De Blasio Dismisses Need To Talk With Rikers Guards, Inmates

NEW YORK CITY ? A defiant Mayor Bill de Blasio dismissed criticism that his recent Rikers Island visit offered a watered-down view of challenges facing the troubled jail.

De Blasio on Tuesday doubled downed on his assertion that speaking with Rikers inmates and guards ? the two groups most affected by an ongoing crisis at the facility ? wasn't his "mission."

Instead, he said he wanted to check in on the progress of steps to alleviate the slow intake process, overcrowded cells and staffing shortages.

"The bottom line is this, for a lot of you, I think some of the challenges that Rikers may be new and I respect that," he told the New York Post's Julia Marsh during his daily briefing. "For me, they're not new."

"Those are horrible problems that have existed for years," he said. "So, I don't need to be reminded of something I already know."

The situation at Rikers has indeed been terrible ? infamously so ? for years.

But conditions worsened in recent months as inmates waited days in crowded intake areas and guards, if they worked at all, were assigned triple shifts.

A steady stream of elected officials and advocates visited the jail in recent weeks and said what they saw amounted to a "humanitarian crisis."

De Blasio, for his part, resisted calls to make a visit. He finally relented Monday for his first tour in four years ? a walk through during which he didn't allow media to document and he avoided speaking with guards and inmates.

Afterward, he held a news conference and dodged questions about what he saw.

The tour was "sugar-coated," said Benny Boscio, Jr., president of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, according a report by THE CITY. All detainees were cleared out before he came, Boscio told reporters outside the jail

Boscio dispatched a blistering response to de Blasio's comments Tuesday.

"The mayor callously stated that the reason he didn't speak to any correction officers during his tour of Rikers yesterday is because he didn't need to be reminded of what he already knows and what he knows is Rikers has to close," Boscio tweeted. "As a majority minority workforce, approximately half of whom are female, we have a serious problem with a white male marginalizing us and pretending he knows about our suffering. I personally asked him why he wasn't speaking to any of our officers, and he had no answers."