by Chuck Sharman

Old ghosts have come back to haunt the promotion of Vincent Grinnage to head the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) for the New York City Department of Correction (DOC).

It cost the city $3.3 million to settle the lawsuit filed over the suicide of Kalief Browder in 2015, shortly after his release from a three-year detention – most of it spent in solitary confinement – because he couldn’t post bail after his arrest for stealing a backpack. [See: PLN, Apr. 2019, p.54.] The case was ultimately dismissed. But Browder’s subsequent death supercharged two reform movements – one to end bail for petty criminal charges, another to bar the use of solitary for juveniles like Browder, who was just 16 when booked into the city’s notorious Riker’s Island jail complex.

During the course of the suit, the state Supreme Court for Bronx County saw surveillance video from September 23, 2012, when a Riker’s Island guard arrived at Browder’s cell in the “Bing,” the Central Punitive Segregation Unit, where Browder had then spent nine months in isolation. During an escort to the showers, the guard suddenly tightened his grip on Browder’s arm and slammed him to the ground, seemingly without provocation. Another guard arrived on the scene, and the first falsely claimed that Browder had tried to flee. For that the teen was sanctioned with more time in solitary.

When the video leaked to new media during the suit, the guard was not identified. But the wrongful death complaint filed by Browder’s family said he was Vincent Grinnage. That’s who was promoted in April 2023 from Assistant Warden to run ESU, with a staff of 200 guards tasked with putting down disturbances and extracting reluctant prisoners from their cells.

In a report to the federal court for the Southern District of New York on April 3, 2023, the monitor in a federal class-action lawsuit addressing jail conditions called out ESU for “continu[ing] to utilize problematic security practices.” The monitor, Steven J. Martin, has repeatedly criticized DOC for “over-reliance” on ESU and its “hyper-confrontational” teams. [See: PLN, Feb. 2023, p.28.] His most recent report noted that 50 ESU guards were removed from the unit in 2021 because of disciplinary records that should have kept them from ever being placed in the job – and 16 of those were then later reinstated.

“This cleansing of the roster did not catalyze the necessary change in practice for those remaining in the unit,” the monitor’s report noted. See: Nunez v. City of New York, USDC (S.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:11-cv-05845.

Additional source: New York Daily News

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