New York
His Mind Helped Rebuild New York. His Body Is Failing Him.

The man pulls the buttoned blue shirt down over his head and waits. His hands, bony, cratered, have lost their strength, so the shirt flutters open at the sleeves and neck. His wife walks into the bedroom. She takes his left hand in hers, and closes the button around his wrist.
“I did succeed in shaving this morning,” says the man.
“Without cutting yourself?” says his wife.
“Without cutting myself.”
The man built so much of this city. Look around. The World Trade Center, rebuilt from a mangled hole in the ground? He led that. The High Line and Hudson Yards? He led those, too. Barclays Center, Citi Field and the new Yankees Stadium? Parks on Governors Island and the Brooklyn waterfront? The East River skyline from Williamsburg to Long Island City? Him, him, him.
Once, and it wasn’t so long ago, Dan Doctoroff had more power to decide what got built in New York City than anyone since Robert Moses. Now he is diagnosed with A.L.S., a neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s that attacks the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, causing patients to lose control of their voluntary muscles. A.L.S. turns the body into a prison. Only the eyes and brain remain mostly unaffected. Death comes by lung failure and suffocation, usually within three to five years of diagnosis.
Mr. Doctoroff is 65. He was diagnosed almost two years ago.
As a powerful man loses authority over his own body, how does he change? And what remains?
It is winter, 2005,
and Mr. Doctoroff is thinking ahead, to a summer day seven years in the future. He is deputy mayor of New York, charged with rebuilding the city after 9/11. His job is to dream the future, and then to marshal the city’s gargantuan bureaucracy to get those dreams built. His boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has even compared Mr. Doctoroff to Mr. Moses: both master builders, both at once respected and resented for their relentlessness and their impatience.
But even Mr. Moses never tried to bring the Olympics to New York.
Mr. Doctoroff visits corporate suites, hotel conference rooms and newspaper editorial boards to give his pitch. In his mind, the 2012 Olympics are already about to start. Ferries cross the East River in a parade. The boats carry athletes to a gleaming Olympic Village, built in Queens atop the ruins of empty warehouses and falling-down piers.
Come, he says. Dream with me.
How many times has Mr. Doctoroff given this spiel? A hundred? As he repeats it, he worries. He feels trapped between his imagined future and the onrushing now. His mind jumps again, to the six emergencies erupting across his desk. He feels pulled in so many directions, it’s hard to be present with people. Do they notice?
He’s right to worry. People notice. A journalist who hears the Olympics pitch describes Mr. Doctoroff as a man whose eyes “gaze past you, out towards the horizon.”
Why this constant drive? Why does he find it so difficult to be present? For years, he doesn’t know. His brother Andy says Mr. Doctoroff should be more introspective, and who knows. Maybe Andy is right. Mr. Doctoroff is aware that he graduated Harvard aimless and lazy. Wound up in New York by following his wife, Alisa, who got a job in town. Bluffed his way into a job on Wall Street. Discovered he enjoys spinning numbers into stories, stories with grand ambitions, like a highly leveraged company with hidden potential, or why New York must host the Olympics.
“You could tell he’s very bright, and very competitive,” recalls Stephen Ross, founder and chairman of the real estate development firm Related Companies, who heard the pitch, dropped his own Olympic bid and joined Mr. Doctoroff’s team.
It is hard work seeing the future, and so Mr. Doctoroff puts everything into the job. But peering into the future makes it hard to see the present — hard to be home with his wife and children, hard to really see them. He leaves his townhouse on the Upper West Side each morning in darkness. He rides his bike down the Hudson River trail. He arrives at City Hall before sunrise, even in summer. He starts dozens of development projects, from the Bronx to Staten Island. He flies around the world, advancing the Olympics bid. He runs on discipline and work and depths of ambition that seem — even to his very successful friends — a little freakish.
His staff, mostly Ivy League types 20 years his junior, try to keep up. They fail.
“‘Don’t tell me no. I don’t believe in no,’” Sharon Greenberger, Mr. Doctoroff’s first chief of staff in city government, says of his worldview back then. “Barriers are temporary. And we just keep going.”
At city hall, no project goes smoothly. Each elicits an angry petition, a news conference, a lawsuit from neighbors or a state senator. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver kills Mr. Doctoroff’s plan for a stadium on the west side of Manhattan, and with it the entire Olympics bid. Governor George Pataki and leaders at the Port Authority rebuild the World Trade Center with office towers, overruling Mr. Doctoroff’s push for a mixed-use neighborhood of apartments and restaurants. Apartment towers and a basketball arena rise in Downtown Brooklyn, but local residents and the 2008 recession force developers to abandon Mr. Doctoroff’s larger plan for 17 high-rises, many up to 50 stories tall.
Mr. Doctoroff’s impatience grows. Ms. Greenberger invents the Doctoroff Mood-o-Meter, advising staff whether to approach or hide. Mr. Doctoroff’s tantrums cause Mr. Bloomberg so much joy, the mayor stops working, eats popcorn and watches.
“Dan’s team at City Hall was very familiar with his impatience and demanding style,” Mr. Bloomberg says of those days in an email, “but they would have run through a brick wall for him.”
Opponents accuse Mr. Doctoroff of “unmitigated arrogance,” according to an editorial in The New York Post. So do allies, including Senator Chuck Schumer.
“He was a bulldozer,” Daniel Goldstein, the leader of a group of neighbors fighting Mr. Doctoroff’s plans for Downtown Brooklyn, tells The Village Voice.
“I just think I was a little out of control,” Mr. Doctoroff says. “I was jet-lagged constantly, probably in a bad mood, which is why sometimes I would yell at people. Which I regret.”
Only Mr. Doctoroff’s closest aides know his mother is fighting cancer. Then his father is diagnosed with A.L.S. Every three weeks for eight years, Mr. Doctoroff travels to his hometown near Detroit, first to care for his mother, then for his father. Both parents die. His uncle dies, also from A.L.S. Mr. Doctoroff creates a nonprofit called Target ALS, raises tens of millions of dollars for A.L.S. research.
It is 2017,
and Mr. Doctoroff looks down from his office on the 27th floor of a tower in Hudson Yards, a neighborhood he named. He sees the glass-capped entrance to the 7-train station, New York’s first subway line extension in decades.
He is now the chief executive of Sidewalk Labs, a start-up Mr. Doctoroff founded with Google after running Bloomberg L.P. for six years.
“Just as we hoped, Midtown leapt to the west and West Chelsea burst to the north, creating a new neighborhood in Manhattan’s last frontier,” Mr. Doctoroff writes in his autobiography.
His schedule slows a little. Mr. Doctoroff finds a therapist to figure out how to spend his extra time. He digs into his childhood in Birmingham, Mich. His father, Myles, drove a blue Chevrolet station wagon to work at a no-name law firm. His mother scolded her husband. Why can’t you be more ambitious?
He remembers his mother’s anger, her need for prestige. He watched his father rise to become chief judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.
“I didn’t want to disappoint my mom,” Mr. Doctoroff says. “That has been the major motivating force in my career. And I didn’t even know it.”
Years later, he and Alisa vacation in Iceland. He walks up a hill and loses his breath — strange, he thinks. Back in New York, in October 2021, a doctor offers a diagnosis: The same disease that killed Mr. Doctoroff’s father and uncle; the same disease he had already raised millions to fight.
Mr. Doctoroff had always tried to predict the future, and sometimes it seemed like he could. But that was just his hopes underpinned by his confidence. Now he can see the future with a measure of certainty, and it is finite and hard: This is how he will die.
He calls Manish Raisinghani, the chief executive of Target ALS. He delivers the news, and an order.
“He said, ‘I want to grow this organization. Don’t think small. Think really big. And let’s move really quickly,’” Mr. Raisinghani recalls. “I’m stunned. But he’s not missing a beat.”
Mr. Doctoroff decides to fund partnerships between scientists, biotech companies and venture capitalists during the earliest stages of research. Hopefully this will encourage drug companies to weather the expensive and risky process of seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
He figures he needs $250 million. A year and a half later, he has only $22 million to go.
“They’re going to have a ton of money,” Jeff Rothstein, a former Target ALS board member who directs the Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, says of its current trajectory.
Mr. Doctoroff’s body fades quickly. He wakes one morning to find his abdominal muscles have disappeared in the night. His whole life, people described him as athletic and good-looking. He enjoyed that. Now his belly falls over his belt like a basketball. He jokes that this is the worst part of A.L.S. He lands the joke by setting his eyebrows to show it is not entirely a joke.
The disease attacks his lungs. Breath comes raggedly, turning his powerful voice into a soft, pausing tremolo. Central Park stands across the street from his house. The nearest train station is three blocks away. Both too far, now that he loses breath on a short flight of stairs.
“There is some upside to having A.L.S.,” he says. “I don’t have to walk the dogs.”
Adapt. Optimize. Take a complex situation and make it better. The disease will have his body. It will not claim his optimism. Can’t ride the subway? Buy a Vespa. Can’t walk without losing breath? Buy hiking sticks, use them to squeeze air into the lungs. A black brace over his right calf prevents Mr. Doctoroff’s foot from dropping as he walks. Black pants prevent people from noticing.
“I’m right-handed, but now I eat with my left hand. I’m getting good at it!” he says. “I find, actually, adaptation is fun. There’s got to be a better way. I can do it. I can look at it as a positive thing instead of a negative.”
It is May 7, 2023,
and Mr. Doctoroff sees 600 scientists, investors and drug company executives in a hotel conference room in Boston for the annual meeting of Target ALS. They discuss the first drug ever to reverse symptoms of the disease.
“We’re in a new era for A.L.S. research,” Mr. Doctoroff says.
He no longer tries to see the future. He is here, present, and it’s simple. With A.L.S., there’s no time to worry about time. He flies to Puerto Rico, Knoxville, Detroit and Provence with family or friends from high school. He rides his Vespa to meet his rich friends. He delivers his Target ALS pitch, wins a handshake and a promise for $200,000 or a million. He’s still on the board at Bloomberg Philanthropies and the University of Chicago, still gets dragooned into helping the mayor and the governor plan New York’s future. For a normal person, this is a busy career in full bloom.
For Mr. Doctoroff, it is retirement. His dread is replaced by a calm that surprises him.
“You worked so hard when we were growing up,” Ariel Doctoroff says to her father. “We talked about how you were never around, basically. Except for on Saturdays.”
“That’s not true,” Mr. Doctoroff says.
“I know. It’s not true,” Ariel says. “And you tried extremely hard to be present.”
Now, at last, he is.
“I never enjoyed any achievement or anything we accomplished because I was always on to the next thing,” he says. “I’ve changed dramatically since my diagnosis. It’s funny. I just don’t think about the future much. And that has made me more patient. It has made me, I think, a nicer person.”
His voice grows weaker. His peace grows stronger. His will remains. It is 8:30 in the morning on a Tuesday in August. The man places both palms on the windowsill of his home gym. He groans, and allows his knees to drop to the floor. A tangle of ropes and rubber bands hangs from hooks on the nearest wall. A physical trainer, connected by Zoom, instructs Mr. Doctoroff to grab the thinnest, lightest band.
“I can do the heavy one,” Mr. Doctoroff says.
“You sure?” says the trainer.
“Yeah.”

New York
Audio Data Shows Newark Outage Problems Persisted Longer Than Officials Said

On April 28, controllers at a Philadelphia facility managing air traffic for Newark Liberty International Airport and smaller regional airports in New Jersey suddenly lost radar and radio contact with planes in one of the busiest airspaces in the country.
On Monday, two weeks after the episode, Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said that the radio returned “almost immediately,” while the radar took up to 90 seconds before it was operational.
A Times analysis of flight traffic data and air traffic control feed, however, reveals that controllers were struggling with communication issues for several minutes after transmissions first blacked out.
The episode resulted in multiple air traffic controllers requesting trauma leave, triggering severe flight delays at Newark that have continued for more than two weeks.
Several exchanges between pilots and controllers show how the outage played out.
Outage Begins
Air traffic recordings show that controllers at the Philadelphia facility first lost radio and radar communications for about a minute starting just before 1:27 p.m., after a controller called out to United Flight 1951, inbound from Phoenix.
The pilot of United 1951 replied to the controller’s call, but there was no answer for over a minute.
1:26:41 PM
Controller
OK, United 1951.
1:26:45 PM
Pilot
Go ahead.
1:27:18 PM
Pilot
Do you hear us?
1:27:51 PM
Controller
How do you hear me?
1:27:53 PM
Pilot
I got you loud and clear now.
Two other planes reached out during the same period as United 1951 — a Boeing 777 inbound from Austria and headed to Newark, and a plane whose pilot called out to a controller, “Approach, are you there?” Their calls went unanswered as well.
Radio Resumes, With Unreliable Radar
From 1:27 to 1:28 p.m., radio communications between pilots and controllers resumed. But soon after, a controller was heard telling multiple aircraft about an ongoing radar outage that was preventing controllers from seeing aircraft on their radarscopes.
One of the planes affected by the radar issues was United Flight 674, a commercial passenger jet headed from Charleston to Newark.
1:27:32 PM
Pilot
United 674, approach.
1:27:36 PM
Controller
Radar contact lost, we lost our radar.
1:30:34 PM
Controller
Turn left 30 degrees.
1:31:03 PM
Pilot
All right, we’re on a heading of 356. …
1:31:44 PM
Controller
I see the turn. I think our radar might be a couple seconds behind.
Once the radio started operating again, some controllers switched from directing flights along their planned paths to instead providing contingency flight instructions.
At 1:28 p.m., the pilot of Flight N16NF, a high-end private jet, was called by a controller who said, “radar contact lost.” The pilot was then told to contact a different controller on another radio frequency.
About two and a half minutes later, the new controller, whose radar did appear to be functioning, instructed the pilot to steer towards a location that would be clear of other aircraft in case the radio communications dropped again.
Flight N426CB, a small private jet flying from Florida to New Jersey, was told to call a different radio frequency at Essex County Airport, known as Caldwell Airport, in northern New Jersey for navigational aid. That was in case the controllers in Philadelphia lost radio communications again.
1:27:57 PM
Controller
If for whatever reason, you don’t hear anything from me further, you can expect to enter right downwind and call Caldwell Tower.
1:29:19 PM
Controller
You just continue on towards the field. They’re going to help navigate you in.
This is in case we are losing our frequencies.
1:29:32 PM
Pilot
OK, I’m going over to Caldwell. Talk to you. Have a good afternoon.
Minutes Later, Radar Issues Persist
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, aircraft reappeared on radarscopes within 90 seconds of the outage’s start, but analysis of air traffic control recordings suggest that the radar remained unreliable for at least some radio frequencies for several minutes after the outage began around 1:27 p.m.
At 1:32 p.m., six minutes after the radio went quiet, Flight N824TP, a small private plane, contacted the controller to request clearance to enter “Class B” airspace — the type around the busiest airports in the country. The request was denied, and the pilot was asked to contact a different radio frequency.
1:32:43 PM
Pilot
Do I have Bravo clearance?
1:32:48 PM
Controller
You do not have a Bravo clearance. We lost our radar, and it’s not working correctly. …
If you want a Bravo clearance, you can just call the tower when you get closer.
1:32:59 PM
Pilot
I’ll wait for that frequency from you, OK?
1:33:03 PM
Controller
Look up the tower frequencies, and we don’t have a radar, so I don’t know where you are.
The last flight to land at Newark was at 1:44 p.m., but about half an hour after the outage began, a controller was still reporting communication problems.
“You’ll have to do that on your own navigation. Our radar and radios are unreliable at the moment,” a Philadelphia controller said to a small aircraft flying from Long Island around 1:54 p.m.
Since April 28, there has been an additional radar outage on May 9, which the F.A.A. also characterized as lasting about 90 seconds. Secretary Duffy has proposed a plan to modernize equipment in the coming months, but the shortage of trained staff members is likely to persist into next year.
New York
Two Men’s Fight to Protect the Geese at the Central Park Reservoir

Whether goslings live or die at the Central Park Reservoir could be up to two 70-something, nature-loving men who first crossed paths there this winter.
Edward Dorson, a wildlife photographer and regular visitor to the reservoir, learned in 2021 that federal workers were destroying the eggs of Canada geese there as part of a government safety program to decrease bird collisions with airplanes. He tried to stop it.
He reached out to animal rights organizations and wrote letters to various government agencies. He got nowhere.
Then in December, he met Larry Schnapf, a tough-talking environmental lawyer, who spotted Mr. Dorson admiring the birds and introduced himself. Mr. Dorson told him about the nest destruction. Mr. Schnapf, in his 40-year legal career, had mostly focused on redeveloping contaminated properties but had picked up the occasional pro bono passion project. “I told him I take on quixotic pursuits,” Mr. Schnapf said.
Now, they are teaming up to protect the eggs of a small population of Canada geese that nest around the reservoir, a popular attraction for joggers and bird watchers. The battle will undoubtedly be uphill: They are lobbying multiple government agencies during a fraught time in aviation where bird strikes are one of many concerns, on behalf of a bird often described as a nuisance because of its honking cries and the droppings it leaves on lawns, parks and golf courses.
The men say they appreciate the importance of protecting planes. But they are seeking to exempt the Central Park Reservoir from the egg destruction program so that it can serve as a sanctuary for the nesting geese. They argue that Central Park is far enough from the area’s airports that the geese do not pose a major problem.
Mr. Schnapf said he plans to send a cease-and-desist letter to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees five major airports in the region, including Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and LaGuardia Airport. The agency works with an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the safety program. “I think this is all unlawful,” he said. “These are protected animals.”
Port Authority officials did not comment on the advocacy plans of the two men. But they stressed that government efforts like those underway in Central Park were part of creating safer conditions for air travel.
“Managing wildlife risks — especially from resident Canada geese — near our airports is a life safety imperative and essential to maintaining safe operations,” said Laura Francoeur, the Port Authority’s chief wildlife biologist.
Although Canada geese are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, authorities have obtained a waiver to control the population. The birds, which can weigh as much as 19 pounds and have a wingspan up to 5.5 feet, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, can get sucked into plane engines and bring an aircraft down.
Between 2008 and 2023, there were 451 aviation accidents involving commercial aircraft in the United States, with a total of 17 caused by bird strikes, producing five injuries and no fatalities, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
New York City tightened its grip on Canada geese in 2009, after a collision with a flock caused US Airways Flight 1549, piloted by Chesley B. Sullenberger III, to lose both its engines shortly after it took off from LaGuardia. The plane was forced into an emergency water landing in what is now commonly known as the “miracle on the Hudson.”
The event prompted the Port Authority to ask the Department of Agriculture for help. In 2010, federal wildlife workers took on the management of Canada geese populations within seven miles of the city’s major airports, including in city parks.
Mr. Schnapf calls the current rules an overreach, since Federal Aviation Administration guidelines call for wildlife management only within five miles of airports. A Port Authority spokeswoman said the agency honors all federal regulations, including addressing wildlife hazards within five miles of airports. But she added that the agency will often go beyond that radius when specific threats arise.
Data from the F.A.A. shows that Canada geese strikes at LaGuardia and Kennedy Airports have remained consistent over the last two decades, with between zero and four instances per year.
Canada geese thrive in people-friendly landscapes, and their population has boomed throughout North America over the last four decades. Many geese have become so comfortable in parks and other green spaces, like the reservoir, that they have stopped migrating, becoming year-round residents.
There are about 228,000 resident Canada geese in New York State, up from 150,000 in 2002. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation would like to see that number shrink to 85,000.
The two men fighting for the Central Park Reservoir’s resident geese were both born in the Bronx, are similar in age and diet (one is a vegetarian, the other a vegan). But the similarities more or less end there.
Mr. Dorson, 77, an accomplished underwater photographer and conservationist with a background in the arts, is a soft-spoken lover of hard-to-love animals — he helped start a shark sanctuary in Palau, in Micronesia. Mr. Schnapf, 72, is a fast-talking, fast-acting networker who is not afraid to make noise.
“I told Ed,” he said, “you’ve got to rattle the bureaucracy.”
Mr. Dorson and Mr. Schnapf are hoping to meet with officials from the Port Authority, the Central Park Conservancy and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the reservoir, among other decision makers.
”All we’re trying to do is get them to talk to us, so we can come up with a plan so at least some of those eggs can be hatched,” Mr. Schnapf said.
Mr. Dorson admitted that, right now, “I don’t see too many people like me who are worried about the geese.”
“But maybe 10 years from now, when there are no geese here, then people might feel the loss,” he said. “I’d like to change that.”
New York
Outside Official Will Take Over Deadly Rikers Island Jail, Judge Orders

A federal judge overseeing New York City’s jails took Rikers Island out of the city’s control on Tuesday, ordering that an outside official be appointed to make major decisions regarding the troubled and violent jail complex.
The judge, Laura Taylor Swain, said in a 77-page ruling that the official would report directly to her and would not be a city employee, turning aside Mayor Eric Adams’s efforts to maintain control of the lockups. The official, called a remediation manager, would work with the New York City correction commissioner, but be “empowered to take all actions necessary” to turn around the city’s jails, she wrote.
“While the necessary changes will take some time, the court expects to see continual progress toward these goals,” Judge Swain wrote.
The order comes nearly a decade after the city’s jails, which include the Rikers Island complex, fell under federal oversight in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit. The agreement focused on curbing the use of force and violence toward both detainees and correction officers. A court-appointed monitor issued regular reports on the persistent mayhem.
New York City has held onto its control of Rikers with white knuckles — struggling to show progress and reaching the brink of losing oversight of the jails as critics of the system have called for a receiver. Conditions have not improved, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs and the federal monitor.
The city’s jail population has grown to more than 7,000 from a low of about 4,000 in 2020. And in the first three months of this year, five people died at Rikers or shortly after being released from city custody, equaling the number of detainees who died in all of 2024.
In a statement, lawyers from the Legal Aid Society and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, which represent detainees, said they commended the court’s “historic decision.”
“For years, the New York City Department of Correction has failed to follow federal court orders to enact meaningful reforms, allowing violence, disorder and systemic dysfunction to persist,” said Mary Lynne Werlwas and Debra Greenberger. “This appointment marks a critical turning point.”
The remediation manager will be a receiver in all but name. The official will be granted “broad powers” as plaintiffs had asked, Judge Swain wrote, but will also develop a plan for improvement in concert with the correction commissioner.
Such arrangements are the last resort for a troubled jail or prison. Since 1974, federal courts have put only nine jail systems in receivership, not counting Tuesday’s Rikers order.
The ruling was another blow for Mr. Adams, who is fighting for his political life after the Trump administration dropped corruption charges against him so that he could assist with its deportation efforts. Many of his confidants have also faced investigations, he is on his fourth police commissioner and his approval ratings have hit historic lows.
Now, the mayor, a former police captain, has lost most control of an institution that employs about 5,000 people represented by the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, a union that has been a bastion of political support.
On Tuesday, even as prisoners rights organizations and some of Mr. Adams’s campaign opponents celebrated, the mayor disputed whether Judge Swain’s order constituted a receivership and painted it as a benefit.
“The problems at Rikers are decades in the making,” he said. “We finally got stability.”
In a statement, Benny Boscio, president of the correction officers’ union, said that Judge Swain’s order had preserved the right to representation and collective bargaining, and he made clear that the guards must be reckoned with.
“The city’s jails cannot operate without us,” he said. “And no matter what the new management of our jails looks like, the path toward a safer jail system begins with supporting the essential men and women who help run the jails every day.”
New York City has spent more than $500,000 per inmate annually in recent years, according to city data, well beyond what other large cities have spent, and yet detainees still sometimes go without food or proper medical care.
A New York Times investigation in 2021 found that guards are often stationed in inefficient ways that fail to protect detainees. And although the jail system has consistently been the most well-staffed in the United States — there is roughly one uniformed officer for each inmate at Rikers, according to city data — an unlimited sick leave policy and other uses of leave have meant that there are too few guards present to keep inmates safe.
The class-action lawsuit that led to the takeover, known as Nunez v. City of New York, was settled in June 2015 and required that the jails be overseen by a court-appointed monitor who would issue regular reports on conditions there but would wield no direct power to effect change.
Through those reports, Judge Swain was given an extensive history of the cyclical nature of the jail system’s problems. Through the administration of two mayors and several correction commissioners, the jails continued to devolve, according to prisoners’ rights advocates and the monitor’s reports. In November, the judge found the city in contempt for failing to stem violence and excessive force at the facility, which is currently run by Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie.
Over the years, the city has argued that the Department of Correction has made progress, even as Judge Swain issued remedial orders and the monitor and prisoners’ advocates pointed to backsliding.
In 2023, Damian Williams, then Manhattan’s top prosecutor, joined calls for the appointment of an outside authority to take control of Rikers, saying that the city had been “unable or unwilling” to make reforms under two mayors and four correction commissioners.
On Tuesday, Jay Clayton, whom President Trump appointed last month as interim U.S. attorney, said Judge Swain’s decision was a “welcomed and much needed milestone.”
In a 65-page opinion last year, Judge Swain said that the city and the Department of Correction had violated the constitutional rights of prisoners and staff members by exposing them to danger, and had intentionally ignored her orders for years. Officials had fallen into an “unfortunate cycle” in which initiatives were abandoned and then restarted under new administrations, she wrote.
An inability to operate independently of politics is what has kept Rikers from turning around, said Elizabeth Glazer, the founder of Vital City and a former criminal justice adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“Every new administration, there’s a reset,” she said. “Every new crisis, there’s a reset.”
Last year, Judge Swain ordered city leaders to meet with lawyers for prisoners to create a plan for an “outside person,” known as a receiver, who could run the system.
The parties met in recent months to try to reach an agreement, in deliberations overseen by the federal monitor, Steve J. Martin. He told the court that the parties and his team had been “actively engaged” in discussions.
In the end, the sides submitted dueling proposals.
The Legal Aid Society and a private law firm representing incarcerated people argued that the court should strip the city of control and install a receiver who would answer only to the court. The receiver should be given broad power to make changes, they proposed, including with regard to staffing and union contracts that govern it.
The receiver, they said, could “review, investigate and take disciplinary or other corrective or remedial actions with respect to violations of D.O.C. policies, procedures and protocols” related to the court order.
In its plan, the city offered to give Ms. Maginley-Liddie dual roles by adding the title of “compliance director” to her responsibilities. The city proposed that she answer to the court on issues related to the consent decree, such as safety and staffing shortages, while answering to the mayor on everything else.
However, the city has had a “a multitude of opportunities” to improve its management of the jails and has “proven unable or unwilling to take advantage of those opportunities,” said Hernandez D. Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
“Judge Swain was left no other choice,” he said.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
-
Austin, TX1 week ago
Best Austin Salads – 15 Food Places For Good Greens!
-
Technology1 week ago
Netflix is removing Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
-
World1 week ago
The Take: Can India and Pakistan avoid a fourth war over Kashmir?
-
News1 week ago
Reincarnated by A.I., Arizona Man Forgives His Killer at Sentencing
-
News1 week ago
Who is the new Pope Leo XIV and what are his views?
-
Politics1 week ago
Department of Justice opens criminal investigation into NY AG Letitia James
-
World1 week ago
New German chancellor aims for stronger EU ties with France and Poland
-
News1 week ago
Judge Orders Release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts Student Detained by ICE