COBA Loses Bid to Slow Jail Closings As Judge Rejects Claim on COs' Health

The Department of Correction’s plan to close two city jails received a green light just before Thanksgiving when a judge dismissed a union argument that the closures during the pandemic would crowd remaining facilities such that the health of correction officers would be compromised. 

In declining to extend a temporary restraining order in place since Nov 10, Queens Supreme Court Justice Kevin J. Kerrigan Nov. 25 wrote that the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association had failed “to show that the population density will increase after the closure of the facilities in question, much less that it will increase to such a significant extent as to put the Correction Officers...at an unreasonable risk of harm.”