Accused bike killer’s court rants
ALBANY — Parents are being left in the dark when it comes to abuse and neglect at state-run facilities for the disabled, according to an audit released Monday by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Investigators with the comptroller’s office found that facilities operated, licensed or certified by the state’s Office for People With Developmental Disabilities repeatedly failed to properly notify parents and guardians about incidents as required by a 2007 law.
The agency is the second to be flagged this year by DiNapoli for failing to comply with Jonathan’s Law, named for Jonathan Carey, a 13-year-old nonverbal autistic and developmentally disabled boy who died while in the care of a state facility.
“The state must do everything it can to protect individuals with disabilities in their care,” DiNapoli said. “Jonathan’s Law was created to make sure incidents of abuse and neglect are properly addressed and families are told of what occurred. This law can’t work if state agencies aren’t fully complying with the law’s requirements.”
Auditors found that programs under the disabilities office’s supervision don’t always provide records to parents or guardians when requested, or are not providing them within 21 days of the request or the conclusion of the investigation as required.
In a sample of 63 record requests, 32% were either not provided on time or not provided at all.
While state- and community-based programs have established practices for notifying qualified people within the required 24 hours of an incident, 11% of the 295 substantiated incidents reviewed by DiNapoli’s auditors lacked supporting evidence that a notification was made. Another 7% lacked support that a written report had been issued within the required 10 days.
A July audit found similar issues at state-run and private mental health facilities.
Jonathan’s Law also requires that the director of a facility offer to meet with a parent or guardian to discuss a reported incident. While facilities generally maintained adequate documentation to support that they made the offers, auditors found 48 incidents involving 73 individuals where there was no such paperwork. A single staterun facility accounted for 45 of the 48 incidents.
The disabilities agency operates 13 operations offices in six regions across the state, which oversee more than 1,100 certified programs. The agency also regulates, certifies, sponsors and oversees approximately 650 community-based service providers.
DiNapoli concluded that the disabilities office could improve compliance with Jonathan’s Law by providing updated guidance to sites on their responsibilities related to the statute’s requirements, including clear and consistent implementation procedures.
He also called for periodic data analysis of the state webbased incident database to identify patterns and areas of concern that may be indicative of noncompliance with Jonathan’s Law.
Officials with the agency countered the comptroller’s report by saying that information about reaching out to parents was already logged in a web-based statewide database that the comptroller’s office had access to.
They also contend that many of the findings are “based on faulty interpretation and inaccurate data.”
Accused Hudson River bike path attacker Sayfullo Saipov ranted again in court Monday as prosecutors revealed they would ask for an anonymous jury that could decide if gets the death penalty for killing eight people.
Speaking through an Uzbek interpreter, Saipov, 31, asked Manhattan Federal Judge Vernon Broderick why he was judging his case, but not a case regarding the Muslim “wives and kids dying by bombs of the American government.”
“You’re judging me for the eight people killed. You’re not judging the prosecutors when the thousands and thousands of Muslims are dying all over the world,” Saipov said.
It’s the second time Saipov, an alleged ISIS sympathizer, has spoken in court. He’s accused of driving a rental pickup truck down a popular bike path for 14 blocks in 2017, running over his victims.