'The administration’s testimony today made clear that the task force’s work aims to protect the [Department of Correction] as an agency, and not at all to protect those in its custody,” said a social worker at the Bronx Defenders.
overdosed from drugs in her cell in May, but Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina said he couldn’t talk about what happened because the matter was still under investigation.
Three recent deaths may have been connected to correction officers’ failing to render aid, according to an, with one man brought to the medical clinic by other incarcerated people after he choked on an orange. Staffing shortages, which the Rikers’ federal monitor has attributed in part to the department’s unlimited sick leave policy, have resulted in a lack of officers available to interact with inmates.
Molina said so far this year he suspended 162 officers for abuse of sick leave — more than last year. And he said there are now about 20 unmanned posts in housing units at any given time, compared to 110 last September. Nothing we have heard this morning — very few facts — indicates the administration appreciates the full gravity of the situation on Rikers Island.The hearing was called to get an update on the Rikers Island Interagency Task Force, which Adams created in May, but Brendan McGuire, chief counsel to the mayor, said many of the details of what the task force was working on couldn’t be discussed publicly, and the task force would not issue public reports.
Among the issues that have led to calls for a takeover is the fact that thousands of detainee medical appointments are