Benjamin Weiser and Annie Correal

<h1>NEW YORK — The crisis at a troubled Brooklyn federal jail has drawn the attention of more than a half-dozen judges, with one planning to tour the jail Tuesday to investigate complaints of freezing temperatures and darkness that followed a heating system breakdown and power failure in the facility.</h1>

Another judge ordered the jail, known as the Metropolitan Detention Center, to allow inmates to begin meeting with their lawyers. Legal visits were canceled last week, leading to claims that inmates’ constitutional rights to counsel were being violated.

At least four other federal judges, in Brooklyn and Manhattan, were said to be calling hearings to examine complaints of deteriorating conditions at the jail, which holds more than 1,600 federal inmates, most of whom are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime.

The judges’ concerns came after reports that inmates had been locked down in frigid and dark cells, huddling under blankets, in the jail, which sits along the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

The heating issues began in late January, when plummeting temperatures caused parts of the heating system to fail, according to leaders of the correction officers’ union.

The power issues, which began earlier that month, culminated in an electrical fire Jan. 27 that put the facility on “emergency power.” For a week, inmates were held on partial lockdown, without access to phones or computers they use to request medicine, according to federal defenders, who began to receive calls from their clients in the jail.

After news reports appeared describing the conditions, federal defenders and elected officials demanded to tour the facility, and protesters set up camp outside. On Sunday, protesters who attempted to storm the jail were pushed back, and said they were pepper-sprayed. The Bureau of Prisons has not confirmed if pepper spray was used on the protesters. There were no arrests.

The power was restored Sunday night, and federal officials said Monday that the heat was working. But there were conflicting accounts about whether all inmates had access to heat.

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement saying it would step in and “examine what happened” at the jail and would ensure the problems with the heat and electricity would not occur again.

The acting head of the Bureau of Prisons, Hugh J. Hurwitz, and the agency’s regional director, both toured the facility Monday, union officials said.

Some legal visits resumed Monday but were quickly ended midmorning after police said a staff member at the jail received a bomb threat. Authorities evaluated the threat, and the jail returned to “normal” operations, according to a statement issued by the Bureau of Prisons.

The growing crisis over the jail also became a focus of the entire U.S. District Court bench in Brooklyn, where the court’s judges were planning to meet to discuss jail conditions, according to a letter filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan in a case that involved an inmate being held in the Brooklyn facility.

The judges may also ask federal officials to attend that meeting and discuss the jail conditions with them, the letter said.

A number of the inmates jailed in Brooklyn are being prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and the judge in one such case, Analisa Torres, plans to tour the jail Tuesday, a court spokesman, Edward Friedland, confirmed.

The judge will be accompanied Tuesday by a senior lawyer with the federal defenders office, Deirdre von Dornum, and an investigator with the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, both of whom visited the jail Friday night at the order of the chief judge there, Dora L. Irizarry, who said she wanted to “obtain current and comprehensive information” about jail conditions.

“I think it’s important that the judge see the conditions at the MDC firsthand,” von Dornum said, adding that there “may have been significant changes in those conditions in recent days.”

Torres had already ordered Bureau of Prisons officials to appear before her at a hearing Tuesday to examine the inmate’s claims about conditions at the MDC. The judge is to tour the jail after hearing testimony in court about the case.

Prosecutors in the case before Torres asked late Monday that she postpone the hearing, saying that “living conditions at MDC are evolving and continue to require intensive work by MDC personnel.”

The letter argued that jail personnel were “fully occupied with bringing MDC back to full operation and addressing issues caused by the loss of electrical power.”

Furthermore, the letter said, “numerous urgent court proceedings regarding living conditions” at the jail had been scheduled and required “simultaneous attention” by prisons officials.

“Denied,” Torres wrote in response to the request for a delay.

The problems at the jail were highlighted at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court Monday after the city’s federal public defender’s office sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the jail’s warden, citing what it said was a “humanitarian crisis” at the MDC.

In saying that she would order the resumption of legal visits for inmates, the judge, LaShann DeArcy Hall, said, “There is no question” that inmates’ right to attorney visits are protected under the Constitution.

The judge said concerns raised by the government about security at the jail did not permit “the wholesale denial” of detainees’ right to counsel. She said her order would continue until a hearing Feb. 13, when a different judge would take up the issue and also review the federal defenders’ request for appointment of a special master to investigate the situation at the jail.

She noted in an order later Monday that the government had argued that the court was without the authority to require attorney visits. While she said that she agreed that the court should not “assume the administration” of the jail, “the court is not only authorized but obligated to ensure that individuals confined in our federal institutions are provided with access to attorneys, as guaranteed by the Constitution.”

The judge added: “If not the courts, then who?”

This article originally appeared in <a id="18538925-eed0-48a4-bbc8-1befd77f45b3" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/nyregion/lawsuit-brooklyn-jail.html">The New York Times</a>.

Federal Judge Will Tour a Jail That Left Inmates Shivering

Another judge ordered the jail, known as the Metropolitan Detention Center, to allow inmates to begin meeting with their lawyers.

Federal Judge will tour a jail that left inmates shivering

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on behalf of the federal public defenders’ office, says that a decision by the jail to cut off inmates’ legal visits with their lawyers violates their constitutional rights. It asks the court to appoint an independent arbiter to investigate the jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center.

A hearing on the case was immediately scheduled for Monday.

The suit follows a call by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday for the Justice Department to investigate conditions at the jail.

On Sunday afternoon, protesters, including family of some of the inmates, tried to enter the jail and appeared to be pepper-sprayed by correction officers, according to the federal defenders. By Sunday night, electrical power was finally restored in the building.

The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on the suit. On Sunday night, a Justice Department spokesman said that with heat and hot water also operational, “The facility can now begin to return to regular operations.”

The spokesman, Wyn Hornbuckle, said the department would work with the Bureau of Prisons “to examine what happened and ensure the facility has the power, heat and backup systems in place to prevent the problem from reoccurring.”

The lawsuit says that since Jan. 27, there has been a “near-total cancellation of legal and family visiting” for male inmates in the jail.

The denial of lawyers’ visits violates the inmates’ Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel, the suit said, and has made it impossible for attorneys to help their clients make critical decisions about their cases.

On Monday morning, lawyers were stymied from meeting with their clients yet again after a “possible bomb threat” around 10:30 a.m., police said. The lawyers were ushered out of the jail building.

The suit pins much of the blame on the jail’s warden, Herman Quay, saying he “consistently dissembled and downplayed the seriousness of the issues at stake.”

The suit cited Quay’s recent statements suggesting that the heat had never shut off, that people had no trouble receiving their medications and that inmates had not been confined to their cells.

“Every single one of these claims has been contradicted by reports from those with firsthand experience of these deplorable conditions,” the suit said.

The jail, in an industrial district near the waterfront in Sunset Park, houses more than 1,600 inmates, mostly detainees who have not yet been convicted of crimes. Many are clients of the federal defenders office, which represents thousands of indigent defendants in the federal courts in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The problems at the jail started last month after officials, citing staff shortages caused by the partial government shutdown, began canceling family and lawyer visits, the suit says. A combination of a power failure and an electrical fire on Jan. 27 put the jail on “emergency power” and confined inmates to their cells as the jail went on lockdown, federal defenders say.

Conditions inside the jail had already begun to deteriorate earlier in January when plummeting temperatures reportedly caused heating units to fail.

After the electrical fire, legal visits were canceled all of last week and resumed briefly Sunday. But they were called off again later in the day after “visiting attorneys began to smell a strong chemical scent, and started coughing, when pepper spray was dispersed” near the visiting room, according to the suit.

The federal defenders asked the court to order the jail to resume allowing daily legal visits, and family visits on the jail’s normal schedule.

In addition to seeking an independent arbiter, or special master, the federal defenders, who are represented in the suit by the law firm Kaplan Hecker &amp; Fink, also sought a court hearing to evaluate the jail’s conditions that they argue infringe on inmates’ rights.

“We are asking the court to intervene immediately on behalf of the many hundreds of individuals who are detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center and entrusted to the government’s care,” David E. Patton, the federal defenders’ attorney in chief, said in a statement.

Deirdre von Dornum, who heads the federal defenders’ office in Brooklyn, was permitted to visit the jail after a judge issued an order Friday. Her account, as quoted in the suit, painted a picture at odds with the warden’s assessment.

“In several of the units, the temperatures were unbearably cold in the cells,” the suit said. She saw inmates wearing as many as eight layers of clothing, while others were wrapped “from head to toe in towels and blankets.”

The suit added that lights were not functioning in cells, leaving inmates in total darkness. As a result of the computer system being down, inmates said they had also not been able to request prescription medicine or medical care.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/nyregion/lawsuit-brooklyn-jail.html" id="8fca1ca3-9448-36c0-a771-d4801265038e">The New York Times</a>.

New York Jail That Lacked Heat Faces a 'Humanitarian Crisis,' Lawsuit Claims

NEW YORK — Defense lawyers in New York filed suit Monday over what they said was a “humanitarian crisis” in a troubled Brooklyn federal jail, where a heating system breakdown and a power failure led to inmates being locked down in frigid and dark cells.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit. On Sunday night, a department spokesman said that with heat and hot water also operational, “The facility can now begin to return to regular operations.”

The spokesman, Wyn Hornbuckle, said the department would work with the Federal Bureau of Prisons “to examine what happened and ensure the facility has the power, heat and backup systems in place to prevent the problem from reoccurring.”

Brooklyn Jail That Lacked Heat Faces a 'Humanitarian Crisis,' Lawsuit Claims

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Benjamin Weiser and Annie Correal

Articles written by the author

Federal Judge will tour a jail that left inmates shivering

New York Jail That Lacked Heat Faces a 'Humanitarian Crisis,' Lawsuit Claims

Brooklyn Jail That Lacked Heat Faces a 'Humanitarian Crisis,' Lawsuit Claims