Louis A. Molina, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, was harshly criticized by a prison oversight panel on Tuesday for failing to document two brutal beatings that took place on Rikers Island last year.
At a meeting of the city’s Board of Corrections, panelists demanded answers about the incidents, which left one man paralyzed in August and another in a coma in December, as well as responsibility for reporting disturbances that misjudged assault and failing to act. register the other in city archives. A board member accused the prison system of a cover-up.
The council also noted that such cases of reporting had happened in the past and focused on Mr Molina’s recent statements about the need for better data collection on incidents in the prison system.
“I’m sure you can improve your data systems, but a data system has not failed to provide the necessary information to the medical staff and the board of directors about those very, very serious injuries,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a board of directors. member. “There were employees of yours who refused, who failed, to let us know that very serious injuries had occurred.
“There was no glitch in the data system,” Mr. Cohen added, “it was a number of people who took it upon themselves not to report and hide this information.”
The Crisis on Rikers Island
Amid the pandemic and a personnel emergency, New York City’s main prison complex is embroiled in an ongoing crisis.
The criticism followed a report in DailyExpertNews detailing the beatings of Khaled Eltahan, 41, in August and Jose Matias, 25, in December. Mr Eltahan was paralyzed from the neck down after another detainee kicked him repeatedly while he was being held in a recording room. Mr Matias underwent emergency skull surgery to reduce brain swelling, was in a coma for several weeks and had to relearn to walk and talk after another inmate threw him to the ground and kicked him onto an unguarded prison floor.
In response to Tuesday’s board meeting, Mr. Molina acknowledged the corrections department’s shortcomings in documenting the incidents and pledged to improve reporting systems.
“Transparency is very important to me,” said Mr Molina, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in January. “The incidents described in the DailyExpertNews article, which took place under the previous administration, are troubling, and it is unacceptable, and they were not well documented or reported.”
When asked whether the correctional department had disciplined wardens for their failure to report the beatings of Mr. Eltahan and Mr. Matias, Mr. Molina declined to discuss that topic at the meeting.
His handling of the assessments of the two cases will be a test of his willingness to hold prison staff accountable, which was questioned when, as he prepared to take over the department, he asked the prison’s top investigator to “consider himself.” to get rid of” 2,000 disciplinary cases pending against prison guards.
He later fired her in a move that was applauded by correctional officers’ unions, which had condemned the previous government’s efforts to ramp up disciplinary cases against guards.
The criticism on Tuesday came as Mr Molina attempted to lead the prison system out of one of the worst crises it has experienced in the past 30 years. Since the coronavirus pandemic has swept through New York City, thousands of security guards have stopped coming to work. The number of blows and stabs in prisons has increased. Gangs have taken control of some residential areas on Rikers Island, leaving many inmates to their own devices, sometimes without food or access to health care.
Sixteen people died after being held in prison last year, the deadliest since 2013, and last month the corrections department registered its first death of 2022, when a 38-year-old man, Tarz Youngblood, was found slumped over a toilet and unable to recover. be revived.