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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We turn now to Rikers Island as crisis conditions have continued from the de Blasio to the Adams administration. About 200 of those detained at one jail facility there have reportedly refused their regular meals since last week on a partial hunger strike. This as the Adams administration transitions to a new Correction Commissioner, Louis Molina, he's receiving criticism already for recent decision. Some saying he's acting on behalf of the correction officers' union.

This includes relaxing Department of Corrections sick leave policy after it was designed to deter "sickouts" as had been taking place. He also fired now-former Deputy Commissioner of Investigations and Trials, Sarena Townsend, who was looking into thousands of correction officer disciplinary cases. Here she is on New York 1 yesterday.

Sarena Townsend: The terminology was get rid of. Wanted to know how I could get rid of 2,000 cases in the first 100 days. I think it is troubling. I think that it says that the commissioner is willing to have the unions run the department.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about that in a minute. The hunger strike at Rikers was revealed in voicemail sent to the New York County Defender Services, explaining conditions like the facility's extended lockdown due to COVID concerns. Here's one.

Ervin Bowins: As we know, the CDC guidelines states, we have to be in isolation for five days. Once we receive a COVID positive testing, we are on the 16th day currently of isolation.

Brian Lehrer: A Rikers hunger strike voicemail to New York County Defender Services attorney, Christopher Boyle. Here's one more.

Ervin Bowins: This is hindering on due process. As you can imagine, our court days are currently constantly being adjourned, bail hearings, and motion hearings as well. We are not receiving communication in a timely fashion as well, so we're basically here stuck in limbo. As you can see, the city is still open for business, but Rikers Island is closed. We are not getting visits, whether it's regular visitors or lawyer visits, which continue to hinder our due process as well.

Brian Lehrer: They're saying they're being denied access to legal resources, including the facilities library and visits with lawyers, as you heard there. Some of those detained. Also say, they're being denied medical and mental health services. One detainee reportedly saying he'd only get mental health support if he were put on suicide watch after an act of self-harm. This alleged shortage of mental health care despite increased reports of self harm in city jails, throughout the pandemic.

Remember of the 15 people who died last year while awaiting trial at Rikers Island, five died by suicide. With me now WNYC and Gothamist reporter, Matt Katz, and Stan Germán, executive director of the New York County Defender Services, which receive those voicemails. Thank you both for coming on. Stan, welcome to WNYC.

Stan Germán: Thank you, Brian.

Matt Katz: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, that clip of the fired investigator first, that's a seriously controversial way to strike the Adams administration with somebody who got fired from it saying they're giving the power to the union, which is seen as suspect in so many ways. What happened there?

Matt Katz: Yes, this is a big deal and signals a very different approach by the Adams administration. Mayor Adams got rid of Vince Guaraldi, who was the outspoken reformer who had clashed with the corrections' unions, and he brought on Louis Molina. He's a former NYPD cop. He was running the Las Vegas jail system. He's the new commissioner. One of the first things Molina did was fire the Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Investigation, this woman, Sarena Townsend, who we heard from.

She was praised by federal monitors for reviewing use of force cases and going through this backlog of allegations against officers. She was investigating sick leave abuses, which we know is a big problem because so many officers are calling out sick, and she was immediately fired and escorted out of headquarters. Now, she has been publicly talking about it. She was on New York 1, she was on Daily News.

This indicates that the new administration here is going to be acceding to demands from the corrections officers' union and is not going to be as reform-minded as the previous administration was at least over the last year or so. It's certainly something we're keeping an eye on and it indicates a lot about where we're going at Rikers.

Brian Lehrer: Stan Germán, executive director of the New York County Defender Services, we'll get to the hunger strike and some of the voicemails that inmates left for your group. Do you want to weigh in on this change at the top and what Matt was just talking about, and the allegations by the person who was fired who we heard the clip from?

Stan Germán: Absolutely, Brian, and it is extremely concerning. It really just shows a theme of retaliation that we're seeing in the Department of Corrections. We'll talk about the retaliation against some of the leaders of the hunger strike that has taken place over the last 36 hours. We should also pause for a second, Brian, and ask ourselves, 2,000 disciplinary cases are being investigated. Just think of the volume of cases that we are talking about. Just the fact that you have a Department of Corrections Office that has a staff with such an ordinate amount of disciplinary cases should be concerning to everyone.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, I saw it reported on New York 1, or at least somebody referred to, they're being even more than that. They're being more like 3,000 open disciplinary cases, and the commissioner was trying to get this investigator to clear 2,000 of them in the first 100 days. Maybe it's even more than 2,000. Do you know or do you have a sense of what these disciplinary charges tend to be over? Is it acts of violence against people incarcerated there or what they tend to be?

Stan Germán: It absolutely runs the gamut. It can be things from acts of violence against our incarcerated clients. It could be failure to file appropriate paperwork, where an acts of violence are taking place. One of the things we saw in Jan Ransom's story a few days ago, at the fight night, and that was our case, Brian, is that all of those incidents that we saw in the video, nobody from the Department of Corrections, any of the officers filed a report to reflect what is happening.

When you look at the official body of reports that we're seeing the federal monitors report, those are only the ones that are actually being documented, but there are hundreds, if not, thousands of incidents, where the Department of Corrections is simply turning a blind eye and not even reporting what's actually really happening in the jail.

Brian Lehrer: Would you tell our listeners who aren't following this closely what you meant by fight night. That was an incident the other day, I understand. After seeing some of the videos of that on New York 1 last night, it was being described as seeming to indicate that the correction officers were letting gang leaders organize and run inmate fights.

Stan Germán: That is exactly what Supreme Court Justice Neubauer found in her [unintelligible 00:08:08] decision, where she agreed that the Department of Correction was acting with deliberate indifference in terms of the care and custody of our clients. Not only did she find that correction officers were allowing this to happen, but that even they were telling the organizers that they should keep it down and not be so obvious. It is clear that the Department of Corrections and the officers have ceded control of the jail to gang leaders in a lot of these dorms.

That's why we are calling for a federal receivership. We're hoping that the federal monitor in the union's federal case as well as the Department of Justice, who is also a party to that case, as well as the Legal Aid Society, who is representing our clients, it's time to call for a federal receivership.

The DOC COBA are incapable and unwilling to fix this problem.

Brian Lehrer: One more follow-up question on this, then we'll bring Matt back in and start talking about the hunger strike. How did the two things we were just discussing hang together? On the one hand, so many disciplinary cases open against thousands of correction officers at Rikers Island, that would presumably indicate a lot of maybe over-policing, if we can use that term. At the same time, you were just describing how they sit back and let gang leaders within the jail organize fights and things like that. Are they being too aggressive or are they being too passive? How do those things hang together?

Stan Germán: I think, unfortunately, both things are occurring, Brian. If you have a staffing problem, and you only have one officer who's overseeing 100 individuals in two different dorms, the only way for them, the decision they've made to be able to have some kind of peace, I guess, in these dorms is to acquiesce to these gang leaders. That's not to say that if there isn't an incident with a correction officer in a certain setting that they are not engaging violence against our clients. I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

I think the acquiescing has a lot to do with the 2,500 correction officers who are calling out sick every single day and it's been going on for months, but that doesn't mean that there's no interaction between a correction officer and a client that can and does, in fact, result in abuse of our clients.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking about conditions on Rikers Island in the first two weeks of the Adams administration. Listeners, we invite your calls. We invite calls from inside and out. We get calls from Rikers here from time to time. If anybody's listening and wants to help us report this story with your own experiences or observations from inside, you are definitely invited, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Correction officers, you are definitely invited, 212-433-9692 or anyone else with a comment or a question for Stan Germán, who is just talking, executive director of the New York County Defender Services, and WNYC and Gothamist reporter, Matt Katz, who's on this story, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Matt, the hunger strike, the Department of Correction says, there is no hunger strike that those who are detained and say are participating are just refusing regularly provided meals, but are eating food from the commissary. What can you ascertain about what there is or isn't of a hunger strike?

Matt Katz: That's what the Department of Corrections said earlier this week. Then, I just spoke to them this morning and they said that, in fact, the inmates, the detainees in this unit are now eating the food that is provided by the institution. They say that the hunger strike is over. I've covered hunger strikes among incarcerated people before. It is hard to know exactly when the hunger strike begins, when it ends, how many people are participating. We do know that detainees clearly were exercising some form of protest and they were seeking outside attention to what they say they're dealing with in this particular unit.

It was apparently extremely cold during the cold snap over the past week, that was one issue. They also said they weren't getting mail and packages. They said that they were not getting medical care and mental health treatment because there weren't enough COs to take them to their appointments. One big issue was a limited access to the law library, which seems like maybe a perk, but for guys who have court dates being moved around and delayed because of the pandemic and the courts as we know are backlogged, they're a bit of a mess at the moment.

Not being able to go to the law library and to see when their court date even is and to try to get their cases together is certainly a big issue. Then, the other issue they brought up was the lack of recreation time. Again, that's related to staffing shortages. I also wanted to bring back something else that you were referring to earlier about the COs allowing this fight night to happen.

I wanted to note that, this was because, according to the New York Times reporting, that gangs were running this unit, that a gang leader was running this unit, having this fight night, the winner would get a cigarette. It appeared to be part of the reason for this is that there was understaffing and the COs seems to have made a decision here that it was easier to allow this to happen than to try to manage a group of people, perhaps without any assistance.

There was a stat in the last report from the federal monitor that gets to this, nearly eight assaults on staff per day on average over the recent period. That indicates that not only are detainee saying that they're facing assaults from officers, but officers are also saying that they're facing violence from the people incarcerated there. I think that's part of the dysfunction and might be part of the disconnect in that question you were asking about.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Matt, do you have reporting to indicate that the correction officer's union is happy with the new Correction Commissioner, Louis Molina and sees him as a change of direction from the reformer who de Blasio had appointed?

Matt Katz: They certainly do in social media posts and in other public statements. They are very happy with the change and they appear tight with the new commissioner, for sure, and with the new mayor for that matter.

Brian Lehrer: Stan, let me replay these clips of the voicemail that someone from Rikers left for one of your colleagues at New York County Defender Services. Here again, is the first 10 seconds that we aired before.

Ervin Bowins: As we know the CDC guidelines states, we have to be in isolation for five days. Once we receive a COVID positive testing, we are on our 16th day currently of isolation.

Brian Lehrer: Five days according to the CDC. He's saying they're being isolated if they test positive for COVID for three times that and, here, he is continuing on some of the implications of that as he sees it.

Ervin Bowins: This is hindering our due process. As you can imagine court days are currently constantly being adjourned, bail hearings, and motion hearings as well. We are not receiving communication in a timely fashion as well. We're basically here stuck in limbo, as you can see the city is still over for business, but Rikers Island is closed. We are not getting visits, whether it's regular visits or lawyer visits which continue to hinder our due process as well.

Brian Lehrer: Stan put that call into context for us if you can.

Stan Germán: Well, Brian, I want to start with the state of the person who left that message. That individual is named Ervin Bowins. He was the only person quoted in the Daily News article, where Graham Rayman broke this story about the hunger strike. What we were told is that two days ago at 1:00 PM, the warden's private security detail showed up and said, "Pack your things, you're out of here." They transferred him to another building. This is what is going on when people complain and voice their frustrations over the conditions on Rikers Island.

It is so common in place that it is referred to as around the world. Also, along the lines of retaliation, yesterday, the public advocate, Jumaane Williams made a visit to these affected dorms. When he appeared, suddenly, for the first time in months, there was actually a correction officer staff inside the dorm. Of course, once the show and tell, and all the high-profile individuals leave, things go back to normal. This morning, we received an email that there is no the officer in the dorms.

We were told that last night, search team from the Department of Corrections went into the dorms that were protesting, they seized clothes, underwear, commissary items, in a clear act of retribution against those individuals that took part. The last thing I want to say, this idea that, well, it's not really a hunger strike. 12 consecutive meals were denied. Now, they say people were eating commissary. What if you're homeless and you don't have any money in your commissary? Like how are you eating? We received a report yesterday that one of our clients, Manuel Zepeda who had been engaged in the hunger strike since Friday passed out.

He was taken out of the dorm in a stretcher, taken to the infirmary. He was unable to stand or walk. The Department of Corrections to try to downplay this as much as they can, but this is very real. I think the last thing that is very important to stress, Brian, is that this just isn't about-- I'm missing my court appearances and due process issues. Yesterday, public advocate, Williams said he saw a mold that there was no heat, that there were roaches and rodents, that there's a constant lockdowns under this name of COVID.

To get to your original question about COVID, what they're doing is if somebody within the dorm test positive for COVID, they are shutting down the entire dorm. They're not testing the other individuals. They're not taking that person out and isolate them. Guess what happens? Five days later, another person in the dorm test positive for COVID and they shut the dorm down again. We believe that this is occurring because they have a staffing shortage.

It's very easy, just to deny the basic services that they need to provide to individuals by simply saying that entire units and in some cases, entire buildings are being locked down under the guys of a COVID quarantine.

Brian Lehrer: We do have a couple of calls coming in from Rikers Island. Let's take one by someone calling as Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for your call today.

Mr. Nelson: Hello, Brian. Yes. I'd like to confirm everything that I've heard the other speakers saying as well as to add to that, the situations that we're experiencing now we're actually way worse. There were situations, where feces were being thrown between inmates and inmates have to defecate in bags, which led to the closing of certain buildings such as the oldest band in Correctional Center. It's not real bad to wear-- MA said, twice-- and the officers wouldn't do anything about it because they were worried about themselves, and wasn't enough staff for them to even do anything. They were scared for their safety. I do confirm all that the speaker is saying and more.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like you have some sympathy for the position of the correction officers there as well. What would help both inmates and officers in your opinion?

Mr. Nelson: Well, the inmates should be the least like they're in limbo right now because they're not being sent upstate. They need to just go upstate and be approved to be let go. There's some inmates, they're stuck in that limbo. As far as the officers, they don't have enough staff to work, they worry about their safety. They feed control to a lot of the gang members, where there are gang members running the jails, and it's hard for them to even-- so I do have sympathy for them, as well.

Brian Lehrer: Have you seen any change just in these last two weeks, since Eric Adams and his Correction Commissioner have been in power, anything on the ground that affects you there?

Mr. Nelson: No, I haven't seen any changes. People are still doing more video courts, like they're calling more people for video courts but that's arbitrary. It's hard for them to determine who gets what and when.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate it. Good luck to you. One more from Rikers. Andre, you're on WNYC. Hi, Andre, thank you so much for calling in today.

Andre: Yes, thank you. I'm a dialysis patient, I'm a diabetic, I have high blood pressure, and I have an elongated period of the heart. I had to go to court for the month of December for three to four weeks. Of that time going to court, which they wake me up five o'clock in the morning, and I'm in court till probably five o'clock, get back to Rikers Island, maybe about 8:00.

During that time, I got no food whatsoever at court because of being that I do dialysis, I cannot eat cheese and peanut butter. That's all the food that they supply at court. I ate nothing, nothing whatsoever. I kept telling the judge that my head is spinning, my blood pressure is low, I don't know what's going on in the court, and he still kept the trial going. I'm saying that they treat us really bad here. Really, really bad.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sorry to hear that. What would help?

Andre: Well, it's a lot of other things but that was one of the major things. I broke my toe in the shower here in NIC and they haven't taken me to the doctor. I went to Bellevue one time and I was supposed to go back to see if my toe was set and they haven't taken me yet. This happened maybe August. I broke my toe in August.

Brian Lehrer: Andre, thank you for calling in and reporting that. Good luck to you. Stan, part of what we heard in the voicemail to New York County Defender Services was lack of health care, and sounds like Andre got a story of an extreme version of that. Yet, this is one of the things that we heard during the last year the de Blasio administration as well. It's a time of COVID, people have other things as well, and yet there wasn't enough health care to go around for the people incarcerated at Rikers Island. Can you expand on that?

Stan Germán: Absolutely. This is something that's just been going on. All of this has been going on for months and months and months and some cases, years. You don't have to take my word for it. The health care workers on Rikers Island, yesterday, some of them met with Jumaane Williams when he visited the island, and they were told that every day, there are dozens and dozens of dozens of appointments, where the inmates are not taken to the infirmary. Again, just folks not being taken.

When our clients are saying that they're not receiving health care, that they're not getting their mental health services, that unless it is something extremely dire, where blood is gushing out, you're just not taking to the infirmary, that is confirmed by the folks on the island, that is confirmed by the doctors and the nurses who say every day, they have a calendar full of appointments. In some cases, 50%, 60% just don't show up. That's because the Department of Corrections is not escorting these folks to get the health care that they need.

Brian Lehrer: We have one more from Rikers that's just come in, and I'm going to take it and this is on conditions around COVID in particular at the Vernon C Bain Correctional Center, also known as the Boat. Anibal at Vernon C Bain, you're on WNYC, thank you for calling in.

Anibal: Thank you, Brian, for taking my call very much. Hi to everyone. Listen, Brian, I'm calling you again because I'm over here, the conditions in here in the Boat are very, very bad, too. Right now, in my dormitory, we've been testing this guy they took out of here. I supposed, positive, Brian. They took them to Rikers Island. On top of that, they keep bringing people. I test negative and I'm inside the dormitory, Brian. We saw the people that are negative, and they keeping the people over here positive.

We are fighting with the officers on the department and they say, "Oh, that step are really, the wardens doing this to you guys," and stuff. They blame it on the deputy warden. There is the one who running everything over here. Then, there's no guy was picking up. I used to work with the cleaning and everything. The officers planning on [unintelligible 00:26:58] and everything is anti-hygiene in here. Sometimes, we'd say with no soap, with no toilet paper, we had to go through hell in here. The commissary, they say before, people without commissary for weeks and stuff. Everything is going down.

Even the officers in here and not for nothing. Brian, I'm going to tell you too, there are officers that they don't even get meal relief. They can even go and get water because they get stuck here for hours and hours, maybe sometimes 24 hours a day. They can't. Sometimes you have to give water to the officer.

Brian Lehrer: That's amazing. Again, some sympathy for the correction officers being expressed by an inmate second time in this call, and Anibal, thank you very much for checking in with us. We're almost out of time. Matt Katz, Louis Molina, the new Correction Commissioner, I see reverse the policy from the de Blasio administration, which required correction officers to see a doctor when they called out sick, and now they don't have to.

Matt Katz: They don't have to, they can call out sick for a couple of days, I believe, and without having to have a doctor's note or having seen a doctor.

Brian Lehrer: Last thought from you, Matt, as we run out of time. Eric Adams to give them the benefit of the doubt, he did not come into office, we will assume with the intent to oppress inmates at Rikers Island, what did he come in trying to do? What would be their version of this that's leading to so many complaints?

Matt Katz: It just seems his mindset is more aligned with the officers. One of his first announcements last month after de Blasio was about to take office regarding Rikers was to reverse a long-standing plan to end solitary confinement at city jails. He believes that solitary confinement is a good way of keeping things safe in these facilities, even though it's widely viewed as a humanitarian problem, but that's something that the officers have wanted. They've wanted that tool, and he has sided with them on that. I think that's what we're seeing with this administration. Somebody's just more aligned with the COs and their unions.

Brian Lehrer: Stan Germán is the executive director of New York County Defender Services. Matt Katz is the WNYC and Gothamist reporter covering Rikers Island. Thank you both for joining us.

Stan Germán and Matt Katz: Thank you, Brian.

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