As Horn Leaves Jail System, COBA Head Blasts 2 Top Chiefs

MARTIN F. HORN: Leaving Correction and Probation.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook last week marked the announcement of Correction Commissioner Martin F. Horn's resignation with an internal barrage against two key department officials he said were incapable of "effective and responsible decisions."

In a directive to his members that was obtained by this newspaper, Mr. Seabrook blasted Chief of Department Carolyn Thomas—the agency's top uniformed officer—and Chief of Environmental Health and Safety Patrick Walsh for failures that he said ranged from the beating death of an inmate last October to a tepid response to a swine flu outbreak in a Rikers Island jail.

'Department's Worst Managers'

Claiming they were guilty of a "pattern of poor decision-making," Mr. Seabrook said the two officials deserved the "Worst Managers of the Department Award."

A Correction Department spokesman, Steven Morello, said Mr. Horn declined comment on Mr. Seabrook's denunciations, pointing out that he was constrained because the inmate beating death is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation and civil litigation.

NORMAN SEABROOK: Lashes out at two top chiefs.

He also flatly denied that that controversial case, in which three Correction Officers represented by COBA have been indicted for allegedly letting predatory inmates take over the jail where 18-year-old Christopher Robinson was fatally beaten, played any role in Mr. Horn's decision to step down as Correction and Probation Commissioner.

Mayor Bloomberg, in a joint press release issued June 3 with Mr. Horn, noted that his 6½ years in the jail post made him the longest-serving city Correction Commissioner of the past 50 years. He praised him for helping "make our jails the safest large-city jails in the nation. . . with far fewer escapes, suicides, homicides and inmate assaults than in previous periods."

Horn Cites Achievements

Mr. Horn, who is taking a position as a Distinguished Lecturer at John Jay College beginning with the fall semester, said that during his tenure he had made marked improvements in both jail safety and the way in which probationers and juvenile offenders are treated that had given offenders "a chance to resume productive, lawabiding lives."

SIDNEY SCHWARTZBAUM: Stop the infighting at top.

He had also cleaned up the internal workings of a jail system that was rife with favoritism and retaliation based on the political leanings of jail supervisors— a culture that began during the Giuliani administration when Bernard B. Kerik was Correction Commissioner and continued under his successor, William Fraser, whom Mr. Bloomberg reappointed when he took office in 2002. It was not until footage of Correction Officers leaving their posts to work in then-Governor George Pataki's re-election campaign that fall was provided to a television news reporter that Mr. Bloomberg sacked Mr. Fraser and Mr. Horn was brought in to depoliticize the agency.

Clash After Inmate's Death

Unlike his two predecessors, who sometimes deferred to Mr. Seabrook because of his clout as leader of the system's largest union, Mr. Horn often clashed with the COBA leader. Their relationship deteriorated further in the wake of the inmate death last fall and what Mr. Seabrook deemed was an attempt to scapegoat his members without holding Chiefs Thomas and Walsh accountable.

The Village Voice over the course of several stories laid out the way in which the three COs under indictment created "The Program," which allegedly allowed violent inmate gangs to set and enforce rules in one Rikers jail. It reported that prior to Mr. Robinson's death, Chiefs Thomas and Walsh had seen internal memos indicating that gangs were running the Robert N. Davoren Center but failed to take corrective action.

Mr. Seabrook charged in his flyer, which was circulated on the same day that Mr. Horn's resignation was announced, that the two officials "were fully briefed on inmate violence which existed at RNDC at the time. They were briefed by the Intelligence Unit, as well as by the Deputy Warden of Security from that facility."

ADW Head: Stop Infighting

The flyer went on, "Now we are faced with the Swine Flu epidemic and once again, who's at the helm of leadership? Chief Thomas and Chief Walsh." He had sought to have the Anna M. Kross Center, where as many as 10 cases of swine flu were suspected, shut down last month; ultimately the department took other precautionary measures.

Assistant Deputy Wardens/Deputy Wardens Association President Sidney Schwartzbaum praised Mr. Horn, saying, "He's an intellectually astute manager and he'll be a good professor."

But he also indicated, without naming names, that he shared Mr. Seabrook's unhappiness with some of the department's uniformed commanders. "Whoever comes in [as Commissioner] has to eradicate the internecine fighting among the Chiefs," Mr. Schwartzbaum said. "It's like Color War. It's counterproductive, and there's times when it made the department dysfunctional."