Last week a chief prosecutor at the Bronx District Attorney's Office instructed his office to decline felony prosecutions of inmates "until further notice," according to an internal email obtained by NY1. The order follows a directive calling for prosecutors to drop cases where illegal items are found under inmates' beds or in visitor lockers unless there was further video or eyewitness evidence directly tying a person to an item, and to not consider video evidence unless it's provided by guards.
"The point of the lockers is to give the visitor the opportunity not to bring items into the facility," one email reads.
The orders come as prisoner violence is on the rise at Rikers (40 percent of inmates there have a diagnosed mental illness). According to the New York Times:
There were 108 reported stabbings and slashings in city jails during fiscal year 2015, compared with 88 the year before, and the number of fights and assaults increased by nearly 600 from 8,827, according to city data.
Halting prosecutions is a way of clearing up the DA's Office's backlog of more than 70 Rikers cases, Chief Assistant DA Odalys Alonso told NY1.
"I said, 'Let's stop. Let's not add any more to this until we can resolve the issues that are causing this,'" she said.
Office spokeswoman Terry Raskyn said the the Department of Corrections regularly fails to provide evidence including witness statements and inmate fingerprints, as well as sometimes the inmates themselves.
Corrections union head Norman Seabrook, who once famously visited a deputy mayor at home at night packing two pistols during contract negotiations, said the stoppage shows a double standard by the office, because it sometimes prosecutes guards.
"It ordinarily and almost unequivocally says, you know, you can do what you want to a New York City correction officer or inmate, for that matter, or civilian, and get away with it in Bronx County," he said.
On Friday, police arrested Rikers jailer Wickenson DeMaitre, who allegedly lied about having called for medical assistance for dying inmate Victor Woods in October 2014. Surveillance footage shows DeMaitre m sipping coffee and doing nothing while Woods convulses in pain from an intestinal hemorrhage.
Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson is headed for a state Supreme Court judgeship after clinching a Democratic Party nomination last week and leaving Bronx voters saddled with whoever party bosses pick to replace him.
