'Band-Aid' Rikers Fix Lets City's Courts 'Crumble': Sources

QUEENS, NEW YORK — A “Band-Aid” solution to the crisis on Rikers Island that transfers courthouse officers to guard the ravaged complex puts court detainees and the city’s halls of justice at risk, sources tell Patch.

“They keep redeploying staff to go to Rikers while letting the courts crumble,” one source said. “[They're] so concerned about Rikers Island they're letting their court system fall apart.”

Understaffing at Queens Criminal Court means holding facilities go uncleaned, detainees wait hours to be escorted to and from appearances, and crucial offices — such as the bail processing room — go unmanned, according to jail sources and documents reviewed by Patch.

Furthermore, court officers say they lack the training and back-up to protect detainees on Rikers Island, where they sometimes work for 24 hours straight, sources said.

“We have no clue or idea what we’re going into," a Queens correction officer said. "They don’t tell us, they just throw us in areas their own staff won’t take.”

Chronic absenteeism has contributed to a humanitarian crisis on Rikers Island — where at least 14 people have died this year — and the Department of Correction says it is crucial to bring in more staff to reduce the number of unstaffed posts and relieve guards working 24 hours at a time.

“We commend the hard work of all of our officers who have been redeployed from their normal posts, including the courts," a DOC spokesperson said. “[They] relieve fellow officers at risk of working multiple shifts on Rikers Island due to our staffing situation.”

But social justice activists and those working inside the system argue the only solution to overcrowding on Rikers Island is a complete overhaul of system that includes reducing the number of people incarcerated.

Said Ann Matthews, managing director of Bronx Defender's criminal defense practice, “The effort to bring back corrections officers from court houses to the main correctional facility is yet another example of a Band-Aid approach to a crisis that demands radical rethinking of the entire correctional system.”

“It’s Really Bad In There”

A Queens Detention Complex officer, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, says she finds human waste on the court holding facility floors, on which detainees must sometime sleep.

“There’s urine all over, feces everywhere,” the officer said. “It’s really bad in there.”

Courts across the city have struggled to regain momentum amid the pandemic and while corrections officers and city official alike agree the halls of justice are in a dire situation, each says the other is to blame.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said in October that about 1,500 detainees on Rikers had been waiting more than a year for trial, noting the number of trials decreased 92 percent and pleas dropped 55 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

De Blasio said the slowdown was caused by court workers who called in sick.

"The folks at the court system love to give excuses," de Blasio said. "Police are there every single time, we need the courts to do their job now."

But Patch's jail sources say they're overwhelmed by work that builds up when redeployed to Rikers and court procedures slow as they're unavailable to escort detainees to Friday court appearances, operate the bail room or clean facilities.

Documents reviewed by Patch show 67 Queens court correction officers were worried enough in June to sign a petition requesting a meeting with DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi to, "address and express some concerns."

Photos taken inside the facility and seen by Patch show a sanitation worker wearing a hazard suit, a corridor flooded with water and a cell with chipped and stained walls littered with abandoned food.

“The [DOC needs] to meet the standards,” the Queens court officer said. “So individuals that are incarcerated can feel like they’re not animals, that they’re human beings.”

According to the Department of Correction, court officers are only redeployed to Rikers on Fridays and weekends — when all but arraignment courts are closed — and only on second tours, to ensure the facilities are cleaned during the first.

A Kings County Criminal Court correction officer confirmed the Brooklyn court jail lost about five officers to Rikers redeployment— reducing the weekend "skeleton crew" to 25 — but said the remaining team was able to carry out court procedures without much difficulty.

"It's not a problem," he said.

The Queens Detention Complex worker said any court delays are a problem for detainees who miss the last bus to Rikers must spend the night in a holding facility without a complete kitchen.

Those detainees are given peanut butter sandwiches but do not have access to hot meals, showers or telephones to call home, according to sources and letters from union delegates addressed to Department of Correction leadership.

“These individuals are now missing the opportunity to have any telephone contact with their loved ones,” Correction Officer Donna Schnirring wrote in a letter to Deputy Commissioner Stanley Richards on July 12. “This cause[s] them not to get what they are entitled to.”

Among rights deferred is access to the bail processing room which sometimes goes unstaffed, according to sources and two letters from union delegates to the DOC commissioner and deputy commissioner.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association delegates Donna Schnirring and Nilda Molina reported to the Commissioner two instances in June when the office could not process bails, documents show.

The Department of Correction disputes bail rooms have closed, stating they have remained open and noting bail can also be paid online.

Sources told Patch the office is officially open, but there have been multiple instances when an officer with needed training to operate the computer system could not be found.

“There's a window and no one is in there,” a jail source said. “They'll be knocking, knocking, knocking.”

Family members who cannot process bail in the courthouse must instead travel to Rikers Island, as must the detained person who would otherwise have been released, sources said.

The Queens officer said her experiences on Rikers Island make it difficult to see families told the computers are down and turned away from the bail office.

“If they were able to bail them out, we wouldn’t have them being transported to Rikers,” the officer said. “They could be released.”

“We Shouldn’t Be Exposed To This"

The Queens Detention Complex officer does not know when she will be sent to Rikers, or over whom she’ll be asked to stand guard, but she knows her family is afraid, she told Patch.

“My husband is really upset, my family, their nerves are wrecked,” she said. “They know I’m in a dangerous situation.”

The officer shares this situation with the 30 to 40 court officers whom the Department of Correction began deploying to Rikers on Fridays and weekends in spring 2021, the department stated.

Court officers are redeployed to Rikers on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays on a rotating schedule based on tours of duty, the DOC said.

Officers who work weekdays are redeployed to Rikers Island on Fridays and those on a rotating schedule are redeployed when their work days fall on weekends, the DOC said.

The Department of Correction credits this redeployment system with relieving Rikers officers, who otherwise would work triple shifts, and decreasing the number of housing facilities with insufficient staff.

"Thanks to these heroes,” a DOC spokesperson said, “we have seen fewer triple shifts and a reduction in unstaffed posts.”

Patch’s sources say triple shifts remain frequent and a report last week from the Office of the Monitor shows that, while overall understaffing decreased, as many as 65 housing units were insufficiently staffed as recently as Nov. 1.

Between 1,400 to 1,600 uniformed staff continue daily to call in sick and the number of AWOL officers vacillates between 15 and 50, according to the federal monitor's report.

“The Department has taken some positive actions to address the mass absenteeism of staff and the issues related to intake,” the report notes.

“But significant work remains to address the entrenched and troubling security practices, decades of mismanagement, and lack of accountability for staff misconduct.”

In court papers filed Friday, the Legal Aid Society argues the dangers of understaffing on Rikers Island ripple into the court system as detainees are denied vital resources they'll need before trial.

Without correction officers to escort detainees between facilities, they miss court appearances and lose access to attorney visits, access to the complex's law library and haircuts, the public defenders said.

“Access to critical services has always been an issue for our incarcerated clients, staff attorney Alexandra Smith said in a statement. "And every indication points to a situation that is worsening.”

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams told City Council in September that during a tour of Rikers Island, he witnessed "horrors" such as bags as substitutes for toilets, meals of rotting food, and inmates locked in showers.

At the same City Council hearing, the Bronx Defenders testified one client arrived to court with a black eye and the blood-stained clothes he wore when attacked days earlier. Another had a finger amputated because he did not receive timely medical attention

“What is happening in our city jails is a moral stain on the city,” said Matthews, of the Bronx Defenders. “And it’s a real abdication of responsibility to those within the system’s care.”

The Queens court officer would like to provide better care and protection to the detainees on Rikers Island, but says she is foiled by a lack of basic information and support.

The officer is not briefed on whom she'll patrol — whether or not detainees have mental health illnesses or gang affiliations — and has seen inmates pull razors when she was unprepared, she said.

The Queens correction officer once asked for help when an inmate refused to leave a vestibule that led to his housing area, she said. The vestibule had no bathroom and would later be used by other detainees who could potentially harm the man, but a supervisor told her to leave him and not worry about it, she said.

“These are human lives and my job is to protect them,” the officer said. “What do you mean don’t worry about it?”

Sources said mismanagement also contributes to workplace indignities that include 24-hour shifts without promised 40-minute breaks, which the DOC said it provides, and lack of contact with family.

Family members don’t always know if an officer is working on Rikers, which led to one officer missing an emergency call about a son with special needs, the Queens court officer said.

The family of another guard discovered he’d been deployed to Rikers Island only when he returned home in an ambulance, the Queens courthouse officer said.

“We’re human beings,” a Queens Detention Complex worker said. “We shouldn’t be exposed to this."

“Only A Matter of Time”

The battle over redeployment erupted in September when a Queens union delegate told the city that absenteeism would abate if the program ended and the city sued the union, quoting her words as proof of an illegal slow-down, court records and documents show.

"The unlawful campaign of mass absenteeism by correction officers is one of the primary contributors to an emergency circumstance," the lawsuit states.

"[It's] an outright abdication of correction officers' basic responsibilities to protect the health and safety of the individuals housed in their facilities."

Correction Officer Benevolent Association delegate Schnirring — who sued the city earlier this year over its alleged treatment of her K-9 partner Bullet — had spent months contacting Department of Correction leadership when she wrote the commissioner a letter on Sept. 2, documents reviewed by Patch show.

“Its [sic] only a matter of time before Queens Criminal Courts will be faced with triple tours, with officers out Sick, Medically Monitored, and retiring at a rapid rate,” Schnirring wrote.

“If its [sic] possible to stop redeployment from our facility I can promise to have officers hold off on their retirement and also get Officers that are out sick and Medically Monitored to return to work."

In Schnirring’s messages to DOC leadership, she called court detainees her clients, whom she argued the city had tasked her with serving and protecting, and had the right to hot meals and showers.

Schnirring told Patch she did not mean to reference any job action or strike in the Sept. 2 letter she wrote the DOC commissioner.

"I intended for my memo to provide exactly what Schiraldi asked for; suggestions," Schnirring said. “If he makes the job more safer, they'll have more people coming back to work.”

Schnirring said she did not receive a reply but saw her words cited in the suit against the city, filed in Manhattan’s Supreme Court about two weeks later.

“COBA [Correction Officers Benevolent Association] is aware that officers are purposefully absenting themselves from work as leverage for policy change,” the lawsuit alleged.

“There is also no doubt that [the union], while excusing and implicitly condoning the job action, are well aware they can - and should - do more to stop it.”

COBA — whose press representative did not respond to Patch’s requests for comment on redeployment — denied any role in encouraging absenteeism and pointed blame on the city instead.

"If anyone is well-versed in violating the law, it's our criminally negligent Mayor, who hasn't done his job for the past eight years," union president Benny Boscio Jr. said at the time.

The lawsuit was withdrawn two days later when COBA and the Mayor’s office reached an agreement and a union official publicly read a statement encouraging correction officers return to work.

But as the federal monitor's report shows, absenteeism remains a consistent problem, with advocates and union leaders saying correction officers face grueling hours of daunting work at a jail in crisis.

“Correction officers are forced to work 24 hours straight unlike any other municipal uniformed force without meals and rest,” union spokesperson Michael Skelly told Gothamist.

“When you’re working that many hours without being given food or rest, when you’re being assaulted, and dealing with the long term effects of Covid, you’re going to have officers out.”

The Queens Detention officer who spoke to Patch says she can’t take many more shifts on Rikers Island, but can think of no other solution than to retire from a job she’s held for more than 15 years.

“There’s just so much going on in there,” the officer said. “It’s not safe for us or them.”