City found in contempt for missed inmate medical visits

A Bronx Supreme Court justice found the city in contempt on Tuesday for failing to make sure detainees at Rikers Island and other city lockups are taken to their medical appointments.

Justice Elizabeth Taylor had ordered the city to fix the problem in December — but the number of missed medical appointments in the jails in March shot up to 12,745, the highest number since last July.

“[The city’s] failure to provide or delay inmates access to health services constitutes disobedience of the [December] order,” Taylor wrote in a seven-page decision. “The court further finds that respondent [the city Department of Correction] failed to meet its heavy burden to demonstrate that it is impossible to comply with the order.”

Taylor gave the city a month to show it is no longer violating the December court order or face fines of close to $200,000. The city will also have to pay legal fees.

The class action lawsuit, known as Agnew vs. Department of Correction, was brought by the Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services and the law firm Milbank LLP. The suit sought fines of close to $500,000.

“The court acknowledged the city’s egregious ongoing failure to fulfill its obligation to provide incarcerated people with timely access to medical care,” the detainees’ lawyers said in a statement.

“This failure has caused undue suffering, resulting in long-lasting health impacts and even death. We hope this contempt finding provides some relief to people denied access to the medical care they desperately need.”

If the city fails to show it is no longer violating the order, it will be fined $100 for each of 1,909 instances where staffers failed to escort detainees to medical appointments in December and January, Legal Aid said. Those instances amount to a fraction of the overall number of missed medical appointments.

There were just over 7,000 missed appointments in December, followed by 8,402 in February before it skyrocketed to 12,745 in March, records show.

To avoid the fines, the city has to make clinic visits available to all people in custody, and make sure there is enough staff to take them to and from the visits.

Key to the case was an admission by Correction Department Chief of Facility Operations Ada Pressley, who said in an affidavit the agency was not in compliance with the order.