In a major shake-up at the New York City Correction Department, three high-ranking officials, including the top uniformed officer, are stepping down amid mounting criticism over the handling of violence and corruption at Rikers Island.
The chief of department, William Clemons, and two high-level deputies — Joandrea Davis, the bureau chief of administration, and Gregory McLaughlin, the bureau chief of facility operations — are departing, according to two senior correction officials. The Correction Department did not immediately comment or provide an explanation for the sudden changes. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handpicked correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, had promoted all three within the last five months.
The department has been under intense pressure from the news media, lawmakers and federal authorities to address systemic brutality and corruption at Rikers, the country’s second-largest jail complex. The United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which in August released a damning report detailing abuse of adolescent inmates at Rikers, has threatened to sue the city if changes are not made.
Photo
William Clemons, right, chief of the New York City Correction Department, with Joseph Ponte, the correction commissioner, at a meeting in July. Credit Jake Naughton/The New York Times
The highest-ranking official in the group, Mr. Clemons, was a 29-year veteran of the department. But he has been under scrutiny since an investigation by The New York Times in September uncovered details from an internal Correction Department audit that found he had “abdicated all responsibility” in his duties as warden of a juvenile facility at Rikers in 2011, where hundreds of inmate fights had been omitted from official statistics. The audit recommended that he be demoted.
Instead, The Times found, he was promoted multiple times, while large sections of the audit, including the recommendation for demotion and the sharpest criticism, were removed from the report by the previous commissioner, Dora B. Schriro.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/nyregion/top-uniformed-jail-officer-to-step-down-over-rikers-violence.html
