Rikers Island Correction Bosses Routinely 'Purge' Unfavorable Violence Stats to Create Illusion of Reform

By Stephen Rex Brown and Reuven Blau, New York Daily News

28 August 16

 

here’s something hokey going on at the city’s pokey.

As pressure mounts to reduce violence at the troubled jails, top correction bosses — seeking to create the impression they have turned matters around — repeatedly order underlings to downgrade incidents, a Daily News review of scores of internal documents shows.

Knife fights and ugly brawls between inmates, even attacks on officers, often end up airbrushed in the records as routine “log book entries,” sources familiar with the process say.

The main culprit, critics say, is Security Chief Turhan Gumusdere, a man who has faced scandal in the past for distorting data in the jails by deleting hundreds of fights among inmates from the records when he was a deputy warden.

They also have questions, they say, about Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte, a touted reformer who nonetheless promoted Gumusdere into his job, even after the city’s Department of Investigation recommended he be demoted.

While vowing to alter the culture of violence, Ponte has done nothing to address flaws in the record-keeping process, either exerting pressure or looking the other way, all to placate City Hall, several sources say.

One officer, requesting anonymity, called the practice a “purging” of unfavorable stats.

Gumusdere and the department strongly deny any wrongdoing. A department spokeswoman said Ponte declined to respond to the accusations.

The cases probed by The News seem to defy reason.

For example, a Rikers Island assault by four inmates leaving another inmate bloodied with severe gashes to his face is first depicted by front-line officers as a “violent incident.”

But an order arrives to downgrade the episode, and it is swallowed up in the ledger as another workaday footnote.

“They lie about the use of force statistics,” charged an officer who asked to remain anonymous. “This is a practice to keep the stats down.”

Now the City Council, citing computations that don’t add up, is demanding answers, starting with Elizabeth Crowley, who heads the committee overseeing the jails. She is calling on city Controller Scott Stringer to run an audit of the records.

This is not the first time jail brass, particularly Gumusdere, have come under fire for juking figures. The city’s Department of Investigation found in 2011 that Gumusdere, while running a Rikers facility for troubled teens, “abdicated all responsibility” in documenting incidents. DOI recommended he be demoted.

Instead, Ponte did the opposite, promoting Gumusdere, in a move requiring special City Hall permission, a source said.

In reviewing 11 specific cases, The News found nine downgrades. But according to several jails bosses, this number represents just a fraction of the cases that are skewed. Incidents are often not logged at all, with Gumusdere telling supervisors to “make it go away,” the sources say.

Experts agree that how the mayhem is chronicled is critical in a jail system rife with chaos. Each of the last two fiscal years has seen more than 100 stabbings and slashings, a threshold not passed since 1999 when the prison population of nearly 20,000 was about double its size today.

By all accounts, curbing the violence is a formidable challenge, complicated by the detainees themselves, often loath to cooperate, lest they be seen as snitches.

In one case, an inmate said three gashes on his face came from a fall against a bedpost. Another inmate said he injured his head falling on a “hot box.”

Doctors doubted their accounts, noting the injuries indicated a blade was used.

Correction officers labeled the incidents as “slashings” only to see them later downgraded. That catch-all category, a holdover from precomputer times, is not included in data on violence.

The Correction Department vehemently denies any wrongdoing.

“Any claim that our numbers are manipulated is absolutely false,” said spokeswoman Dina Montes. “We have a rigorous process for capturing and reporting incidents.”

The allegations, though, are not a surprise to former warden Raino Hills, who succeeded Gumusdere as head of the juveniles complex. He blew the whistle against Gumusdere in 2011, telling DOI there were scores of cases left open to make it appear violence was down.

“Gumusdere is Gumusdere,” Hills told The News. “That’s his MO. That’s what he does.”

In an interview with The News last Tuesday, Gumusdere denied any broad attempt to downgrade cases. He said that since he became security chief in February, there have been only 14 such examples — a number hotly disputed by the several sources who spoke to The News.

“Everything is on video,” Gumusdere said. “Everything is on the up and up. I don’t know where all this is coming from. I can tell you one thing. Everything you have is wrong.”

Department rules are clear — when an inmate suffers a “serious injury” a report must be filed and an investigation launched. Similarly, when an inmate resists restraint by an officer, it must be recorded as an official use of force.

The examination by The News of nearly a dozen “24-hour reports” reveals a pattern where high-ranking jail officials override the judgment of correction officers and doctors.

After a Jan. 21 fight, Christian Sims was found on the floor of the Otis Bantum Correctional Center at Rikers.

He suffered a slice to his forehead 6 centimeters deep and cuts on the nose and upper lip, documents show. From the start, Sims said he fell on his face, slamming his head on the edge of the bed.

Citing a medical review, front-line jail staff deemed it a slashing, records show.

But a day before the end of the fiscal year on June 29, the incident was “downgraded” to “a logbook” entry.

Sims, now in an upstate New York prison for a drug sale conviction, downplayed the episode, saying in a jailhouse interview that although he was jumped by four men, he hurt his head on a metal bedpost.

A jail source familiar with the case maintains the downgrade six months later was pure politics.

“It smells of manipulation,” the source said.

Gumusdere defended the recasting.

“That was an inmate who was running around his dorm. All the phone conversations say that he tripped,” Gumusdere said, referring to secretly recorded phone exchanges.

Department officials insist incident upgrades are actually more frequent than downgrades, citing statistics largely compiled before Gumusdere took over as security chief. They said since January 2011, there have been only 62 downgrades, along with 108 upgrades. But the department declined to share details of any of the cases — including the 14 Gumusdere said were downgraded since he stepped into the security chief role early this year.

In one instance on June 12, Lesane Tyquan slashed another inmate, Michael Bryant, 21, on his side and back in the George Motchan Detention Center at the lockup by the East River.

The incident was initially recorded as a logbook entry because of pressure from Gumusdere, a source familiar with the case says.

But Chief Hazel Jennings reviewed the case and took the unusual step of ordering staff to upgrade it, according to email obtained by The News.

For example, on June 8, inmate Ricardo Wright “attempted to assault another inmate” and a captain “utilized control holds” to restrain him, an internal report says.

A photo shows one of the captain’s hands covered in blood.

The incident — with no video surveillance — was initially classified as a low-level use of force. But it was later “downgraded ... on behalf of bureau chief of security Gumusdere,” records show.

Critics say Gumusdere cherry-picks portions of video that does not reveal what really happened.

“Gumusdere is up to his old tricks,” a July 1 anonymous letter sent to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and The News alleges. “Please scrutinize this agency further.”