Adams administration thumbs nose at Rikers oversight team about jail deaths and violence, says federal monitor

The Adams administration’s “action plan” to reform the city’s jails is failing, and officials are releasing inaccurate or no information about violent incidents including deaths at Rikers Island, according to a report filed on Thursday by the court-appointed federal monitor who oversees city jails.

The Department of Correction is no longer informing the media of deaths in custody, and the monitor, Steve Martin, said the department likewise stopped its practice of immediately providing information on deaths to his office. In fact, a chart in the report outlining the number of deaths of detainees includes a startling footnote regarding the three known deaths in 2023: “[I]t is possible this number could be higher.”

The change in death reporting policy also drew the attention of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who wrote a letter to Correction Commissioner Louis Molina on Thursday reminding him of his “responsibility to be transparent” with the state in providing documents after any death in custody, so an investigation can commence. A copy of the letter was provided to Gothamist.

In a departure from dozens of monitor reports since Martin was installed in 2015 following a lawsuit and federal consent decree, this report contained no silver linings indicating measures of progress. The 81-page report was entirely critical of the department.

Martin said “every safety and violence indicator is substantially higher” than when he was first appointed by a federal judge to help the department make the jails safer. Specifically, officers’ use of force rate is 127% higher than in 2016, with the number of people sustaining serious injuries during those incidents skyrocketing from 74 in 2016 to 434 last year.

Martin had previously praised Molina’s “action plan,” which was announced last year with the aim of reducing violence and improving conditions at the jails. Now, he said conditions “may be somewhat better” than in 2021, the year before Molina was first appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, but “a pervasive, imminent risk of harm to both people in custody and staff remains.”

Martin wrote, with italics for emphasis: “The current rates of [officer] use of force, stabbing and slashing, fights, assaults on staff, and in-custody deaths are not typical, they are not expected, they are not normal.”

Martin also revealed that the department defied its promise to remove certain problematic officers from a special team of officers whom the monitor had previously criticized for recklessly using chokeholds, chemical spray and head strikes against detainees.

Meanwhile, Martin said that correction officials say that officers feel so unsafe in dealing with violent incidents that they “would rather be disciplined than do their job as expected.”

“When reviewing videos of incidents, the monitoring team frequently observes an apathetic approach to basic security practices or a failure to intervene that is all too common in systems where staff feel they are inadequately prepared for and supported while on the job, feel unsafe, and lack the skills and confidence to maintain the necessary order without causing an event to escalate,” he wrote.

Much of the monitor’s gripes centered around the current leaders of the department and their alleged lack of cooperation with the monitor. Without naming names, Martin said that the department's leaders ignore, delay or act “defensive” when asked for information by the monitoring team. The leaders also fail to implement promised changes, he asserted.

One reason for the monitor’s difficulty in accessing information might be the fact that the Adams administration gutted the office responsible for providing data to the monitor. There are just five people responsible for working on monitor-related matters, and all work on it part time.

In another damning report last week, Martin highlighted five violent incidents in May that left two detainees dead, one paralyzed, one currently hospitalized in critical condition and another with fractured ribs, who was left “naked and alone for at least three hours.” Martin said the department was continuing to stonewall him on providing more information about what happened in those cases, and why the initial responses were so lacking.

The monitor’s latest report also cited a Gothamist story about how officers are using what it calls “soft-hand force” to pull detainees onto buses for court appearances. Such a change in policy was not approved by the monitoring team, and Martin said he doubts both the legality of such a use of force and the accuracy of the data that the department provided about how often it is employed.

In response to the report, attorneys from the Legal Aid Society, which is a party to the lawsuit that led to the Nunez consent decree and federal monitor, reiterated its call for a federal receiver to take over operations of the jails from the city. “This administration has not only wrought horrific levels of violence in the jails, but is increasingly authoritarian in seeking to shield its abuses from judicial and public oversight,” attorney Mary Lynne Werlwas said in a statement.

A federal court hearing on the monitor’s concerns is scheduled for Tuesday. Martin is asking U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain to order the department to be “candid, transparent, forthright, and accurate in their communications” with the monitoring team. He also wants her to order the department to provide the monitor all information about deaths in custody this year, and going forward. And he is asking the judge to force the department to appoint a senior official to manage communications with the monitor.

A spokesperson for the Department of Correction, Frank Dwyer, noted that the monitor's own data in the report shows improvements in deaths and stabbings this year compared to last.

"The practice and cultural changes that are being initiated have real potential to move the department toward reducing the imminent risk of harm faced by people in custody and staff," he said in a statement.

This story has been updated with comment from Frank Dwyer.