He alone can fix it.
That’s what Mayor Eric Adams essentially said Tuesday as he declared himself to be the “best person” to turn around the city’s troubled Department of Correction — not even 24 hours after Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor Damian Williams called for a federal takeover of the jails on Rikers Island.
“I am the best person … to finally turn around the Department of Correction,” the mayor said during an unrelated news conference on July 18.
“I think I have personally committed myself to doing so no matter how busy my job has been,” he added.
Williams — the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York — said in a Monday statement that while the violence on Rikers Island far predates Adams’ administration, his office can’t “wait any longer” for conditions there to improve.
Although, Williams noted, efforts at reform have been made over the past eight years, since a court-appointed federal monitor was installed in 2015, the island jail complex has remained far too dangerous to detainees and corrections officers alike.
That’s why, Williams said, the jail must be taken over by the feds, a process that’s also known as receivership.
“Rikers Island has been in crisis for years. This is a collective failure with deep roots, spanning multiple mayoral administrations and DOC commissioners,” Williams said. “But after eight years of trying every tool in the toolkit, we cannot wait any longer for substantial progress to materialize. That is why my office will seek a court-appointed receiver to address the conditions on Rikers Island.”
Judge Laura Swain, who is assigned to the 2015 case Nunez v. City of New York, also rebuked the city’s handling of its jails system on in a court order on Tuesday following Williams’ statement, according to a published report. In the order, where Swain instructed the city to tell the U.S. attorney’s office how it will fix issues identified at the jail, she said the administration had failed to “address the dangerous conditions that perpetually plague the jails and imperil those who are confined and who work there.”
“These concerns raise questions as to whether defendants are capable of safe and proper management of the jails,” she added.
Williams’ statement comes after three deaths have occurred either on Rikers Island or in DOC custody just this month, and six have died so far this year.
Additionally, Steve Martin — the federal monitor appointed to oversee Rikers in the Nunez case, has issued several blistering reports in recent months documenting various instances where he says both the mayor and DOC Commissioner Louis Molina haven’t been transparent about violent instances inside the jails.
Additionally, Swain last month ruled she was open to hearing arguments from plaintiffs in the class-action suit — represented by the Legal Aid Society — as to why control of Rikers should be handed over to the feds.
Legal Aid, in a Monday statement, applauded Williams’ move to push for federal control of the island.
“Too many lives have been lost and damaged due to the City’s inability to manage the jails humanely,” the legal defense group said. “We look forward to working together to seek the relief necessary to end this culture of brutality.”
But during the Tuesday press conference, Adams insisted that intensified calls for a federal takeover in recent weeks are inconsistent with findings in an April report by Martin that found Rikers was showing signs of beginning improvement.
At the same time, the report noted that the jails still faced major areas for improvement, including a high number of “use of force” by corrections officers and detainee assaults on guards.
Adams, however, didn’t acknowledge that part of the report.
“‘Real change has occurred since the action plan was ordered by the court,’” Adams said, while reading from the report. “‘The practices and cultural changes that are being initiated have real potential to move the department towards reducing the imminent risk of harm faced by people in custody and staff.’”
Adams said moving from that sentiment to calling for the jail to be taken out of city control just “doesn’t add up.”
“The monitors said, ‘This guy, Eric Adams, is moving us in the right direction,’” Adams said. “What happened? What happened three months later that we’ve gone from ‘hey, real cultural changes’ … [to] that we need receivership? Something just doesn’t add up. I respect the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District. I think he’s a great leader there. But something is just not adding up that I went from ‘Eric is turning the corner’ to ‘now we need to place it in receivership.’”
However, several of Martin’s reports highlighting Adams’ and Molina’s failure to be transparent about violent incidents in the jail were issued since the one Adams pointed to.
