Court to Hear Arguments Today in Effort to Conceal Rikers Officer Disciplinary Decisions

A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice today will hear arguments in a case in which the corrections officers union’s is seeking to remove decades of Rikers Island guards’ disciplinary records from public view. The case is one of several recent efforts to misuse the decades-old Civil Rights Law Section 50-a to hide misconduct by police and corrections officers in New York City.

“At a public safety hazard like Rikers Island, we need more transparency about corrections officer misconduct, not less,” said NYCLU Associate Legal Director, Christopher Dunn, who will participate in argument on behalf of the NYCLU, which has filed an amicus curiae brief in the case. “The public has a right to know whether the Department of Correction is holding guards accountable for the widespread abuse plaguing Rikers.”

The disciplinary records at issue in the case — decisions by the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) — are one of the only ways the public can learn about and address the abuse inside the notoriously secretive Rikers Island. In 2011, Aubrey Victor, a corrections officer, was charged with striking a teenager incarcerated at Rikers without provocation and brutally stomping on his head three times as he lay on the ground. The disciplinary decision by not only found that Victor had used excessive force, but that his claims of self-defense were “incredible.”

“I find respondent’s testimony that he kicked at Inmate Humphrey because he believed the inmate had a weapon to be incredible… The video shows there were multiple times when the inmate held his hands in an open position…It defies belief that respondent did not see that the inmate’s hands were open and empty.” – Dept of Correction v. Victor (OATH decision)

A lawsuit filed by the corrections officers union seeks to have the entire OATH ruling about Victor’s case above — and the cases of all corrections officers past and present — removed from the public record. The union claims that 50-a, enacted in 1976 to protect some personal information about government employees, should suddenly apply to misconduct records, wiping out decades of public information important to understanding prison safety.

The oral argument in this case come during a firestorm of controversy over 50-a. After decades of releasing NYPD officer disciplinary decision, the NYPD likewise is using 50-a to keep records secret, despite the public’s clear right to know that officers with a history of violence are not being sent back out to patrol New York neighborhoods. Former police commissioner Bill Bratton publicly stated that he would use 50-a to keep under wraps the outcome of any disciplinary case against the officer who fatally choked Eric Garner in 2014. The NYCLU is also litigating a Freedom of Information Law request that seeks ten years of NYPD judicial decisions relating to officers’ mistreatment of New Yorkers.

What:
Oral arguments to ensure that Rikers corrections officers misconduct records remain public

The NYCLU will participate as amicus alongside the New York Times (intervenor) and the city law department (defendant). The corrections officers union is the plaintiff.

When:
2:15 p.m. today, Monday, Oct. 31

Where:
Court room 335, 60 Centre Street in Manhattan