Workers from the city’s Department of Correction squirreled away hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of unused equipment — and built themselves a makeshift lounge replete with leather sofas, a big-screen TV and a mini-fridge — inside an abandoned jail on Rikers Island, according to a recently-unearthed city investigation.
The city Department of Investigation, in its December 2021 report, said it got an anonymous tip the previous fall about employees of the DOC’s maintenance and repair division stockpiling all sorts of materials and equipment in the James A. Thomas Center – a century-old jail that had been condemned and closed in 2015.
When they inspected the building in October 2020, investigators found a mammoth cache of pristine DOC equipment — including $100,000 in tools, $450,000 worth of air filters, 17 snow blowers and $230,000 worth of lockers that, at one time, were supposed to be installed at DOC facilities to “boost morale,” the report said.
A month later, investigators stumbled upon another unexpected surprise: A sweet lounge, apparently built by mystery staffers, outfitted with a 70-inch TV, a mini-fridge, two full-size leather couches and a fully-working bathroom.
Whoever built the hidden retreat used DOC-bought lumber, floor tiling, plumbing and electrical equipment to build a raised floor and install heat and air conditioning. They also hacked into the facility’s power and piping lines to run their makeshift playground, the DOI said.
The only problem?
Nobody was supposed to be in the building to begin with.
Jail officials had closed the facility years earlier because of its “age and decrepitude,” according to the findings of the DOI probe, which were first reported by the Daily News.
The jail also had asbestos and lead contamination, which were likely exacerbated by collapsing ceilings, chipping lead paint, cracked walls and sunken floors.
Taken together, this created “multiple hazards and should have prevented staff from being in the building,” states the DOI report, obtained by The Post Monday via a Freedom of Information Law request.
It’s not clear why the equipment — much of which was brand-new and dated back to 2017 — was stored in the jail in the first place.
Investigators pilloried the correction department for the unbelievable oversight.
“Overall, DOI discovered thousands of items within multiple areas of the [jail] that collectively
were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the report said.
“Since [the jail’s] closing, these items had remained improperly stored, many ruined by exposure to moisture, heat, and vermin,” it continued. “Some had been left so long they were obsolete.”
“The overall result was enormous waste,” the report said. “There was a complete lack of institutional oversight, and no apparent protocols to account for incoming and outgoing materials, equipment and property.”
Investigators questioned jail officials about the findings.
At least one person — a former DOC deputy commissioner whose name was redacted in the report — knew about the stored materials.
But nobody knew who built or renovated the lounge.
On Monday, a DOC spokesperson said the department had since “installed new leadership for facilities management and restructured the division to ensure accurate tracking and inventory of all equipment for facilities.”
The DOI report had recommended a slew of policy changes to fix the issues, including new ways to inventory equipment, throw out the damaged stuff and keep people out of the crumbling building.
This would help prevent such remarkable havoc and ruin in the future, it said.
“The investigation showed the DOC lacked proper oversight … and did not have any protocols to track the property and equipment stored there,” the report said.
“These failures led to waste and destruction of DOC property.”
