"Charles Manson jail cell preserved in LA Hall of Justice" Associated Press October 27, 2014
LOS ANGELES — The old Los Angeles Hall of Justice has received a dazzling restoration.
But a single grim artifact has been preserved: the claustrophobic jail cell occupied by Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, and other high-profile defendants.
The cell is in the basement where the county coroner once performed autopsies on Marilyn Monroe and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the building that also saw the trials of Bugsy Siegel and movie stars Robert Mitchum and Charlie Chaplin.
The Hall of Justice opened in 1926 as an all-purpose justice center, providing 17 courtrooms, 750 jail cells, a morgue, and offices for law enforcement officials.
Its proximity to Hollywood made it a site of famous trials and fictional movie and TV shows, including ‘‘Dragnet’’ and ‘‘Get Smart.’’
In 1949, movie star Robert Mitchum, convicted of marijuana possession, served his 60-day sentence there.
The 12-floor edifice was restored at a cost of $231.8 million.
I'm sure the austerity-lashed California taxpayers will be pleased with that.
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Also see: Nev. court considers Simpson case
I'm not going to.
"Rikers corruption spurs NYC shake-up" by Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip | New York Times October 29, 2014
NEW YORK — In a major shake-up at the New York City Correction Department, three high-ranking officials, including the top uniformed officer, are stepping down amid mounting criticism over the handling of violence and corruption at Rikers Island.
The chief of the department, William Clemons, and two high-level deputies — Joandrea Davis, the bureau chief of administration, and Gregory McLaughlin, the bureau chief of facility operations — are departing, according to two senior correction officials. The Department of Correction did not immediately comment or provide an explanation for the sudden changes. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hand-picked correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, had promoted all three within the last five months.
But the department has been under intense pressure from the news media, lawmakers, and federal authorities to address systemic brutality and corruption at Rikers, the country’s second-largest jail complex. The US attorney’s office in Manhattan, which in August released a damning report detailing abuse of adolescent inmates at Rikers, has threatened to sue the city if changes are not made.
The highest-ranking official in the group, Clemons, was a 29-year veteran of the department. But he has been under scrutiny since an investigation by The New York Times in September uncovered details from an internal Correction Department audit that found he had “abdicated all responsibility” in his duties as warden of a juvenile facility at Rikers Island in 2011, where hundreds of inmate fights had been omitted from official statistics. The audit recommended that he be demoted.
Instead, the Times found, he was promoted, multiple times, while large sections of the audit, including the recommendation for demotion and the sharpest criticism, were removed from the report by the commissioner at the time.
Ponte has said he did not see the unedited version of the report before appointing Clemons chief of the department in May. He promoted Clemons over the objections of the city’s Department of Investigation, the Times found.
In a statement released Tuesday, Ponte wrote that Clemons had “proved himself an able leader” and “was a model of stability in a tumultuous time.” Ponte said he would appoint a new chief by Dec. 1, when Clemons is scheduled to retire.
Davis, who joined the department in 1988, is Clemons’s sister-in-law. She served as warden of three of the 10 jails on Rikers Island, including the women’s detention facility, before moving to high-ranking administrative positions. McLaughlin has been with the department for 27 years and held several high-ranking posts. He was warden of the Robert N. Davoren Center, an adolescent jail on Rikers, during a period of extreme violence, and was removed from that command in 2008 shortly after an 18-year-old inmate named Christopher Robinson was beaten to death by fellow inmates.
Davis, McLaughlin, and Clemons were promoted to their positions within a month of Ponte’s arrival in April.
In the face of withering criticism directed at Clemons, some of his strongest support in the last month has come from the correction officers’ union. Norman Seabrook, the union’s president, has said that Clemons has been doing “a great job.” In a post on the union’s website, Seabrook’s deputy, Elias Husamudeen, defended Clemons against lawmakers’ criticism this month.
“I feel like this council is calling for the head of Chief Clemons,” he wrote.
On Tuesday, Mark Riley, the union’s spokesman, said that Seabrook would not be commenting on Clemons’s departure.
As recently as this month, Ponte praised Clemons at a City Council hearing for a “long history of doing good work in the agency.”
At the hearing lawmakers seized upon Ponte’s defense of Clemons, raising questions about his commitment to remaking the department.
Citing the Times’ investigation, the council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, criticized Ponte for failing to fire Clemons, calling the department chief “clearly incompetent.”
In a joint statement released Tuesday, Mark-Viverito and Elizabeth Crowley, the chairwoman of the committee overseeing Rikers, urged “Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Ponte to appoint new leadership that will commit to implementing transparent and humane policies.”
“For too long, the Department of Correction has been rife with the mismanagement and mistreatment of inmates, and the council’s oversight has only served to further shed light on the deep-seated issues plaguing the DOC,” the statement said.
At the hearing this month, Clemons did not appear at that hearing, raising the ire of Crowley.
Clemons, she said, “did not have the backbone to appear today before the committee.”
When asked where he was, Ponte told her that Clemons was on vacation.
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Related: Taking a Trip to Rikers Island
Didn't a Marine die there?
