A second correction captain has been suspended for internally raising concerns about department operations, the Us.Mistertruth has learned.
Captain Marat Chmut, an 18-year veteran officer, was suspended Saturday by DOC Commissioner Louis Molina after sending an email to most of the agency’s top leadership questioning why detainees at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Rikers Island weren’t being given outdoor recreation.
“From whom are we waiting a clearance to start outside recreation? Where is our management? Commissioner, what is going on?” Chmut wrote in the email obtained by The News.
“Who will you suspend next? Who has failed right now in your management team? You do not let us take initiative and be proactive.”
He also wrote in support of Captain Awais Ghauri, who was suspended June 2 for asking for help with a combative mentally ill detainee. Ghauri’s suspension was initially seven days, but last week, Molina extended it to a month.
“Captain Ghauri, sorry to hear you (were) suspended,” Chmut wrote about 11 a.m. Saturday. “The department is weak and cannot hold any criticism in their direction.”
Just four hours later Saturday, Chmut wrote he had been suspended. “As expected I got suspended for 30 days requested by Assistant Commissioner Jonathan Levine,” he wrote.
“They are about to escort me out of the facility. So another act of weakness. They cannot hold a critique from staff.”
Chmut did not reply to messages from The News.
David Fullard, a retired correction captain who served the city for 29 years, said he doesn’t recall anyone in his career suspended for sharing internal concerns about jail operations.
“I never met a commissioner or a warden who wouldn’t listen,” said Fullard, now a professor at SUNY Empire State. “Back then, you had a suggestion box. These days email is the suggestion box.
“You’re in the trenches and you’re seeing things the commissioner is not seeing, so that feedback is valuable. I don’t quite get it.”
The department did not respond to a request for comment.
The email is another hint, correction insiders said, that support for Molina is softening among the rank-and-file, particularly among mid-level managers who have seen their promotional opportunities shrink with the turn toward outside civilian leadership.
“The captain that wrote that email has been on the job since 2005. He knows how the agency operated before this mess of an administration,” one correction source said.
Another insider said Chmut’s suspension on top of Ghauri’s was “not a good look.”
A special hearing in federal court before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain is slated for Tuesday following two federal monitor’s reports which alleged possible attempts to cover-up five serious incidents.
DOC and the Adams administration have been on a campaign to restrict negative information about the jails – including cutting off remote video access to the Board of Correction and ending a practice of releasing information on deaths in custody.
After The News broke the story of Ghauri’s suspension, a poster titled “We support our fellow captain” was circulated on line with a picture of the newspaper’s cover.
“You have to do what you have to do to give the department notification about a serious issue and in return the union turns their back on you and you get suspended,” the poster read.
“This is what we voted for? You want to go play golf, go play golf. We need help and change.”
The anonymous authors of the poster called on uniformed officers to go to the press, saying, “Now the enemy of our enemy is our friend in time of need.”
The Us.Mistertruth also obtained an anonymous letter written by officers in the Robert N. Davoren Center in January in which they complained bitterly that they were being asked to work double shifts while other officers got cushy assignments and even attended a birthday party on city time.