This workload appears unlawful.
The guards on Rikers Island are so overworked that many spend an average of more over 100 hours per week at the scandal-tainted jail complex, according to the available records.
Department of Correction officials like James Internicola are obliged to monitor detainees as a record number of unhappy employees quit or call in sick, and the number of violent incidents at Rikers continues to rise.
According to records, Internicola, 55, a city corrections officer since 1996, worked 3,692 hours of overtime in addition to his regular shifts during the fiscal year ending on June 30 – an average of 111 hours per week.
This is around 16 hours every day, seven days per week.
He is also not alone.
Of the 50 municipal employees that worked the most overtime during the fiscal year 2022, 44 were DOC officers and captains, including Internicola and a dozen others who led the pack with nearly 3,000 extra hours each. Michael Thompson, a corrections officer for eleven years, was second with 3,617 overtime hours.
Benny Boscio, head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, told The Post that his members’ schedules are so long that many sleep in their automobiles in Rikers’ parking lot between shifts rather than sacrifice valuable rest hours travelling to work.
Boscio stated that no other labor in the city is required to perform exorbitant and exhausting amounts of overtime, miss meals and rest, and work in one of the most dangerous conditions in the city.
The Post’s study of city data revealed, however, that DOC employees are not compensated as generously as their counterparts in other city agencies.
Internicola’s workload was greater than that of any city employee in at least a decade, but while earning $151,096 in overtime compensation on top of his $92,075 base salary, he was not among the city’s top overtime earners last fiscal year. Thompson, who made $150,049 in overtime, was not either.
Julio Lopez, a supervising deputy sheriff for the Department of Finance, earned a staggering $255,999 from 2,216 overtime hours, bringing his total earnings to $410,553.
Richard Reilly Jr., an engineer for the Corrections Department, ranked second with $231,869 in overtime pay, followed by Bevelyn Barkley, another supervising deputy sheriff, with $231,151 in overtime pay.
Since Mayor Adams entered office in January, DOC spokesman Latima Johnson asserted the agency had made significant efforts in addressing Rikers’ staffing shortfalls, particularly by cracking down on employees who feigned illness to remain on paid leave, but acknowledged “we are not where we want to be.”
“Correction officers have one of the most difficult jobs in law enforcement, and the pandemic exacerbated many of their difficulties,” Johnson said.
In fiscal 2019, prior to the pandemic, Correction employees accrued 3,153,573 overtime hours at a cost of $181,8 million to taxpayers. The agency’s overtime consumption increased somewhat during the next two years before skyrocketing to 5,369,074 hours and $259.8 million in fiscal year 2022.
In the previous fiscal year, city agencies spent $2.44 billion on overtime pay, compared to $1.79 billion the year before and $1.87 billion in fiscal 2019.
Alexis Done, an ex-pension investment advisor in the Comptroller’s Office, was listed as the city’s top earner for fiscal year 2022, with a total salary of $445,078 — a portion of which included a six-figure payment for unused time — according to a newly released city database of municipal employee salaries as of Friday. Gregory Russ, chairman of NYCHA, ranked second with $430,977.
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