QUESTION
What recommendations has the New York City Board of Correction made to avoid unnecessary use of chemical agents at Rikers?
4:36:31
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3 min
The NYC Board of Correction shared its recommendations for reducing unnecessary chemical agent use in jails, including training, monitoring, and policy revisions.
- Recommendations include closely examining current chemical agent training for officers and captains, and ensuring timely recertification.
- The board suggests improving the completion and accuracy of use of force reports and ensuring officers with expired OC training certifications are not issued OC handheld units.
- Proposed policy revisions focus on authorization for the use of strong chemical agents, expanding body-worn camera use, attempting mental health interventions before chemical agent deployment, and reviewing the strength of handheld OC units.
- The Department of Corrections (DOC) is reviewing the report and considering the recommendations, including those related to training and certification.
Sandy Nurse
4:36:31
I just want to turn to charter mandated reports.
4:36:35
The board recently released a report regarding the unnecessary use of chemical agents on people in custody at Rykers.
4:36:44
The the DOC commissioner testified that they're going through it.
4:36:48
But could you please share for the record the recommendations that the board has or any that you particularly would like to highlight, recommendations that you've made to the apartment in order to avoid unnecessary use of chemicals of these chemicals moving forward.
Jasmine Georges-Yilla
4:37:04
Yes.
4:37:04
I'll I'll turn it over to my general counsel, but I just wanted to initially say that we did share a draft of the report with the department in January.
4:37:13
And there's actually an addendum to the report, which is a response from DOC and CHS.
4:37:19
So and and also a part of our restructuring has been to restructure our our board meetings to center around minimum standards and to address issues such as the use of the chemical agents, which is what our meeting next week will focus on.
4:37:37
So we hope that the department comes prepared to to address the recommendations.
Melissa Cintrón Hernández
4:37:45
Thank you, to your nurse.
4:37:47
Some of the recommendations that the border correction made in its report on the use of chemical agents in the jails include on training.
4:37:55
The department should closely examine the current chemical agent training for both officers and captains.
4:38:04
That also relates to recertification.
4:38:06
One of the findings was that officers are not getting recertified on a timely basis and that a very small percentage captains are also getting are not getting recertified.
4:38:15
So one of the recommendations is to increase its training pace.
4:38:21
In the aspect of monitoring, we noted that there are issues with completing use of force or reports.
4:38:30
So one of the recommendations that we made is identifying incomplete or incorrect, use of force reports ensuring that officers with expired OC training certifications are not issued OC handheld units assessing the availability and response time of appistance to calls for assistance.
4:38:49
We also made recommendations when it comes to their policies.
4:38:54
So where applicable do the department should revise its current chemical agent policies and practices related to the following concerns.
4:39:05
The authorization for the use of MK9, which is the very strong chemical agent that is usually used for crowd control.
4:39:14
Revise the anticipated use of force tracking and reporting protocol, expand the use of body worn camera use and the jails, to always be on during the full shift, attempt mental health interventions prior to chemical agent deployment and review lower strength handheld of handheld OC units.
4:39:33
Now, appended to our report, the department did include some information about how they reviewed the report and some of the recommendations that they will take into consideration, including reviewing the trainings and ensuring that officers and captains are trained.
Sandy Nurse
4:39:50
Thank you for that.