Explore More
The city Department of Correction is pushing hard to empty a Brooklyn jail by early 2020 to fast-track Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ultimate goal of closing the main lockup on Rikers Island, union officials told The Post.
“This is a rush to close the jail,” said Joseph Russo, president of the Deputy Wardens Association.
The Brooklyn Detention Complex, at 275 Atlantic Ave., currently houses about 360 inmates, about half its capacity. The mayor’s plan to close Rikers by 2027 includes the demolition and rebuilding of borough jails including the Brooklyn Detention Complex, better known as the “House of D.”
“The construction plans are not clear,” Russo said, although the city intends to build the new, larger jail on the same site. News outlet The City first reported the fast-tracked closure.
Another union leader, Patty Ferrioula of the Correction Captains’ Association, said officials with the DOC told him earlier this week that they were “targeting closing at the end of the year, more toward the beginning of next year.”
“All of this is basically tentative. Right now nothing is engraved in stone but this is what the talks are in the [DOC] commissioner’s office,” Ferrioula said.
The Brooklyn slammer’s inmate population will be transferred to Rikers and will be housed either in a facility that currently locks up women and/or distributed throughout men’s sections of the Queens jail, Ferrioula said. The women would be cordoned off in a separate part of Rikers, Ferrioula confirmed. Correction officers will also move to Rikers or other facilities, he said.
A third union head, Elias Husamaudeen with the rank-and-file’s Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, expressed concern about the rush to demolish the Brooklyn jail.
“We hope that they have made sufficient plans to deal with an increased population [at Rikers] that will only continue to grow as the other borough facilities are closed. COBA is more focused on achieving safer jails than the location of a jail and that should be the city’s focus as well,” Husamaudeen said.
City reps did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlfnp7j3FmbGhfl7%2Bwu8qlsKdllJrBprrToqanZZOkurG4xLFkqKZdm660wIytqZqbm2LBsHnSoaytZZSkxK95xaipZqaVrHqrrcilZK6mmaS7cA%3D%3D