Critical component of jail plan concealed from the public for ‘optics’: sources
A decision to reduce the size of four new jails was made months ahead of a contentious vote, but sources tell the Brooklyn Eagle that it was quietly withheld from the public in favor of political theatrics that could benefit the “mayoral ambitions” of City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
Days before the City Council’s vote on the mayor’s borough-based jail plan in October, the members announced a big win: They had secured significant reductions in the heights of each of the four proposed jails in response to local concerns that the city was building massive towers of incarceration in their neighborhoods.
But according to numerous sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations between City Hall and the City Council on the controversial land use measure aimed at closing the violence-plagued jail complex at Rikers Island, the Mayor’s Office had already planned on making the reductions to the facilities months earlier — but Johnson wanted to announce it as a council win just before the vote.