Incorrection Department
City Correction Commissioner Cynthia Brann is leaving her post at month’s end — six months early and many months too late. Her tenure since succeeding Joe Ponte in 2017 has seen as many problems as progress. It is perhaps the perfect capper that Mayor de Blasio has no replacement lined up, leaving a demoralized agency to founder until his term ends.
The signs were bad from before day one. Brann took over the jails after a Department of Investigation probe found Ponte had used his city vehicle for frequent personal trips back home to Maine — and that she too had used her city vehicle for personal reasons, like traveling to Long Island to shop.
Brann was often missing in action, delegating authority to an “acting commissioner” for 151 days, a majority of them weekdays, between 2017 and 2019. When COVID hit last spring, she was deafeningly quiet as the virus infected hundreds of inmates and staff. DOC officers, demoralized, began spreading “missing” posters with her face on them across social media.
In recent months, absentee rates have been so high, averaging 1,200 people or 13% of staffers out sick daily, that officers have done double and triple shifts, despite the high ratio of officers to inmates. Last week, a Rikers facility for the mentally ill was forced into lockdown because too few correction officers showed up to work. In a seven-day stretch this spring, officers mistakenly released two inmates, including one arrested on murder charges, who remained at large several weeks before being found.
Recently, criminal charges were filed against a DOC captain who prosecutors said failed to help a suicidal inmate who ended up hanging himself. And city officials learned that a DOC contractor had mistakenly recorded more than 1,500 private jail phone calls. Not to mention, despite an inmate population that’s small by historical standards, violent incidents have risen, as have serious injuries, and assaults on staff are way up.
They say Rikers is godforsaken. The fish has been rotting from the head.