Queens lawmakers call Rikers 'cheerful' days before judge to consider federal takeover

City Councilmember Robert Holden said that conditions on RIkers Island have drastically improved over the past year and urged against federal receivership after touring the jail complex with his colleagues in the city council’s common sense caucus on tuesday, aug. 8, 2023. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye

By Jacob Kaye

Queens City Councilmember Robert Holden this week said Rikers Island had a “great atmosphere” after taking a tour of the jail complex where over two dozen people have died in the last two years.

In stark contrast to recent accounts from inside the city’s notorious jail complex, Holden and his colleagues in the City Council’s Common Sense Caucus painted a calm, clean, orderly and “cheerful” picture of Rikers Island on Tuesday. They said detainees were engaged in social services, they saw freshly painted facilities and walked through air conditioned rooms.

Queens City Councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Republican, said that she played ping pong with a detainee.

“For anyone, any federal monitor, to say that the conditions have not improved – they're not telling the truth,” Holden said. “They're lying.”

The caucus’ tour came just two days before a federal judge is expected to hear the earliest arguments in favor of stripping the city of its control over Rikers Island and turning it over to a federal court-appointed authority. The judge, Laura Swain, said earlier this summer that she was open to hearing arguments for the extreme court order known as federal receivership after having her confidence in the city’s commitment to improving conditions in the jail complex “shaken.”

Members of the Common Sense Caucus, which is composed of the council’s Republican delegation and two Democrats who very frequently vote with Republicans, said that they were strongly opposed to receivership on Tuesday and demanded Swain keep the jail under control of the city.

Last year’s death toll on the island was the highest it has been in a decade, stabbings and slashings remain at levels jail and prison experts have called abnormal and the number of serious use of force incidents inside Rikers have been on the rise. Over the past several years, the Department of Correction has additionally seen its ability to get detainees to court appearances and medical appointments diminish, it’s number of correctional officers has drastically declined and it’s been brought to court numerous times over a wide variety its practices, including its crumbling facilities, detainee processing abilities and wrongful deaths.

The poor conditions have primarily been documented by Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor appointed by Swain to act as her eyes and ears inside the jail where seven people have died this year.

In a report filed with Swain on Monday, Martin said that while some improvements have been made in recent weeks, not enough has been done to address what he has previously called “dangerous” conditions in the jail complex.

“The department’s efforts over the last few weeks have been haphazard, tepid, and insubstantial,” Martin said in his Monday report.

Last month, Martin said that he believed the city should be held in contempt of court for failing, over the past decade, to tamp down violent conditions in Rikers. His mind does not appear to have changed heading into this week’s crucial court appearance.

Also calling into question the city’s ability to turn the jail around is U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and the Legal Aid Society, both of whom represent the plaintiff class in the decade-old class action lawsuit. Both the public defense firm and the federal prosecutor are expected to attempt to begin contempt proceedings on Thursday, and call for a federal receivership as relief.

But Holden, Paladino, and City Councilemembers Joann Ariola, Kalman Yeger, Ari Kagan, Inna Vernikov and David Carr attempted to counter what Martin, Williams and others have said about the direction of the jails and specifically attempted to discredit Martin and his assessment of Rikers on Tuesday, often referring to him as “someone from Oklahoma.”

Not only did they urge against receivership, several of them called for an end to the federal monitorship, which has been in place since 2015.

“We now have a new mayor, we now have a new commissioner who are 100 percent committed to improvement – why is the monitor there?” Yeger said. “Let the commissioner do his job, let our mayor do his job, and then if it's not getting better, then let's have that conversation.”

“But for right now, every bureaucratic step that's thrown in the way of allowing the elected government of the city to do its job is only impeding progress,” he added. “It's not progress.”

Under the leadership of Mayor Eric Adams and DOC Commissioner Louis Molina the average daily population on Rikers Island has increased by over 700 detainees and the city has taken a number of steps away from being able to close Rikers Island as a jail complex by 2027, as it is legally obligated to do. During Adams and Molina’s first year in office, the jail’s death rate was the highest it's been in over a decade.

But both Molina and Adams, as well as the lawmakers who toured Rikers on Tuesday, have said that they, and not a federal receiver, are best suited to run the jail.

A receivership installation would signal the city is “weak,” Yeger said.

“Anybody who's in government, in elected office, took an oath of office on behalf of the people of New York who are taking the position that we ought to outsource running an agency to another person who's not elected by anybody is weak,” Yeger said.

Should Swain eventually order the creation of a receivership – an order that likely would not come until next year – its form could take several shapes. A receiver could be given full control over Rikers or could be given more of a co-management position, running the complex alongside the Department of Correction.

Regardless, a receiver would be given powers currently not given to city officials. They could bypass the contract the city currently has with the Correctional Officers Benevolent Association, the union that represents corrections officers on Rikers. A receiver could also bypass the city’s civil service laws, and could hire jail professionals from outside the current ranks of the DOC.

Supporters of receivership also argue that an outside authority is needed to bypass what the monitor has described as a “culture of dysfunction” that is “deeply entrenched…[and] has persisted across decades and many administrations.”

But in just a year and seven months, Holden said that he believes Molina and Adams have turned a corner on what has often been described as a “stain” on the city.

“Commissioner Molina should be given an award for what he's done to this island in a very, very short time,” Holden said. “The last thing we need is somebody to come in and disrupt what's going on.”