Louis A. Molina, the commissioner of the New York Metropolis Division of Correction, was harshly criticized on Tuesday by a jails oversight panel for his company’s failure to doc two brutal beatings that occurred on Rikers Island final 12 months.
Throughout a gathering of the town’s Board of Correction, panel members demanded solutions concerning the incidents, which left one man paralyzed in August and landed one other in a coma in December, in addition to accountability for reporting breakdowns that mischaracterized one beating and didn’t report the opposite in metropolis data. One board member accused the jail system of a cover-up.
The board additionally famous that such reporting lapses had occurred up to now and took purpose at Mr. Molina’s current statements a couple of want for higher assortment of knowledge on incidents within the jail system.
“I’m positive you may enhance your information programs, however an information system didn’t fail to offer the mandatory data to the medical workers and to the board about these very, very critical accidents,” mentioned Dr. Robert Cohen, a board member. “There have been workers of yours who refused, who failed, to tell us that very critical accidents had occurred.
“There wasn’t an information system failure,” Mr. Cohen added, “it was quite a few individuals who took it upon themselves to not report this data and to cowl it up.”
The Disaster at Rikers Island
Amid the pandemic and a staffing emergency, New York Metropolis’s fundamental jail complicated has been embroiled in a seamless disaster.
The criticism adopted a report in The New York Occasions that detailed the beatings of Khaled Eltahan, 41, in August and Jose Matias, 25, in December. Mr. Eltahan was paralyzed from the neck down after one other detainee kicked him repeatedly whereas he was being held in an consumption holding pen. Mr. Matias underwent emergency cranium surgical procedure to ease swelling of the mind, spent a number of weeks in a coma and needed to relearn find out how to stroll and discuss after one other detainee threw him to the ground and kicked him on an unguarded jail housing flooring.
Responding throughout the board assembly on Tuesday, Mr. Molina acknowledged the Correction Division’s failures in documenting the incidents and pledged to enhance the reporting programs.
“Transparency is essential to me,” mentioned Mr. Molina, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in January. “The incidents described in The New York Occasions article, which occurred beneath the earlier administration, are disturbing, and it’s unacceptable, and so they weren’t correctly documented or reported.”
Requested whether or not the Correction Division had disciplined jailers for his or her failure to report the beatings of Mr. Eltahan and Mr. Matias, Mr. Molina declined to debate that subject on the assembly.
His dealing with of the opinions of the 2 instances will likely be a check of his willingness to carry jail workers accountable, which was referred to as into query when, whereas getting ready to take over the division, he requested the jails’ high investigator to “get rid” of two,000 self-discipline instances pending in opposition to jailers.
He later fired her in a transfer that was cheered by the correction officers’ unions, which had condemned efforts by the previous administration to step up self-discipline instances in opposition to guards.
The criticism on Tuesday got here as Mr. Molina makes an attempt to steer the jail system out of one of many worst crises it has confronted up to now 30 years. Because the coronavirus pandemic swept by New York Metropolis, 1000’s of correction officers have stopped exhibiting as much as work. Slashings and stabbings within the jails have risen. Gangs have taken management of some housing areas on Rikers Island, leaving many detainees to fend for themselves, at occasions with out meals or entry to well being care.
Sixteen folks died after being held within the jail system final 12 months, the deadliest since 2013, and final month the Correction Division recorded its first loss of life of 2022, when a 38-year-old man, Tarz Youngblood, was discovered slumped over a rest room and couldn’t be revived.