Corrections Commissioner Acknowledges That Rikers Island is in a “State of Emergency”

On Thursday, The Post revealed videos of inmates attacking one another and another clip of inmates partying in their cell, and the head of Rikers Island is now acknowledging that there is a “serious problem.”

According to reports, the corrections commissioner, Vincent Schiraldi, claimed that he didn’t see the TikTok videos until after the news conference.

“The level of disorder here is deeply, deeply troubling,” Schiraldi said. “I’m not going to deny that there are serious problems here.”

The video that showed inmates partying in their cell also revealed a number of damaged cell doors that were supposed to be fixed at Rikers Robert N. Davoren Complex for young males.

Schiraldi claimed that some doors had been fixed, and others won’t be completed until spring.

About 500 doors remained broken, according to a spokesman for the city correction officers union, fuelling violence and other misconduct by inmates who can come and go at will.

Following a meeting with Schiraldi, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams gave a virtual briefing. He claimed he wasn’t aware of the recent video footage but had seen others that showed attacks on both inmates and correction officers.

“I don’t need to see this video to feel what I’m feeling. I’m angry. I’m frustrated,” he said. “All of those videos trouble me all the time.”

According to Williams, Rikers is in a “state of emergency” and is asking for “emergency decarceration” to remove inmates due to staff shortages that the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association claim is linked to injuries inflicted on the staff by inmates.

The Correction Department also hired the DiRAD Technologies telemarketing agency to recruit 600 new corrections officers, a fraction of the 2,000 the union requested. Williams claimed that there were “enough people on staff right now” if it weren’t for the 30% “not coming to work,” and he questioned how many officers were truly “sick and hurt” and how many were taking advantage of contract clauses to stay home.

Despite more than 1,300 resignations driven by the triple shifts that officers are often compelled to perform without warning, COBA spokesperson Michael Skelly stated no new correction officers had been hired since February 2019.

“Don’t tell us after we’re working 25 hours…after we’re victimized by a brutal inmate assault… to suck it up and come back to work,” he said.

Skelly also revealed that Schiraldi had boosted his projected hiring by half, implying that Rikers was severely understaffed.

“I think the jails are in severe, severe, severe crisis. I mean, we’re seeing it every single day — hearing it from the staff at Rikers, the leadership at Rikers, lawyers for the people that are on Rikers Island,” said Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

“We need to understand what their plan is; we need to understand what they need to be able to make Rikers a safe place — because it’s not safe right now, for the folks that are incarcerated or the folks that are working there.”

Councilman Joe Borelli said, “The problem is that it’s not a surprise; the union and elected officials have been sounding the alarm on this crisis for nearly two years.”

Borelli also added, “Why we hired 10,000 low-skilled, duplicative street-cleaning jobs in this budget when we had this incredibly unsafe staffing shortage should boggle the mind of any student of city management,” referring to de Blasio’s City Cleanup Corps.

De Blasio mentioned his $8.7 billion proposal to rebuild Rikers Island with four smaller facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens by August 2027 during his daily press briefing.

“For the here and now, we have reduced the number of buildings we’re using so that we have less of a problem with staff being put into overtime situations,” he said.

“It’s a very tough situation…But I know Commissioner Schiraldi is committed to just continued changes and reforms, and it’s endless work; honestly — very, very tough work made much tougher by COVID — but we are confident that over time we’re going to be able to overcome this.”