Federal control of Rikers Island, other NYC jails backed in proposed City Council resolution by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Comptroller Brad Lander

Two of New York City’s top elected officials — Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Brad Lander — plan a City Council resolution backing a federal takeover of Rikers Island and the rest of the city’s jail system.

Williams and Lander announced Wednesday that they are introducing the resolution after they toured jails at Rikers Island. A resolution carries no legal weight and is largely symbolic, but it could influence the debate over a federal takeover.

“What I want to see is something change,” Williams said.

“I have problems and concerns about what could happen in federal receivership. But the options are not many,” Williams said. “I haven’t seen what I want to see [from the city]. … What’s happening on Rikers is not working.”

Under federal receivership, a judge would appoint an outside expert and give them special powers to bypass or overcome practices or policies at Rikers Island and other city jails that are seen to be blocking improvement in the system.

Williams and Lander are making the move on the heels of a May 26 report by a federal court appointed monitor of violence in the city’s jails that revealed five serious incidents, including two deaths, that may have been the subject of attempted coverups within the Correction Department.

Correction Commissioner Louis Molina asked the jails violence monitor, Steve Martin, not to release the report and has defended the agency against the criticisms of Martin and his staff. Mayor Adams has questioned the monitor’s integrity.

But when the report was released, Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain immediately ordered a special conference on the matter June 13.

Mayor Adams opposes a federal takeover of the city’s jails. “Since taking office, we have been working diligently to turn the Department of Correction around, reducing violence, bringing officers back to work, and working with all our partners to improve conditions,” he said in a statement Wednesday.

“There has been a lot of progress as Comptroller Lander and Public Advocate Williams have acknowledged, and a federal receiver will not magically fix decades of dysfunction and mismanagement,” the mayor’s statement said

Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, took a dim view of the proposed resolution.

“This meaningless call for a resolution, seeking to impose a receivership, just shows how desperate [WIlliams and Landers] are to appease the Close Rikers advocates funding their campaigns,” Boscio said.

“Our members need stronger policies to deal with violent offenders, not political theater.”

Lander noted that he could not get answers about what happened to another of the five cases citd by the monitor — including that of Ovidio Porras, 86, who spent at least 11 days in intensive care after officer roughed him up in the Eric M. Taylor Center.