Rikers Staff Shortages Spike To New Highs As COVID Spreads: Union

QUEENS, NY — Nearly one third of New York City correction officers were absent from duty this week as omicron spread across the nation and a group of guards resisted a recently implemented vaccine mandate, according to the jailer's union president.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association president Benny Boscio reported Wednesday that about 2,200 officers, about 30 percent of those on active duty, were unavailable to work primarily because of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases.

This news comes as Rikers Island faces a humanitarian crisis spurred by staffing shortages that, its peak, saw about 19 percent of Department of Corrections staff — or 1,600 officers — calling out sick, according to the latest report from the DOC's federal monitor.

Healthy officers will be called in for an extra tour of duty during the upcoming holiday weekend to cope with the staff shortage, according to the letter from Boscio addressed to correction officers.

COBA informed its members that no one will have to work more than one of those days, and that the DOC isn't planning to cancel any other days off.

Department of Correction spokesperson Patrick Gallahue confirmed that the work shortage is connected to the rapidly spreading omicron variant.

"We aim to get staffing and services back to normal as soon as possible," he told Patch in a statement, adding that in the meantime healthy officers are working overtime.

The DOC has also suspended visitations as of Dec. 22nd, Gallahue confirmed, a change that went into effect before people were able to visit incarcerated loved ones on Christmas or New Years.

Press representatives from the union said that the COVID-related absenteeism among officers is due to visitors at city jails.

"The Mayor and the Commissioner refused to even test visitors before coming into our jails and that is now driving the skyrocketing COVID outbreak in our jails, which is responsible for over 2,000 officers being out sick," Boscio told Patch in a written statement. While in-person visitation was allowed, all visitors had to wear face masks, comply with COVID screening, and stay six feet apart from others, according to the DOC.

Boscio contended that the de Blasio administration has treated corrections officers as "expendable workers" and caused "pain" and "criminal neglect" through "management failures."

Chronic absenteeism among the city's corrections officers has been an ongoing issue this year. In recent months absenteeism has contributed to a humanitarian crisis — including 15 inmate deaths — on Rikers Island, where a vast majority of officers work at eight of the city's nine jails.

The percentage of officers missing from work this Wednesday, however, surpassed already high absentee rates reported this year by nearly double.

The city sued the correction officers' union in September for orchestrating what they called a months-long illegal work slowdown as a political maneuver against the city.

Union officials denied the accusations, instead blaming mass absenteeism on staff depletion coupled with a rise in the jail's population, especially on Rikers Island.

A few days after the suit was filed, however, a union official encouraged officers to come to work in a court hearing related to the case, prompting Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration to quickly withdraw the lawsuit.

Staff absences have remained a problem especially since hundreds of corrections officers who refused to comply with the city vaccine mandate were put on unpaid leave earlier this month. As of Dec. 30th, 87 percent of DOC uniformed personnel have gotten at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, according to the agency's data.

The Department of Correction has tried to alleviate staffing shortages by temporarily increasing shifts from eight to 12 hours, a move that the officers' union called "nothing short of torture," and redeploying court officers to the island on weekends.

Officers are not the only people on Rikers Island impacted by the city's latest omicron variant-induced coronavirus surge.

Last week, outgoing DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi said that the COVID positivity rate among people detained on Rikers nearly doubled overnight from 9.5 to 17 percent the Daily News reported.

The positivity rate has nearly doubled again since then, according to DOC data, which indicates that between Dec. 23rd and Dec. 29th nearly 30 percent of people in the jail tested positive for COVID.

Inmates at Rikers are particularly at risk during this latest coronavirus wave, Schiraldi said, since their vaccination rates remain extremely low — a nationwide trend that's left people living in jails and prisons disproportionately at the center of COVID outbreaks.

"Only 45% of our incarcerated population has received one shot of the vaccine, and only 38% is fully vaccinated," he wrote, according to the Daily News. "The risks to the human beings in our custody are at a crisis level."