As Preet Bharara told Rediff India Abroad, “When is the last time you had two Indian Americans doing a law enforcement press conference” dealing with violations of civil rights and taking the city of New York to court?
Photographs: Paresh Gandhi/Rediff India Abroad.
When Preet Bharara, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights for the US department of justice, appeared together in the former’s office on Thursday to announce that the DoJ was taking legal action to address excessive force and violence at Rikers Island jails, it was a red letter day.
As Bharara told Rediff India Abroad, “When is the last time you had two Indian Americans doing a law enforcement press conference” dealing with violations of civil rights and taking the city of New York to court?
They duo had called the press conference to announce that the DoJ had filed a motion seeking the court’s permission to join and become a plaintiff in a pending class action lawsuit against New York City, Nunez v City of New York (the ‘Nunez Action’), which alleges that the department of corrections, which is in charge of prisons, had engaged in a pattern and practice of using unnecessary and excessive force against inmates, especially against the younger detainees.
The action comes a DoJ report in August concluded that ‘a deep-seated culture of violence is pervasive throughout the adolescent facilities at Rikers, and DoC staff routinely use force not as a last resort, but instead as a means to control the adolescent population and punish disorderly or disrespectful behaviour.’
The report also urged the city administration to adopt and implement over 70 specific remedial measures.
Although DoC’s new leadership has taken some positive steps in response to the report, especially with respect to the 16- and 17-year-old population, including reducing the inmate-to-staff ratio, developing new programming, and moving toward eliminating the use of punitive segregation, much more needs to be done.
Bharara and Gupta said the DoJ took this legal step as part of its ongoing effort to ensure that DoC implements all the needed institutional reforms promptly, and that these reforms are lasting, verifiable, and enforceable through the judicial process.
Bharara said, ‘The devil, as they say, is in the details and we have come to the conclusion that joining the pending case as a formal party is the best and most efficient way to get those details done.’
Gupta said, ‘We stand ready to work with the City to remedy these deeply disturbing conditions for the safety of confined youth, remedies that will ultimately also promote public safety and the safety of correctional officers.’
Think about it, this landmark event of two Indian American law enforcement officials addressing a press conference caps a history-making week for the community.
For, on December 15, just a week after the United States Senate confirmed Richard Rahul Verma as the first Indian-American Ambassador to India, Dr Vivek Murthy was confirmed as the first Indian-American Surgeon General.
And the very next day, Amit Mehta was confirmed as a federal judge in the District of Columbia, the first Asian Pacific American to occupy this influential position.
Images: Preet Bharara, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights for the US department of justice, at a press conference in New York City on Thursday.
