The hellish conditions on Rikers Island have gotten so bad that Mayor Bill de Blasio will transfer 100 NYPD officers from crimefighting duties and into courts to replace correction officers who are needed in the notorious lockup.
Correction officers escort inmates to court appearances and guard them before and after the proceedings. Now cops will take over many of those duties in courts across the city.
“We’ll use overtime as necessary to help ensure that we can get the most done with minimal impact on other work the NYPD is doing,” de Blasio said Tuesday during his daily press briefing.
The move drew an immediate rebuke from law enforcement officials.
“Right now cops are being denied days off because the NYPD is too understaffed to meet the needs on our streets,” said Pat Lynch, president of the 24,000-member Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
“This is no time for the mayor to pull additional personnel away to cover for his mismanagement of another agency. It’s just more proof that ‘Defund the Police’ was a hollow slogan, because City Hall can’t solve any problem without dragging in the NYPD,” Lynch said.
“Can we make morale any worse?” another police source said.
“Also we had a year of ‘defund talk’ that said cops shouldn’t do work not in our purview. So let’s make us correction officers! Great policymaking. And this was City Hall’s idea? Gotta hold on for a few months, then it’s not his problem,” the source said of de Blasio, who will be term-limited out of office at the end of the year.
De Blasio also said he’d be using private security contractors at Rikers to fill the gap left by correction officers who are calling out sick en masse as part of an alleged protest of jail conditions.
“We’re going to bring in private security as well, we’ll get all those numbers they’re still shaping up,” the mayor said.
Violent incidents in city jails spiked from 80 per month last year to 98 this year, 11 inmates have died so far this year and a 12th tried to hang himself in front of a group of visiting lawmakers earlier this month.
A rep for Benny Boscio Jr., head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said the move to privatize security duties at Rikers violates a state law that makes the jobs “a non-transferrable governmental responsibility.”
De Blasio “is the one public employer who failed to meet his obligation to maintain safe staffing levels by refusing to hire more correction officers for nearly three years even as jail violence soared and the inmate population increased by 57 percent alone last year,” Boscio said.
“His negligence has created a humanitarian crisis that the whole world is now witnessing. He should be focused on fixing this humanitarian crisis in our jails instead of preparing to run for governor,” said Boscio.
De Blasio has teased a potential gubernatorial bid as his next chapter after leaving City Hall.