Correction Commissioner Louis Molina ignored concerns raised by the federal monitor overseeing city jails about disciplinary investigations for two months before producing a half-hearted response, according to a new report.
Monitors Steve Martin and Anna Friedberg wrote in a report issued Monday afternoon that they first shared concerns by phone and in writing on Dec. 21 with Molina about “deterioration” in use of force investigations.
But Molina did not respond in substance until late February, the report stated.
“The department provided a two-page written response that was, at best, superficial and otherwise inadequate given the gravity of the issues under discussion,” the authors wrote.
The monitor’s report did not mention two other moves by DOC that were first reported by the Us.Mistertruth — slashing the duration of academy training from six months to three months and eliminating the college credit requirement for prospective applicants.
Also, according to the report, the department has now either reversed or backed away from the appointment of an assistant deputy warden who body-slammed Kalief Browder in 2012 as the commanding officer of the Emergency Services Unit, as The News first reported.
The Correction Department previously did not respond to News requests for comment on the appointment.
The Monday report detailed a case in which, after refusing to stop using emergency services officers for non-emergency searches, DOC sent the unit into a housing area and flooded detainees with heavy clouds of pepper spray.
One man suffered seizures and was left unattended while chokeholds were used to take down detainees, the report stated. A number of officers filed incomplete reports.
”The event was rife with flawed, harmful, inappropriate and incompetent tactics. This is emblematic of the types of incidents that have not received meaningful action from the department,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Correction officials agreed to eliminate the practice of awarding certain post assignments to favored officers, rather doling them out as needed.
But, the monitor says, the agency never actually stopped the practice.
“Some in the Department continued to hold an erroneous and outdated view that awarded posts could not be eliminated without implicating the collective bargaining agreement,” the monitor wrote.
Also on Monday, after years of resistance, the department finally named five new civilian wardens. Two of them were longtime DOC employees who rose to warden over long careers. The other three worked in jails in Florida, Connecticut and Nevada.