U.S. to sue NY City over rights violations of teen Rikers inmates
By Andrew Chung and Jonathan Allen NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government will sue New York City over widespread violations of civil rights of teenage inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex, the Justice Department said on Thursday, raising the prospect of years of federal oversight of the troubled jail. The move by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for New York's southern district, followed a report in August describing a pattern of violent abuse of 16- to 18-year-old male inmates by guards and others held at Rikers. "At the end of the day, there must be a court-ordered agreement," Bharara told reporters at a press conference. He is seeking a so-called consent decree, which typically also entails the court appointing monitors to oversee that the promised changes are made, he said. Only a handful of the country's thousands of jails, prisons and mental hospitals have problems serious enough to warrant the Justice Department's attention each year under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, or CRIPA. The statute empowers the department to carry out a civil investigation into broader systemic problems of inmate abuse, as opposed to a more narrow criminal investigation into misconduct by individual employees. The Justice Department began investigating Rikers in 2012 when Michael Bloomberg was mayor. The department says the city has allowed guards to routinely batter inmates, sometimes even after inmates had been cuffed, deliberately dragging them out of view of security cameras. Its report also criticized the heavy use of solitary confinement and poor management oversight. Bharara's office had been in settlement talks with the city and hoped to reach a deal, but court papers filed in federal court in Manhattan Thursday said "insufficient progress has been made." Neither he nor City Hall would discuss any disagreements that led to the talks dissolving. Marti Adams, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in a statement that the mayor and the city's Department of Correction had already made some of the more than 70 changes the Justice Department had demanded. Since taking office in January, the mayor has called conditions at Rikers deplorable. On Wednesday, he announced an end to the practice of solitary confinement for teenagers. Former inmate Damien Norman, who says a Rikers guard broke his wrist in 2012 when he was 17, welcomed the Justice Department move. "I think change is going to happen because it's becoming an issue now and kids are starting to speak up about what they went through," said Norman, who spent 11 months at Rikers awaiting trial on a robbery charge. Bharara said he wants to enforce "legally permanent" change at Rikers. If other CRIPA investigations are any guide, New York may be at the start of a protracted process. The Los Angeles County Jail has been struggling for 12 years to address the findings of a CRIPA investigation, according to the Justice Department. In Chicago, Cook County Jail officials signed a consent decree with the Justice Department in 2010, and four court-appointed monitors have overseen the jail since then. (Additional reporting by Nate Raymond and Elizabeth Shafiroff; Editing by Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio)
