The city agreed Friday to pause a controversial practice of transferring some of Rikers Island’s most troubled inmates to Albany jail until 2022 as part of a settlement resolving allegations of torture at the upstate lockup.
The so-called Substitute Jail Orders have been criticized as a way for the Department of Correction to get around restrictions on the city’s use of solitary confinement, including a ban for inmates younger than 22. Four men charged in a lawsuit filed last year that they endured disturbingly similar beatings and sexual assaults by correction officers upon arriving at the Albany County Correctional Facility. Sometimes, they said, city correction officers were present for the depraved punishment.
“For our clients this was really and truly an act of solidarity,” said attorney Doug Lieb, who filed the suit. “This wasn’t about them, it was about making this stop.”
The allegations were so disturbing that Judge Colleen McMahon referred the case to an assortment of state and federal prosecutors in May. A source familiar with the case said that after the referral, prosecutors with the Southern and Northern Districts of New York questioned the men who said they were tortured. The scope of those investigations was not clear.
Under the deal, once the city resumes sending inmates to Albany in 2022 they will be subject to DOC rules regarding the use of solitary confinement. Inmates will also receive written notice that they are being transferred, addressing allegations that inmates felt as if they were being kidnapped when they were moved to Albany without warning.
“If anybody gets sent up there after 2021 they’re to be treated as if they’re in the city of New York, for the purposes of punitive segregation,” Lieb said.
“The city’s responsibility for (inmates’) well-being doesn’t stop at the northern border of the Bronx. It doesn’t end by shipping them somewhere else.”
The four men, Davon Washington, Steven Espinal, Pariis Tillery and one identified only as John Doe, also received $980,000, which will be mostly paid by the city and Albany. The city refused to pay Espinal, who led a vicious attack on a Rikers correction officer.
Espinal was 18 when he was locked up at Rikers. After he nearly killed the correction officer in February 2018, officers from the DOC emergency service unit threw him in a van bound for Albany, though he had no idea where he was going, according to the suit.
At the upstate jail, court papers say he was met by a dozen Albany officers wearing green fatigues and riot gear.
Espinal said they brutally beat and tased him. When an X-ray revealed he had a blade hidden in his rectum, he was sexually assaulted and beaten more, he says. The assaults were so bad he has had to use a catheter and spent nearly a year in solitary, according to legal papers.
“This isn’t Rikers. This is Albany County. We do what we want,” Albany Lt. Anthony Torrisi allegedly told him.
Albany said in legal papers that correction officers do not torture under any circumstances and that any uses of force were due to the men not complying with commands or attempting to sneak in weapons.
Three of the four men remain behind bars. Washington, 22, is living in the Bronx. He said he was transferred to Albany after getting into a fight with a deputy warden while being held at Rikers for attempted robbery. Albany staff pummeled him for disobeying deliberately confusing commands and sexually assaulted him, according to the suit. He was punished with 360 days of solitary for bogus violations, he said.
“We believe there are a small number of cases where a transfer makes sense to protect the safety and security of individuals in our facilities. The settlement will result in a more transparent process, which we believe is in the best interest of all parties,” City Hall spokeswoman Avery Cohen said.
