NYC NOW - May 24, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Doctors in training at Elmhurst Hospital will go back to work tomorrow morning after negotiating an end to their strike with residency program administrators, New York City officials are warning of impending service cuts due to the daily arrival of migrants unless the federal government provides additional support. And, a New York Times-Marshall Project investigation exposes a culture of abuse and cover-ups among correctional officers, analyzing over 290 cases of alleged prisoner abuse. Michael Hill talks with Alysia Santo, who co-reported the story.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, May 24th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Doctors in training at Elmhurst Hospital will go back to work tomorrow morning after negotiating an end to their strike with residency program administrators. The union representing more than 160 doctors in the hospital's residency program, which is run by the Mount Sinai Health System, says officials have agreed to 18% races for residents over the next three years,

among other provisions. The union says it puts an end to almost a year of negotiations. Mount Sinai says the new agreement is fair and reasonable while also putting patients and the residents' educations first. New York City officials say an estimated more than 600 migrants are arriving every day and that's getting expensive. Budget Director Jacques Jihad says city services could be cut even more if the federal government fails to provide more money. Every New Yorker should be concerned about these escalating costs and there are ramifications for potential service disruptions.

And there are a real possibility that this may go on for years. The city already is planning to slash budgets for services, including its libraries and meals for seniors, The city does have a $2 billion rainy day fund for unexpected needs it can draw on, despite declaring a state of emergency mayor Adams has not moved to tap into that fun. 69 right now with a mix of sun and clouds out there. Sunny in the city in 75 today with a light wind. Chance of showers late tonight, low of 50 and gusty. And then tomorrow sunny and 68, breezy.

Friday's sunny and 73. The holiday weekend is looking dry, sunny, temperatures in 70, Saturday and Sunday and 80 on Memorial Day. 69 now. I see. On New York Times and the Marshall Project investigation finds a culture of abuse and cover-ups among state corrections officers. The report analyzed data from more than 290 cases in which the corrections department trying to fire guards or supervisors over claims they were abusing prisoners.

They also looked at lawsuits over claims of excessive force that the state lost or settled in the decade. leading up to 2020. Alicia Santo co-reported this story, and she joins us now. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Tell us what you're reporting found. So we reviewed previously secret records that we obtained from the Department of Corrections,

and we wanted to see how guards were disciplined over a period of about 10 years for what the state called inmate abuse. So this would mean physical abuse of people covering up that abuse. also some other types of abuse, which we described in the story. And we found that for all of the efforts that the state made to fire about almost 300 cases we looked at where they attempted to fire the officer. The state succeeded in actually firing that officer in only 10% of those cases. And this is something that was not, you could not find out about this previously. These records had been a secret under New York State law until the law changed in 2020 following the murder of George

Floyd. So this is a system that has not been analyzable until, you know, now, basically. You tell the story of Chad Stambrough. Would you walk us through this situation? Sure. So Mr. Stambrough was serving a 10-year sentence for sealing a television and violating parole. And he was being held at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, which is right near B. in New York. And he had been taken to a dental clinic at a local hospital for treatment for a dislocated jaw. And he got agitated during the surgery. He tried to pull away, knocked over a monitor. And when he woke up, he testified in court that one of the officers was pressing a knee into his neck. And at that point, he was paralyzed. Now, there's pictures of him from the hospital

showing him, you know, laying back in a chair, unable to move. He was brought out to the car, lifted into the van by the corrections officers, and driven back to the prison where he was eventually sent to the hospital. We highlight this story because the officers didn't write about any injuries in their use of force reports. In fact, the officer accused of pressing a knee into Mr. San Roe's neck didn't even fill out a use of force report until several days later when he was asked to. And what they wrote was that he had complied and gotten into the van. But what was different about this event than events that

typically, you know, that could happen inside of the prison. This happened at a hospital was that there was video in the parking lot that showed the officers lifting Mr. Stambrough into a van and showing that he was unable to get into the van on his own. And this all came out during. And this all came out during a lawsuit and in a trial in which Mr. Sanbrough was awarded over $2 million for the injuries he suffered and the officers actually admitted that they had, you know, left him out of their reports that they had said he climbed into the van when he actually hadn't. And so this story really told one example of which there are so many of where officers covered up what they had done in their reports and somebody suffered a very, very serious injury from the force that was used.

Tell us about who works these sorts of jobs as corrections officers. What kind of training and support do they receive? Well, New York State has 16,000 corrections officers approximately. This is a state where a very, very strong union for the corrections officers, they receive plenty of training. They're well trained. They're well compensated, especially when you compare to what corrections officers make in other states. And this is a very strong unit of officers.

They have some people make well over 100,000 and they work really hard for that. They spend a lot, a lot of time working in the prison and doing overtime. So it's a really, really tough job. And it's something, one of the reasons that we think this is so important to look at is we recognize that lots of officers do not do this. But the point is, the one of the ones that, that do, it gets covered up and it's part of a culture that exists inside the Department of Corrections that has been incredibly difficult, it seems, for officials to get rid of. It seems in these sorts of stories, the guards themselves are often put under the microscope, but the larger systemic structures that allow this sort of violence are rarely scrutinized,

nor are the people responsible for hiring, training, and oversight. Do you think there are larger policy issues at play here? One of the things that's really important in this particular setup is that there is a contract that lays out the way that discipline occurs. And this has so many protections for the corrections officers that it often tilts in their favor. And that is something that can really affect a culture inside of a prison when people can get away with this. And the thing is that I always try to keep in mind because it really explains the human dynamics behind it. is that when you work in a prison, it's an incredibly stressful job and people are covering each other's backs because it works, right? Like at the end of the day, the fact that the union fights to keep

people's jobs and they win is also saying a lot about the Department of Corrections and their ability to document these cases and their ability, even their willingness to go after cases. Because as we had noted, there was 80% of the paid lawsuits didn't have a corresponding discipline that we saw in the database we had obtained. And so there's there's the cases where they can't fire people and then there's all the cases they don't even try. And all of that adds up to a situation where accountability, people do get away with this and that's why the pattern continues. Alicia Santos is a staff writer with the Marshall Project. Alicia, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from

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