NEW YORK, NY July 15, 2004 — In late 2002 word began to emerge that New York City Correction Department employees were working on Republican political campaigns -- often while on-duty. Now, in the WNYC News documentary: Politics and Punishment on Rikers Island, Andrea Bernstein takes a close look how and why jail supervisors organized hundreds of their employees as campaign foot soldiers - in apparent violation of city law.

In New York City, most of the jail population of about 12,000 inmates is housed on Riker's Island, a four hundred and fifteen acre land mass once home to the Dutch family, the Rykens. To get there you have to stop at the foot of a bridge in Queens just about where the East River begins to change into the Long Island Sound.

The smell of salt and slighty decaying fish rises from the Bowery Bay.

There's a culture of watching here. The guards oversee the inmates, inmates eye the guards. It is also a place where the guards watch each other

Darryl Bryant was watched. He has worked here for 17 years. He says his career was on the rise - until his supervisor found out he was volunteering - on his own time -- for Democratic mayoral candidate Mark Green. Back in August of 2001, Bryant says his supervisor called him at home.

Bryant: She says come tomorrow, early, pick up your stuff, pack it and you have to report to 74. Seventy four is the most dangerous prison on Rikers Island.

He asked her why he was being transferred. Bryant says she told him, it was because of his support for the Democratic candidate.

Worse was coming. In his new post, Bryant received a detailed and chilling threat from a gang member - and was issued a gun and a bulletproof vest. Two months later the protective equipment was taken away.

Bernstein: Do you feel like your life is still in danger?
Bryant: No.
Bernstein: How long did you feel that your life was in danger?
Bryant: For that entire year I had to look over my shoulder.

A corrections spokesman says a security assessment determines how long employees are issued protective equipment. But Bryant believes it was taken away as punishment for working for the wrong political party. Bryant says that's the way it was, at Rikers. We interviewed more than three dozen present and former corrections employees and read hundreds of pages of sworn deposition testimony from top correction officials. Almost all agree. For a decade beginning in the early 1990's, Rikers was ruled by fear. And when it came to partisan politics it worked like this: if you supported Republicans - and worked on their campaigns, sometimes while on duty, you'd get the choicest assignments and promotions. If you worked for the Democrats, you'd be treated like Darryl Bryant.

In the 1990's Ralph McGrane was a Rikers Bureau Chief - the second highest ranking uniformed job. He's now the number two man in the Morris County, NJ Sherriff's office. He says he was present when other officials talked about meting out punishment for guards who were NOT on the team.

Bernstein: They would say: we're going to whack someone ?
McGrane: Absolutely. Talking about high ranking people. People would be demoted or forced to retire. And the vocabulary that was used, the vernacular was we're going to whack warden so and so and we're going to whack deputy warden so and so was if it were a mafia hit.
Bernstein: And what would happen after they said we're going to whack somebody?
McGrane: It happened.
Bernstein: They got whacked?
McGrane: That's right.

Former Deputy Warden Jane Gibson says that's what happened to her. She says that after the higher-ups tagged her as not being part of the team, after a difference on a personnel matter, they began a campaign of harassment. She says a captain warned her they were going to set her up for some missing radios.

Gibson: He tells me Dep, another captain overheard the warden and three other people in his office saying don't worry we'll get her for the radios.'

Gibson protested - and was accused of insubordination. Gibson says she was called into her warden's office and told to sign a letter acknowledging problems in her jail.

Gibson: I told the warden I would never sign this document. He asked me why and I told him it is rift with lies and there's nothing here that's true and I will never sign a document that's not true.

In the end, Gibson decided she had no choice.

Gibson: This is a paramilitary organization they that concluded if I did not sign this document it was failure to obey a direct order and I was to be suspended and demoted immediately if I did not sign this document.

Gibson did sign it. Then, she says, she suffered a nervous breakdown. She never went back to work at the department of correction and now works in a private security firm.

Around the same time Deputy Warden Lionel Lorquet organized a fundraiser for Democrat Mark Green, at his own home, on his own time. Soon after that, he was transferred, and transferred again.
Lorquet says just before the election, then-Commissioner William Fraser and his staff came through his facility. An aide to the commissioner took him aside.

Lorquet: And told me straight: If your boy didn't make it then you're all mine your life will be miserable you will be transferred we will have all eyes on you.

Lorquet says his life WAS made miserable. So he sued the city, and won a settlement of $325,000. Soon after he was promoted to warden. In the course of the lawsuit, the city turned over to Lorquet's attorneys a surveillance videotape. It was made by ON DUTY corrections employees, sitting in a van across the street from the fundraiser held outdoors at Lorquet's modest Queens home.

Camera shutters.

On the videotape, you can hear the corrections employees snapping photos. One of the people they saw at the party was Warden Clyton Eastmond. Eastmond was also there on his own time. In sworn testimony, he says he was transferred the day after the fundraiser,
and forced to take an $8,000 pay cut.

But then Eastmond got a rare second chance. According to deposition testimony, Commissioner Fraser called him into his office and told him we want to bring you back into the fold of things.

Not long after that, a three star chief named Anthony Serra motioned Eastmond into his office. Serra was well known on Riker's island as the organizer of the political operation.

He said I know about the meeting you had with the commissioner,' Eastmond testified. You have to come and do some things for the team and we will get you back into the position where you are suppose to be. And then Eastmond got instructions for what to do for the Pataki re-election campaign, in his office, on government time. Why wouldn't I want to follow a lead into that nature? Eastmond testified. Especially when he had all the stars and I didn't.

Gene Russianoff, senior attorney with the New York Public Interest Research group, helped write the current city charter. He says what happened to Clyton Eastmond is clearly wrong.

Russianoff: That's a violation of the Conflicts of Interest code and that is punishable and finable and it is unethical. You can't ask someone who works for you to work on a campaign and there's a good reason for that. One hundred years ago - or more -- in the Tammany hall era, we had the spoils system.

Russianoff says city employees CAN work for political campaigns on their own time - that's their first amendment right. But pressuring city employees to do it is coercion.

Republicans said they suffered, too. Whenever any of us wanted out, one former top aide to Serra told us, he put these guys on midnight tours. I got kids, working midnights was tough after 18 years on the job.

Through their attorneys, both Anthony Serra and former Commissioner Fraser declined to be interviewed for this story, but both have said they did nothing wrong. Serra told the Daily News he spent 95 percent of his time on his corrections job.

The current commissioner is Martin Horn. He acknowledges there are still people like Daryl Bryant, stuck in what the commissioner calls purgatory based on what they did or did not do years ago.

Horn: There are many wrongs that have probably been done to people over time I can't go and start moving everybody around who got where they are for the wrong reason. I think, look, this Department has been through a lot, it didn't get the way it got overnight.

Horn says he's committed to a promotion system based on merit. But he says he worries he may not have the time to fully change the culture on Rikers Island. The average tenure of a corrections commissioner is two years.

Giuliani: Thank you, thank you, thank you very, very much.

In 1989, after a hard-fought campaign, former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani lost a narrow election to Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins. Democrats were wild with joy - they'd elected the first African American Mayor in city history. Republicans were devastated.

Giuliani: I just spoke to Mayor-elect David Dinkins! Boo! Boo! No No Nope, Stop that no! Quiet! Quiet!

Some Republicans took it personally. They believe Democrats, who had held power for more than a quarter century here, controlled every aspect of elections, and had stolen this one. Several top Republicans told us they thought Democratic poll workers were signing the voter rolls under the names of people who hadn't shown up to vote. And then they said, they were pulling the lever for Democrats many times over.

Sound: Voter machine lever.

Republicans vowed never to let this happen again. From then on, for all major elections, they would dispatch Republican party campaign workers to the polls to watch what was going on. Around that time, a correction captain named Anthony Serra volunteered to organize correction officers for such an effort, even though the corrections department has no official role in monitoring New York City elections.
Through this unofficial arrangement, prison guards found themselves guarding the polls.

Former Bureau Chief Ralph McGrane says they were suited to the job.

McGrane: You have some big boys in the Department of Correction, big strong healthy kids who can very easily allow you to see their weapons exposed if they wanted to. They can do a variety of things, even if you're in civilian clothes you can wear your shield on the outside.

Some Democrats say the guards were most visible in minority neighborhoods. They saw it as a blatant attempt to intimidate voters. But Republicans say they say they were simply trying to keep Democrats honest. And they say it worked. As one top Republican told us: All of a sudden we're appearing and they're off kilter.

Dinkins: The people have spoken (NO! NO!), they have

In 1993, in a historic shift, Democrat David Dinkins lost and Republican Rudolph Giuliani became Mayor, by another narrow margin. Many republicans told us they believed the poll watching made the difference. Said one, after that, it was religion.

Inside the Department of Correction, Anthony Serra let it be known he had political connections. He had elephants all around his office, one top aid to Serra told us. There were cars going in, literature being picked up, you would have thought it was a campaign headquarters. Another associate said: He would put pressure on us. He would say, can you get people? If you only had five, he would say, I need 15, I need 20. He would push everybody. These men wouldn't talk on tape. They're still afraid of the repercussions.

Former Bureau Chief McGrane, who served until 1998, says by the late 1990's, the political operation being run from the Department of Corrections was huge.

McGrane: Oh hundreds, no question about it hundreds of people. Bernstein: Hundreds of people on Rikers island were working on the Giuliani campaign?
McGrane: No doubt in my mind there were hundreds of people involved.

Former Deputy Warden Ed Gavin was one of the employees who worked on the election for the Republicans. He says he was gassing up his car on Rikers one day, when an associate of Serra's approached him.

Gavin: He came up to me and he said listen he said um why don't you come out and help us with the Republican campaign we can really use you .

Gavin says he'd heard about the election day effort to watch the polls, and was curious about what went on. So he took the day off, and reported to Republican headquarters on November 7, 2000, the day voters were choosing between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rick Lazio for U.S. Senate.

Gavin: I got there at like six in the morning and I worked like a, like very, very hard that day.

Gavin says his job was handing out radios and keeping in touch with lawyers who were checking out what was going on at the polls.

Gavin: And they would say at this site everything seems to be normal operations, 1700 hours, whatever time it was of the day.

Gavin says he was rewarded for his efforts, being invited to a VIP suite at Republican election night headquarters at the Roosevelt hotel.

Gavin: So I went to the hotel and I saw other correction employees there and Serra was there and he was sitting there and had his own suite with a television. He had food and all types of wine and sodas for his use and I saw the Lt. Governor there, Mary O' Donohue (sic) talking to him like we're talking now.

A spokesman for Lt. Governor, Mary Donohue, says while she doesn't dispute the account, she doesn't specifically recall this conversation. Downstairs in the ballroom Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Rick Lazio was conceding the election to Hillary Clinton.

Lazio: I feel like the Mets, we came in second.

The Republicans didn't win. But Serra's power at the Department of Correction was growing. He became Deputy Warden, then Warden, the Bureau Chief, and got the salary increase of 90 thousand dollars that came with his new job.

Not long after the 2000 elections, Serra began charging premium prices for his political services. In October of that year, the Republican party paid Serra $75,000 --- and wrote another $40,000 in checks for cars, gas, and food. It was October 2001, and Michael Bloomberg was running to succeed Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani: Ladies and Gentleman let's greet the next mayor of the greatest city in the world, Michael Bloomberg.

Michael Bloomberg won - with just over fifty percent of the vote. The race was so close the victory speech wasn't given until the wee hours of the next morning.

In 2002, word of the political operation at Riker's Island began to leak out.

Sarah Wallace: We watched as dozen's of correction officers, some in full uniform arrived to rent cars.

Channel 7's Sarah Wallace sent a hidden camera to the dollar rent-a-car at the foot of the Riker's Island Bridge.

At the same time, the Daily News was working on an article that ran under the headline: Rikers to Riches Story: Pataki pays jail chief 233G as part time political aide. The jail chief in question was Anthony Serra, who held the second highest ranking unformed job at Rikers Island. Top Republican campaign officials insisted to us they didn't know Serra was pressuring subordinates to do political work. During that fall campaign for re-election, Governor Pataki himself said he didn't know the details.

Bernstein: Governor, what was your understanding of what Anthony Serra was doing for your campaign for a quarter of a million dollars?
Pataki: What he had done to help Mayor Bloomberg, what he had done to help Mayor Giuliani.

On his weekly radio show, Mayor Michael Bloomberg also downplayed the story.

Caller: Mayor, I'm just curious what you're going to do about this.
Bloomberg: There's an allegation that he's done it on company time, if you will, and we're investigating to make sure that's not true. After that I think it's probably not true, nobody got forced.

We investigated, too. And we found, in dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of sworn testimony, that top officials in the Department of Correction were well aware that employees, including Anthony Serra, were actively involved in Republican campaigns.
Eric Taylor held the highest uniformed job on Rikers Island.

Taylor: Let's face it they all did it because they were hoping that their guy won and if their guy won everybody expects to get something. That's the American way.

In fact, there was evidence suggesting that what was happening on Rikers was illegal, that city workers were misusing taxpayer resources -- and there WAS a preliminary investigation. The correction commissioner at the time, Michael Jacobson, was briefed.

Jacobson: I did know there had been a prior investigation not just into Serra, but into a few people about doing campaign work on DOC time.

William Fraser commissioner at the end of the Giuliani years and the beginning of Mayor Bloomberg's term. He said in sworn deposition testimony he saw city employees working at the Republican State Convention in 2002, during the day.

Speaker: The Chair appoints the following committee to inform Governor Pataki of his designation for the office of Governor.
Music: And baby, you better believe, I'm back in a New York groove.

In the deposition, Fraser testified Chief Serra met me and was walking me around, introduced me to a couple of people. Fraser said he also saw several subordinates at this convention, including an assistant chief, an assistant deputy warden, and a number of correction officers. Even though they were there during a weekday, Fraser didn't check to make sure they were off the clock.
Questioned by the attorney for a correction employee who sued the city, Fraser was asked: Did you attempt to find out why those individuals were there with Mr. Serra?
Answer: No.
Fraser was well aware of the political work. He testified he worked on election day himself for the Republicans, in 1993.

There were four commissioners who served from 1993 to 2002 Anthony Schembri, Michael Jacbson, Bernard Kerik, and William Fraser. None of them ever championed an investigation of illegal political activity at Rikers Island. But down the chain of command, there were attempts.

In 1995 Ralph McGrane was a warden. He received a complaint that employees were getting time off around election day. And there WAS an internal corrections department probe. But the investigator herself was harassed. While she was in McGrane's jail, investigating the matter, her badge was stolen.

McGrane: Which is a big deal, particularly in a jail because someone can take that shield and escape.

McGrane says he knew instantly it was an inside job. So he called Anthony Serra and another subordinate into his office.

McGrane: And I emphatically told them that shield better show up I want that shield back now. Within a matter of minutes the shield was returned.

Not long after that, the investigator's car was set on fire. She quit the Department of Correction. This probe was dropped.

Michael Caruso is the head of the oversight body designed specifically to root out corruption and waste in the Department of Correction. But in his fifteen years as department of correction inspector general, there have been no formal charges of political corruption emanating from the Department of Correction. Keeping with city policy, Caruso would not discuss his investigations publicly.

Over in Manhattan, in 2002 the Board of Elections was asking its own set of questions about a registration drive for independence party voters. The drive was organized by Republicans to help Governor Pataki win that party's ballot line. Party and corrections employees say the drive was a major project of Anthony Serra's that year.

At a hearing that August, Board of Elections clerks said they'd found thousands of questionable ballots submitted by supporters of Governor George Pataki's campaign for re-election.

Clerk: You had some made up names, you had Manuel Noriega, my favorite one is Romeo Shagwell. (Laughter)

Commissioner Douglas Kellner, a Democrat, wasn't laughing.

Kellner: What we are facing now is an apparent level of registration fraud that is unprecedented in the board history in the last hundred years and really harkens back to the 19th century abuses.

Kellner wanted to refer the matter to the Manhattan D.A. But the Board of Elections, which is evenly divided along party lines deadlocked, and no further action was taken.

Later that year, up in the Bronx - where Rikers is officially located, another investigation WAS conducted.

Johnson: We're announcing today the indictment of Anthony Serra a former three star chief in the Department of Corrections.

In February of last year Anthony Serra was indicted by Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson. But not for politically related work. Instead, he was charged with using on-duty correction staff to renovate the bathroom and do gardening work in his Putnam County home.

Some correction employees interviewed by the D.A.'s office told us they don't understand why the indictments haven't gone further.

They say the D.A. has route maps for election day seized from Anthony Serra's Rikers Island trailer, computer hard drives, and lists of hundreds of employees who were working on the GOP campaign operation. Law enforcement sources told us any number of laws could have been broken including larceny, theft of services, and coercion.

We asked the Bronx D.A.'s spokesman, why there have never been charges brought on the political matters. His answer: It's under investigation. If and when a determination is made there is sufficient evidence a crime has been committed, charges will be brought.

Both Anthony Serra and William Fraser have told newspaper reporters they did nothing wrong. Through their attorneys, they declined to be interviewed.

Martin Horn was appointed correction commissioner in January, 2003.

Horn: I can't fix the mistakes that people made in the period before I got here I am not an investigative agency.

Horn says when he took over there were 250 employees who weren't working in the jails they were supposed to be working in. That made it easy for them to do work that wasn't official corrections department business.

Horn says he's put an end to that practice. He says all promotions are now made on merit. But as to calling people to account, he says that's beyond him.

Horn: Aaaach, what makes you think this dept is different from any other dept? Look at how many times do we see stories of -- I remember growing up in New York City and reading stories as a youngster of city workers that were called to kick back part of their salary. There's nothing new here, I'm not frustrated with that.

To date, not one correction employee has been charged with doing political work on the taxpayer's dime. For WNYC, I'm Andrea Bernstein.

Credits: Politics and Punishment on Rikers Island" was edited by Karen Frillman, with audio engineering by Wayne Shulmister, Rob Weisberg, Rob Christianson and Jennifer Munson. Our archivist is Andy Lanset, and Amy Pearl is our web producer. The executive producer is John Keefe.