NYC mayor blames corrections officers union for Rikers crisis

The city filed a lawsuit against COBA earlier this week accusing it of encouraging absenteeism

Rikers protest

Community groups and families impacted by Rikers Island incarceration hold a small rally outside New York City Hall in lower Manhattan, New York to demand Mayor Bill de Blasio address the inhumane and unsafe conditions at the jail complex.

New York Daily News

By Michael Gartland
New York Daily News

NEW YORK — After days of withering criticism over his handling of overcrowding on Rikers Island, Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday squarely laid blame for the crisis at the feet of the union that represents corrections officers there.

That union, the Corrections Officers’ Benevolent Association, was quick to return the favor.

De Blasio described COBA as the “people who created the crisis” and said he found it “deeply ironic” that the union is now pushing back against his plan to hire private security contractors to help improve conditions at the jail complex.

Hizzoner has attacked some corrections officers for calling in sick excessively and for being AWOL, and his administration filed a lawsuit against COBA earlier this week accusing it of encouraging absenteeism.

That legal matter was resolved in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday when COBA lawyer John Burns assured the court that corrections officers who are fit for duty would be encouraged by the union to return to work. Burns did not concede, though, that the union encouraged employees to call in sick.

“Officers who are fit for duty should show up to work as required by the law,” he said. “COBA has never instructed anyone not to show up for work or walk off a post or bang in sick or claim a personal emergency when that correction officer is, in fact, not sick nor experiencing a personal emergency.”

Despite that, the city and COBA might soon find themselves in court once more.

For the most part, COBA has pushed back on the mayor at almost every turn in recent days. On Tuesday, the union claimed de Blasio’s efforts to bring in private security firms are “illegal” and cited a 2002 state law explicitly prohibiting the hiring of any “private person or entity” from guarding inmates in the city to back up that claim.

But de Blasio suggested at his Wednesday press briefing that the law, more broadly speaking, isn’t so clear cut on the issue.

“It’s not valid for the people who helped create the crisis to then say don’t go to a solution,” de Blasio said Wednesday. “We’re still in an emergency situation with COVID. The law also speaks to the ability of the city to protect its employees, to address public health challenges — this is an emergency dynamic. So we believe when you factor in all elements of the law that what we’re doing here is absolutely appropriate and necessary.”

Benny Boscio Jr., the head of COBA, pointed to the fact that de Blasio hasn’t visited Rikers in four years as proof that he’s wrong and called him “our pathologically lying mayor.”

“He explicitly stated in his own press conference and on Twitter on April 23, 2020, that triple shifts were a ‘dumb managerial mistake’ and vowed ‘they would never happen again,’” Boscio said Wednesday, offering both a transcript and a screenshot of the tweet to back up his claim. “He didn’t say then that the union created triple shifts, he said management.”

De Blasio also responded to a call Tuesday from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for him and Gov. Hochul to release all inmates now being held on Rikers. AOC cited “human right violations” there and picked up the support of Reps. Nydia Velazquez, Jerrold Nadler and Jamaal Bowman.

That demand came a week after state lawmakers visited the jail and reported filthy conditions, crowded cells and in one instance an inmate attempting to commit suicide before their eyes.

De Blasio said that while he respects AOC and her colleagues, their proposal was “not the right way to handle things.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Releasing everyone there is not the right way obviously. Doesn’t make sense. And in the end, the real thing we have to do as a city is close Rikers once and for all.”

In spite of that goal, the city is now in the process of reopening some buildings on Rikers Island to address overcrowded intake cells and the length of time it takes to process incoming prisoners. To achieve that short-term goal, the city is moving forward with plans to renew its use of the Eric M. Taylor Center, which closed in March 2020.

De Blasio, though, remained resistant to what’s known as the 6A program, which allows him to free people who violate their parole into supervised work release programs. He said Wednesday that the difference it would make amounts to “very small numbers,” but did not entirely rule its use out, as he has previously done.

“If there’s no public safety ramification, if it’s talking about someone who is not involved in an act of violence, or has a background related to an act of violence, that’s something I would consider,” he said. “But I’m going to be very, very clear that we have to balance the need to address rapidly the situation at Rikers with our ongoing focus on securing public safety for the whole city.”

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