NYC NOW - August 8, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

An Essex County judge says Millburn Township, NJ has to pay $115,000 in legal fees for trying to back out of an affordable housing deal. Plus, neighbors in a Bronx neighborhood are fearful after a shooting left six people injured Wednesday night. And finally, we continue WNYC’s ongoing coverage of sexual assault allegations at the Rikers Island Jails.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. In New Jersey, a judge is ordering a tiny town to pay $115,000 in legal fees for trying to back out of an affordable housing deal. An Essex County judge says Milburn Township has to pay the attorney fees to a developer and housing organization following a month-long-long, back and forth over the affordable housing plan. Fair share housing centers, Josh Bowers, said the court is merely asking the town to do what it originally promised. I think there's a view that the court is somehow ordering the town to do something

that was sort of violating their right to make decisions for themselves, and that's just not the case. The judge is giving Milburn until the end of the month to re-adopt the original agreement to develop 75 units of affordable housing or potentially face further penalties. Police are looking for at least two suspects who fled on a moped after allegedly opening fire on a crowd in the Bronx Wednesday night injuring six people. WMYC's Brittany Crickstein has more from neighbors on the block. Ange Lugustado lives on East 1901st Street in Morris Avenue. He says shootings aren't the only things he worries about when he walks around his Fordham neighborhood.

He says he sees people carrying guns, selling drugs, and drag racing on his block. He tells his wife to avoid the area because it's dangerous. NYPD data shows this shooting accounts for the most people shot in a single incident in New York City since six people were shot near the Mount Eden Avenue subway station in February. Police have not made any arrest and have yet to identify a possible motive for the incident. After the break, we continue our ongoing coverage of sexual assault allegations at Rikers Island jails.

Stay close. Earlier this year, a Rikers Island correction officer was arrested on charges of raping a woman in Queens while he was off duty. He's currently suspended from the Department of Correction while he faces the charges. But one woman says she tried to raise the alarm about that same officer more than three years ago, after she alleges he sexually assaulted her on Rikers, and WMYC has determined that her complaint was never investigated. Reporter Jesse Edwards has been working on WMYC's ongoing coverage of sexual assault allegations

at Rikers. She talked with my colleague, Sean Carlson. And a warning. This story contains detailed accounts of sexual assault. Jesse, what have you learned about this correction officer? In April, we learned that this New York City correction officer, his name is Anthony Martin Jr. that he had been arrested on charges of raping a woman at a house in Queens while he was off duty. Prosecutors say that he was in a bedroom with a woman, that he held her down, forced his

fingers into her vagina and then raped her. Sean, this comes at a time when hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against the city of New York from women who were formerly detained at the woman's jail on Rikers Island and who say that they were sexually as well. assaulted by jail staff while they were there. These claims they go back almost five decades, right back to the 70s and right up to last year. Earlier this week, we reported on one correction officer who was identified by 24 different women in these lawsuits. They all say that he was the man who sexually assaulted them in claims ranging from the late 80s through to the early 2000s. So all of this suggests that this is a system.

issue that's been going on for a very long time. Now, Sean, you mentioned this woman who filed a report. Yeah. This is one of the 700 women who I mentioned had filed a lawsuit recently. Her name is Karina Kalado. She says that Anthony Martin Jr. sexually assaulted her while she was being held at Rikers in 2020 and that she later reported it. I checked with the Department of Correction and it told me that there was only one officer

with the name Martin Jr. who was working at the woman's jail at that time. What does Colato say happen to her? Well, there are similarities here between Colato's account and what prosecutors say happened to this other woman in Queens. So Colardo was sent to the woman's jail on Rikers in 2019 on a drug and assault charge.

I'm not sure if you know, but you can do little jobs on Rikers as a detainee to make money, a little bit of money. Calado says that Martin Jr. oversaw some of these work assignments and that he selected her to do a job organizing boxes in a storage closet that was isolated from other people in the jail. She alleges that one day Officer Martin Jr. cornered her in a dark area of this storage space, that he held her down while he forced his fingers into her vagina. She says that he then performed oral sex on her, which is when she was able to kick him off.

And then she says he told her to keep quiet. He threatened me saying that he was going to put me into solitary confinement. He was going to change the events of what actually took place. And he was going to say that I came on to him. And he even said that he would have inmates coming for me. I was scared to go to sleep. I was scared to even shock. I was scared to even be in that jail knowing the power of authority that he had.

So, Jessie, what happened when she filed a report? Calado said she was too afraid to file a report while she was on Rikers, but she did file a formal complaint the following year once she was transferred to prison in Westchester County. I've seen a copy of that report. Calado spells out what she says happened to her, and she names Martin Jr. Now, state and federal guidelines required the prison officials there to send her complaint back to Rikers so that her allegations could be investigated. And they told me that that's exactly what they did.

They even told me the exact date and the exact time right down to the minute that they sent it and the name of the warden that they sent it to. So under federal guidelines, Karina should have got a call within the next 72 hours to be interviewed about her allegations. But Calado says that never happened. And when I asked the New York City Department of Correction about it, they said they had no record of her complaint. We also spoke with the warden who should have received the complaint. She's since retired.

She told us she has no memory of getting it. So what we found is that Calado's complaint disappeared and it was never investigated. and Collado was angry about that. I already had confided in people and reached out and turned to people for help, and nobody did nothing. Nobody believed in me. And now look, that's how real it is.

But the truth will always come to the life. Were there other cases in these hundreds of lawsuits that named Martin Jr. specifically? There are four other women who identify an officer Martin in their lawsuits with dates that align with the time that Martin Jr., was working at the women's jail. And one of those women did identify Anthony Martin, Jr. as the officer who she says attacked her through photographs that she saw. She didn't want to be interviewed, but the allegations in her lawsuit are really similar to the ones

in collados. She also describes being sexually assaulted in a storage room by an officer who forced his fingers into her vagina. What is Martin Jr. had to say about all of this? I did reach him by phone very, very briefly. I told him about the allegations and he said they, quote, sound like a bunch of BS. Both him and his attorney told me that I was the first person to reach out about it, which suggested that city officials and prosecutors, they aren't looking into these claims.

What are city officials saying? City officials have been very slow to investigate all of these, hundreds of sexual assault allegations. Mayor Adams promised, quote, a thorough investigation back in March that hasn't materialised. Now, the fact that Collado's complaint wasn't investigated. I talked to Serena Townsend. She's a former sex crimes prosecutor and she was also the Deputy Commissioner of Investigations at Rikers Island during the time that Collado filed this report.

That was before she was fired by the Adams administration. She says that the protocols for how reports like collados are filed need to be improved. The process failed her, and it should have been taken seriously. And, you know, I just feel very bad that this happened to her. And I hope that she could get some sort of justice here. That's WNYC's Jesse Edwards talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson. Be on the lookout for a special episode of NYC Now this Saturday. It will be a deep dive into WNYC's investigation about the two dozen women who claim in lawsuits that they were sexually assaulted while held at the Rikers Island jail by one correction officer who went by the name, Champagne.

Turns out the city had no record of an officer who went by that name, so we went looking for answers. Come back Saturday to hear what we found. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.