Federal Monitor Overseeing Rikers Takes Aim at Head of N.Y.C. Jails

A year and a half into Louis A. Molina’s tenure as correction commissioner, the federal monitor overseeing the Rikers Island jail complex on Thursday took direct aim at his leadership, saying that the violence there remains unabated and that officials are hiding information about it.

“The commitment to effective collaboration, as evidenced by the department’s recent performance, has deteriorated,” the monitor, Steve J. Martin, wrote in a report filed in federal district court. “The department’s approach to reform has recently become characterized by inaccuracies and a lack of transparency.”

“These problems have grave consequences for the prospect of reform and eliminating the imminent risk of harm faced by incarcerated individuals and staff,” he added.

A request for comment from the Department of Correction was not immediately answered.

The report, the second that the monitor has filed in recent weeks, is the latest in a series of reports, court filings and statements in which those who oversee the jail and groups with vested interests in its improvement have sounded increasingly urgent alarms about the complex.

The jails fell under federal oversight in 2015 after a class-action lawsuit against the Correction Department regarding the frequent use of excessive force. The lawsuit resulted in a consent judgment, and Mr. Martin was appointed to issue his periodic reports on violence within the facilities. The judge overseeing the case could appoint an official known as a receiver to oversee the jails directly.

Mr. Molina, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, took over the department at the start of 2022, during one of its worst crises in decades and following the death of 16 people in the jail system the previous year. The start of his tenure was plagued by chronic absenteeism among correction officers that contributed to understaffed posts and a rise in violence.

Mr. Molina has obstructed the jail’s oversight bodies’ ability to know what’s happening inside, watchdogs have said, inflaming tensions and making them concerned that problems were being hidden and reports delayed.

The Correction Department, the monitor said Thursday, has shown an “unwillingness and inability to collaborate effectively.”

In May, the monitor detailed five “serious and disturbing” instances when detainees were injured or had fallen ill over a two-week period this spring. The events, Mr. Martin said, were not appropriately reported by jail staff and were unknown to his team until reporters asked about them.

In January, Mr. Molina took away unrestricted access to video footage on the island complex from the Board of Correction, a municipal body that monitors city jails. The move, the nine-person body said, “stands at odds with the New York City Charter.”

Mr. Molina has said there was sufficient transparency and that his administration was more open than its predecessors’. The system has made “great strides” over the past year, he said in an interview Wednesday.

“There’s not this hiding of information or anything like that,” he said. “There’s no benefit to this administration or me as a commissioner to hide something that’s true.”

Chronic absenteeism has greatly decreased, he said, and he has worked to investigate and punish wrongdoing by officers.

However, advocates and the monitor’s reports contradict Mr. Molina’s account.

In the past year, violence in the jails has been “off the charts,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at Legal Aid Society, which is a party to the lawsuit.

According to the monitor’s report: “The current state of affairs in the jails remains alarming, not just for the rampant violence and frequency with which force is used, but also because of regression in the department’s management.”

(This is a breaking story and will be updated.)