Seeking to Curb Jail Violence, Bronx Prosecutors Set Up Shop on Rikers Island

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/nyregion/rikers-bronx-prosecutor-violence.html

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The surprise was not that inmates were arrested after an attack on a correction captain on Rikers Island. It was how many were charged — 15 prisoners in all, even though just three had laid hands on the captain.

Bronx prosecutors, using surveillance video and other evidence from the Thanksgiving Day attack, had determined that a dozen other inmates — all members of the Bloods prison gang — conspired to ambush the captain and to block other officers from coming to his aid.

In just a couple of weeks, the 15 inmates had been indicted by a grand jury.

That prosecutors were able to assemble evidence and obtain an indictment so quickly marks a big change from the past, when many investigations at Rikers bogged down in the logistics of doing interviews and collecting physical evidence inside one of the nation’s largest jails.

Now, a team of a dozen prosecutors and two investigators is stationed on the island inside the New York City jail complex, working out of a gray double-wide trailer.

The Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, opened the bureau in September 2016 to handle crimes by inmates, fulfilling a campaign promise and addressing a longstanding demand by the union representing correction officers.

During labor negotiations with the city in December 2015, the union had demanded the bureau be set up in. As it happened, Ms. Clark, a former judge, had already committed to putting prosecutors on the island, a pledge made a month earlier after she won election having promised to tackle a persistent backlog of Rikers cases.

“I realized that in order to deal with Rikers, something had to be done in real time,” Ms. Clark said. “I could not conduct Rikers day-to-day business from 161st Street in the Bronx.”

Ms. Clark’s predecessor, Robert T. Johnson, had been criticized by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Correction Officers Benevolent Union for delays in prosecuting cases against inmates, even as slashings and assaults continued to rise.

Union leaders also had complained that Mr. Johnson was overly aggressive when it came to bringing charges against officers for using force on inmates, but slow to bring charges when inmates attacked officers.

Since taking office in January 2016, Ms. Clark has tried to walk a tricky line, embracing the correction officers’ complaints, while also stepping up prosecutions of officers accused of misconduct. In the last two years, she has secured indictments against 14 officers on charges ranging from assault to smuggling. Five of the officers have been convicted and the others are awaiting trial.

Her efforts have played out as the city continues its push to improve conditions at the jail complex, which is being overseen by a federal monitor as part of a legal settlement. As part of those reforms, the de Blasio administration has limited solitary confinement, which correction officers saw as a vital tool for maintaining discipline.

In addition to stationing a team of prosecutors on Rikers, Ms. Clark has begun demanding consecutive sentences for inmates who commit crimes on Rikers, greatly increasing the penalties for jailhouse violence.

Some experts on the jail system, however, worry Ms. Clark’s aggressive approach may have unintended consequences. It may load inmates down with additional prison time for jailhouse fights that were in reality acts of self-defense. It also could keep inmates housed in the troubled jail for far longer than necessary, awaiting trial on the new charges.

“I have not seen that this has had any positive effect in terms of controlling violence, and I am concerned that it may actually be keeping people on Rikers Island for extended periods of time who would otherwise be going upstate probably to serve very significant long sentences,” said Dr. Robert L. Cohen, a member of the Board of Correction, which regulates and inspects city correctional facilities.

In her effort to bolster investigations of guards, Ms. Clark formed a public integrity bureau and made it responsible for examining allegations of misconduct by correction officers.

The creation of the two bureaus were intended to “send a loud and clear message that we will not tolerate crimes by anyone on Rikers Island,” she said this month.

Arrests of inmates at Rikers have surged since Ms. Clark took over, rising 41 percent in the last two fiscal years ending on June 30, officials from the city Department of Correction said. The number of inmates charged with assaulting officers nearly doubled during that time, rising to 805 from 430. At the same time, the number of staff seriously injured by inmates dropped by nearly two-thirds, to 32 last year from 79.

That trend has pleased the union representing officers, but it has yet to put a dent in the overall violence in the jail system. Slashings and stabbings have continued to rise, nearly doubling since 2014 to 165 from 88, the correction department said.

“It has helped, but it is not a cure all,” said Elias Husamudeen, the president of the correction officers union. He maintained the officers still need sanctions, like punitive segregation, to punish violent inmates. “The mayor has taken away the tools that we historically have used to keep the violence down,” he said.

Arrests of inmates for assaulting other inmates have remained steady, despite the decrease in population at the jail. In addition, the federal monitor said in its most recent report that excessive force by guards remains a chronic problem.

Deanna G. Logan, the bureau’s chief, said the daily presence of prosecutors inside the jail system has begun to pay off, persuading many officers and inmates that slashings and beatings will not go unpunished as they often did in the past.

“Victims have begun to think someone cares,” Ms. Logan said recently. “We are getting people cooperating on cases where before we didn’t.”

Before the bureau was established, prosecutors would have to wait for investigators from the Correction Intelligence Bureau, which investigates crime in the jails, to bring evidence to the Bronx.

It was a slow process. Officers and inmates who were witnesses had to be brought to the Bronx for interviews or grand jury appearances. Getting surveillance tapes or physical evidence was a struggle. Rikers cases were often dismissed simply because defendants were not charged by a grand jury in time to satisfy speedy-trial provision under state law.

Now the prosecutors are able to interview officers soon after a crime has been committed, pulling them off their posts for an hour or two to come to the district attorney’s trailer, Ms. Logan said.

Interviewing inmates who are victims or witnesses is trickier. Many fear they will be attacked for cooperating with investigators, and those in gangs prefer to mete out their own justice.

Prosecutors must arrange clandestine visits with detainees who are victims or witnesses, before they leave the jail. These interviews are often done in the early hours of the morning, at secret locations in the complex, so the inmates’ absence is not detected by other detainees.

“We sit in a scary position,” Ms. Logan said. “If we are not careful, we can get people hurt and that is not the mission of this bureau.”

These days, prosecutors have more video evidence. Cameras are plentiful. About 6,600 cameras have been installed under the 2015 agreement between the city and plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit over abuses at Rikers. With so few willing witnesses, video evidence often forms the heart of Rikers prosecutions.

“Sometimes you have to go back and look at hours of videotape to find out what really happened,” said James T. Brennan, a deputy chief of the Rikers bureau. “What has changed is our ability to do that more effectively.”