legislature approved a $960,000 settlement, which the county split with New York City. It was not immediately clear whether this second settlement imposed additional conditions on the practice of sending Rikers Island inmates to upstate jails.
The men who filed the lawsuit were among 24 Rikers inmates who were transferred to Albany County jail in 2018. Records indicate several of the inmates were sent to the upstate jail because they were accused of violence at Rikers or other jails.
The allegations in the second lawsuit mirror those of the four men who previ
ously settled their claims in 2019. The men were transferred from Rikers Island with no notice to Albany County jail. When the men arrived, they were met by members of the jail’s Correctional Emergency Response Team who then allegedly beat them, hit them with stun guns and threatened to kill them unless they gave up any contraband they had hidden on them.
Jail records indicated makeshift weapons were recovered from some of them, according to previous Times Union reports.
The men also claim a jail nurse refused to treat their injuries, which allegedly included rectal bleeding, severe bruising and lacerations, beyond giving them over-thecounter pain medication. A previous Times Union investigation called into question the extent of the men’s injuries, based on jail records.
The men were then placed in a special housing unit in solitary cells for 23 hours a day, including some who spent more than a year in the unit. Sheriff Apple previously said that it was the jail’s policy to put any inmate who had ever attacked a correctional officer anywhere into the special housing unit.
Attorneys for the men believe New York City officials shipped them to upstate jails to get around rules that limited solitary confinement for younger inmates in the city’s jail system.
Albany County sheriff ’s officials have not disputed that physical force was used against many of the Rikers inmates. But they allege the officers’ use of Tasers and “hand strikes” was justified when the inmates refused orders or allegedly attacked and spit at them, according to previous Times Union reporting.
Attorneys for the men have stood by their allegations.
“That any of the Rikers detainees chose to spontaneously assault multiple officers wearing helmets and full riot gear while locked in a confined space is entirely unlikely. That all of them did so rises to the level of systematic fabrication,” the second lawsuit states.
Debris injury claim
The second settlement the legislature is expected to approve will pay $385,000 to resolve allegations that county workers were negligent when they cleared ice and snow off the county courthouse roof in January 2019.
According to a copy of the complaint, Maureen Conley and her husband, Thomas Daley, were walking into the building on Lodge Street when the debris came crashing down near them.
Conley’s lawsuit claims she fell trying to avoid the ice and snow and hurt her arm. Conley said she lost the use of her arm and that county employees did not block off that area of sidewalk or give any kind of warning that they were clearing off the roof.