NEW YORK — New York City has failed to comply with a federal judge’s order to make sure Rikers Island detainees are moved out of often fetid temporary holding cells into regular jail beds within 24 hours, according to a legal motion filed Wednesday night.
The Legal Aid Society’s motion asks Judge Laura Taylor Swain to hold the city in contempt for failing to develop a system that reliably tracks the movement of detainees out of the so-called “intake” calls in less than a day.
“Court orders have meaning. Parties are obligated to comply with them,” Mary Lynne Werlwas of the society writes in the motion.
