Group Files Lawsuit Against Nassau County Jail

The Nassau County Correctional Facility in East Meadow is under the gun once again – this time from the New York Civil Liberties Union for allegedly refusing to release information on the medical and mental health care of inmates.

The group filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court on Apr. 29 after the jail allegedly did not fully comply with a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request last fall to reveal its policies and procedures pertaining to the health care of prisoners.

“We have been getting more and more complaints from inmates about the lack of medical and mental health care,” said Samantha Fredrickson, director of the Nassau chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).

She said NYCLU has spoken to 60 inmates who have complained about the lack of care, which has violated their constitutional rights. “It’s a systemic problem the way care is provided at the jail,” she said. “There are 2,000 inmates there and we want to make sure there is enough medical staff. From October until now, we’re still getting complaints on a pretty regular basis.”

 The issue has become even more glaring since four inmates committed suicide between January 2010 and January 2011, including “one suicide that was determined to be a preventable death caused by the lack of adequate medical and mental health care,” said Fredrickson.

Much of the problem could be blamed on the jail’s initial screening process, which Fredrickson described as “out-of-date.”

She said NYCLU has received some but not all of the documents through the FOIL request, which was filed on Nov. 29, and her group required all the paperwork to determine the “full extent of the problem at the jail.”

Michael R. Golio, investigator captain for the Nassau County Sheriff's Department at the correctional center, said he believes the jail has done nothing wrong.

“The Sheriff’s Department believes that our response to the FOIL request by the NYCLU was both complete and in full compliance with the applicable law,” Golio said. “For those reasons we disagree with the assertions made by the NYCLU in their petition.  Because of the pending litigation, we have no further comment at this time.”

The state commissioner of correction recently permitted the jail to rent empty cells to Suffolk County after prohibiting the move because the jail failed to correct several sanitary violations.

In the NYCLU suit, Fredrickson said, the group claims inmates are not being provided their medicine as prescribed, receiving their medicine once a day when they require it more often or not getting it at all.

“If they’re not getting their medicine, their condition would get worse,” Fredrickson said.

In other cases, she said, the jail’s inmates have not been transported to follow-up visits to Nassau University Medical Center to see specialty physicians such as orthopedists or cardiologists.

Fredrickson said the Department of Justice raised the same lack of care issues at the East Meadow lock-up in early 2000 and a lawsuit was filed, which resulted in a consent decree in 2002, forcing the jail to provide better care. The decree was vacated in 2008 after it was determined the jail was in compliance. “And now we’re seeing the same issues,” she said.

The East Meadow jail also discriminates against the handicapped because it does not have a wheelchair-accessible van to transport them to court, she said.

“We talked to families and inmates themselves,” said Fredrickson. “We’ve tried to meet with jail officials to talk about the issues, but they don’t believe it’s a problem.

“I think there is definitely a problem in the way [the jail] is operating,” she added. “It’s not very open. There’s no transparency at the jail.”

Fredrickson said the county has until May 21 to respond to the NYCLU’s lawsuit. “And we’ll take it from there,” she said. “We’re just seeking the records.”