Prison officer faked suicide prevention training for 74 guards, says DA

Amid a suicide crisis in New York City jails, a correctional officer falsified records to show that dozens of her colleagues had taken a suicide prevention course they hadn’t completed, Bronx prosecutors and the Department of Investigation said Friday.

Rikers Island District Attorney Vinette Tucker-Frederick is said to have awarded the course to 74 officers on leave in 2021, according to the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. She gave their credentials to colleagues and said she would use the digital training were to follow in place of the absent officers, prosecutors said.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said in a statement that Ms. Tucker-Frederick’s leads led to the officers receiving credit “despite the fact that they weren’t even on Rikers Island.”

A nine-year veteran of the Department of Correction, Ms Tucker-Frederick, 41, was charged with tampering with public records and identity theft and has been suspended indefinitely without pay. Her attorney, Peter C. Troxler, said she “definitely maintains her innocence and has every expectation of being acquitted.”

The acts described by prosecutors came as the department was under pressure to address the growing crisis of suicide among inmates, Ms Clark said. At least 13 people have reportedly committed suicide in prisons since early 2021.

That year’s outburst of suicides coincided with mass absenteeism among corrections officers, sending the long-plagued prison complex on Rikers Island into a spiral of violence and chaos. Without guards at key posts, conditions deteriorated sharply; New York lawmakers who visited described what they saw as a humanitarian crisis.

Self-harm rates skyrocketed during that time. In August 2021, the court-appointed monitor overseeing conditions at Rikers, Steve J. Martin, wrote that there had been four suicides since December 2020 and expressed concerns about “the adequacy of the staff’s response”. Staffers acted slowly to deal with emergencies, he noted.

Louis A. Molina, Commissioner of the Department of Correction, said Friday that prison officials are working to improve conditions and that corruption is unacceptable.

According to the department, all uniformed personnel are trained in suicide prevention upon enlistment, and 68 percent had completed refresher training by Friday.

“This act was the kind of egregious behavior tolerated in the past and has no place in this administration,” Mr Molina said in a statement. “Suicide prevention training is critical for any public safety organization and especially for a correctional facility. We will continue to push this important training to all our employees and will hold everyone accountable.”

Ms. Clark, who is in a primary race against Tess Cohen, who has been critical of her oversight of Rikers, has announced three charges related to the prison complex in recent days. The office of Mrs. Clark has sued a former correctional officer accused of accepting a $2,500 bribe to smuggle a cell phone to an inmate. It also charged four detainees with brutally beating another detainee, rupturing his spleen, which had to be removed.

While Friday’s indictments relate to events alleged to have taken place during the last administration, the Department of Correction continues to be criticized for its lack of transparency. Recent reports from federal observer Mr. Martin have targeted bureau leaders directly, saying violence in the city’s prisons continues unabated as officials hide information.

“These issues have serious implications for the prospect of reform and the removal of the imminent risk of harm faced by detainees and staff,” Martin wrote this month.

In a recent episode highlighted by the monitor, staff members waited 33 hours to report that a person being held at a Rikers Island facility jumped from the stairs on the top floor of his housing unit and landed on the floor below . The department did not immediately notify the monitoring team, Mr Martin wrote, first letting them know about the episode through news reports.

The man, Rubu Zhao, suffered a fractured skull and died days later at Elmhurst Hospital, according to internal prison records and six people who knew about the incident. Initially, prison staff reported that Mr. Zhao had jumped, but when medical staff arrived, prison guards said he had slipped and fallen.

At a hearing this month, Rikers inmate advocates reiterated their call for a federal judge to strip Mr. Molina of his supervisory powers and appoint a trustee to oversee the prisons. The judge, Laura T. Swain, said that while she was not ready to hear arguments about that course of action, her confidence in the city’s ability to manage its prisons had been shaken.

After the hearing, she directed prison officials to provide Mr. Martin with timely, accurate information about deaths and other serious incidents on Rikers Island.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Jan Ranssom reporting contributed.