Rikers monitor blasts Mamdanis jail boss for hobbling court review: Dynfunctional

A federal monitor overseeing Rikers Island blasted the city’s jail boss for muzzling his underlings from speaking with court-appointed watchdogs at the troubled jail — even after he was warned of “dysfunctional” management practices.Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards has been working to “undermine” efforts to clean up the notoriously mismanaged lockup — most recently by demanding that his staff brief him before speaking with investigators, monitor Steve Martin said in a scathing letter.In a Sept.1 directive, Richards also ordered his staff to document “all meetings” with Martin or Nicholas Deml, the court-appointed remediation manager running the jail, Martin wrote in a letter to Manhattan federal court judge Laura Swain dated Thursday.An “anonymous source” promptly leaked Richards’ orders, which were sent out by his chief of staff America Canas, to the oversight team, Martin said.The moves by Richards and his leadership are “among the most specific, direct, and consequential actions” taken to “undermine” the court-appointed monitor that Martin has observed in his more than a decade watching over Rikers, the monitor alleged.DOC leadership, “at the highest levels, is actively engaging in efforts to evade transparency and impede cooperation and collaboration,” Martin fumed in the letter.Richards’ demand for staffers to report to him before speaking with the monitor or remediation manager came after he’d been warned in several recent meetings about his “dysfunctional, haphazard, and problematic management strategies,” the monitor wrote.Rikers has been subject to a federal monitor since 2015 as a result of a settlement of a federal lawsuit alleging horrible conditions and rampant violence at the city jail.The judge has repeatedly found that the city failed to comply with court orders, and in 2024 found the administration of former Mayor Eric Adams in contempt of court.The contempt finding led to Deml, the...