DON’T YOU DARE GO THERE!
BLAZ ATTEMPTS TO BLOCK POLS FROM TOURING RIKERS
The de Blasio administration is trying to block a planned tour Monday of the Rikers Island jails by members of the state Legislature, the Daily News has learned.
Eleven Assembly and Senate members, along with representatives from the Legal Aid Society and Neighborhood Defenders Services, were set to tour the troubled complex and later hold a news conference to call on the city and state to sharply reduce the jail population and address a staffing crisis because of “extreme and dangerous conditions.”
But Friday, a de Blasio administration official told organizers the pols couldn’t visit without making a prior appointment. Only City Council members could visit without going through channels, the official said.
The earliest the state legislators could visit, the de Blasio administration official insisted, was Thursday. On Saturday, the official declined to comment.
“It’s absurd and frustrating,” state Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democrat from Brooklyn, told The News.
“They told me that the mayor’s office reached out to them and said, ‘We don’t have to allow state legislators to enter Rikers because the City Charter doesn’t specify that.’ ”
Salazar said state correction law allows state legislators to visit any prison or jail in New York at “their pleasure,” meaning anytime they want and without an appointment. She said the legislators will visit the island anyway.
“The following persons shall be authorized to visit at pleasure all correctional facilities: … members of the Legislature and their accompanying staff,” according to Article 6, Section 146 of New York State’s correction law.
The City Charter gives the same right to Council members, but doesn’t preclude state legislators from visiting as they wish.
“State legislators have a clear right under the law to visit city jails at any time unannounced and without any need for approval,” said Victoria Phillips of the Jails Action Coalition.
“Now is a moment for full transparency, not the mayor hiding the deadly conditions in his jails.”
In a statement, the spokesman for the city Correction Department, Jason Kersten, said officials “welcome a visit from these state legislators.”
“And we appreciate their legitimate concerns and their desire to raise awareness about the conditions in our facilities,” he stated. “We are hoping to find a time this week that suits the schedules of everyone involved.”
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In recent weeks, The News has reported on a range of problems in the jail, including unstaffed units, lack of a broad range of services, five-day stretches in crowded cells before detainees are provided a bed, overlong periods in quarantine and the failure to produce detainees for court appearances. On Tuesday, Esias Johnson, 24, died in the Anna M. Kross Center, the 10th death in the jails since December.
Salazar called the Rikers situation a “policy failure.”
“The situation at Rikers is uniquely severe right now and that is especially motivating us to go,” she said. “It’s important to use this privilege. We have in an oversight role.”
The extent of absenteeism among correction staff combined with a jail population that has doubled since July 2020 to about 6,000 has only worsened the situation.
Johnson was being held on a misdemeanor case in Queens and a misdemeanor warrant out of New Jersey. The News reported Friday that Correction Department officials did not bring him to two court conferences to deal with those cases, his family said.
On Friday, the department’s top medical official, Dr. Ross McDonald of Correctional Health Services, sent a letter to the Council urging outside intervention from the state and federal government to address an emergency that he charged the city can’t handle.
“In 2021, we have witnessed a collapse in basic jail operations such that today I do not believe the city is capable of managing the custody of those it is charged with incarcerating in its jails nor maintaining the safety of those who work there,” McDonald wrote to Councilman Keith Powers (D-Manhattan), chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee.
“The breakdown has resulted in an increase in deaths which we refer to as jail attributable, where jail conditions meaningfully contributed to the death.”
McDonald proposed reopening a closed jail, increasing staff in intake to more quickly get detainees to a bed, and dealing with the staffing crisis.
A key Council hearing on Rikers is planned for Wednesday.