theintercept--2020-06-16--Disbanding Notorious NYPD Anti-Crime Unit Is a “Shell Game,” Critics Say

protests against police brutality , the New York City Police Department announced on Monday that it is disbanding a hyperaggressive and notoriously trigger-happy plainclothes unit .
A majority of the roughly 600 officers in the department ’ s “ anti-crime ” units would be immediately moved to other assignments , NYPD Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said in a press conference , though a portion would continue to patrol the city ’ s subways .
The reassigned officers will take up positions in the detective ’ s bureau and the department ’ s community policing efforts , Shea said , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ brute force ” with an embrace of intelligence and technology-driven policing .
“ This is a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this great city , ” Shea told reporters .
“ It will be felt immediately in the communities that we protect.
” But it was hardly the first time the NYPD had promised change , and the announcement was met with a great deal of skepticism by advocates wary of empty talk of reform .
Monifa Bandele , vice president of criminal justice campaigns at MomsRising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team for the Movement for Black Lives , called the move a “ shell game ” and a “ distraction , ” aimed at diverting New Yorkers ’ attention from growing calls to defund the NYPD .
“ It ’ s moving around resources and actual police officers , shuffling them around within the department to make it look like what we ’ re asking for , but we ’ re actually calling for a much larger systemic shift , ” Bandele told The Intercept .
“ We ’ re not talking about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ department .
We ’ re talking about moving around resources within the citywide budget in a way that makes our communities safer .
That means actually moving money out of the NYPD budget , and moving those resources into education , housing , mental health services , homelessness services.
” “ Internal personnel changes don ’ t really address the fact that our communities are over-policed and under-resourced.
” Albert Cahn , director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project , called the move to disband the unit “ a publicity stunt.
” “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Cahn told The Intercept .
“ It ’ s simply an easy way for them to take a page out of the NYPD PR handbook and avoid real structural reform .
And if these officers are simply doubling down on the NYPD bias and broken surveillance of communities of color , it ’ s going to result in more police violence.
” “ I ’ ve seen this cycle play out before , where you have outrage and then the NYPD claims it will fix it , ” he added .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Indeed , while the disbanding no doubt reflected the immense pressure that more than two weeks of sustained protests have had on the decision-making of even the largest police department in the country , the move was also infused with a bit of déjà vu .
The modern anti-crime units in New York City were born in a similar period of unrest more than two decades ago .
On a winter night in February 1999 , four plainclothes NYPD officers roaming the south Bronx spotted a 22-year-old man stepping out of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was Amadou Diallo : He was a West African immigrant who sold socks and gloves in Manhattan to make money for his family back home .
The officers would later claim that Diallo made “ furtive gestures.
” They opened up on him , firing 41 shots , 19 of which hit their target .
Diallo ’ s killing was a critical moment in New York City policing history .
In the aftermath , there were protests and litigation — including a lawsuit that , 14 years later , would find that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of racial profiling and give the current mayor an issue on which to propel himself to office .
At the center of the civil turmoil was the supposedly elite police crew behind the shooting : the Street Crimes Unit .
The plainclothes cops were the rough face of a new form of numbers-driven policing , supported by the latest in law enforcement technology and undergirded by an increasingly fashionable theory of policing called “ broken windows.
” A 2000 report by the Cato Institute described the culture of the unit as “ militaristic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retaking neighborhoods.
” Members even designed T-shirts to represent their clique .
Borrowing a line from Hemingway , they read : “ Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man , and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it , never really care for anything else thereafter.
” In 2002 , with the Street Crimes Unit tied up in litigation stemming from the Diallo killing , NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that the officers would be rolled into newly emerging , borough-wide units that , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perform much the same function as the Street Crime Unit , patrolling in unmarked cars looking for criminals.
” The name of the new units was anti-crime .
More than a decade and a half later , the NYPD is now saying that anti-crime , too , has got to go .
In the press conference announcing the decision , Shea praised the “ thoughtful discussions about reform ” that emerged from two weeks of protests .
The commissioner went on to highlight a number of bills passed at the state and local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of these bills will not have significant impact on day-to-day operations of the NYPD — I say this because most of what is codified in these bills was already being practiced by policies and procedures of the NYPD , ” Shea claimed .
“ We welcome reform , but we also believe that meaningful reform starts from within.
” It was hardly the first time a police commissioner had promised the department would reform from within .
In 2016 , two-time NYPD Commissioner William Bratton , argued on his last day before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be legislated and that only police could change themselves .
“ There are police reformers from outside the profession who think that changing police culture is a matter of passing regulations , establishing oversight bodies and more or less legislating a new order , ” Bratton wrote in an op-ed then .
“ It is not .
Such oversight usually has only marginal impact .
What changes police culture is leadership from within.
” And as Shea is doing now , Bratton ’ s successor , James O ’ Neill , promised a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in New York City .
Before being appointed commissioner , O ’ Neill had spearheaded the city ’ s Neighborhood Coordination Program , New York ’ s version of a nationwide push toward what proponents had promised would be a gentler , friendlier police presence .
The pivot towards community policing , aided by significant federal investment in local departments , came as the Obama administration ’ s response to the protests that from Ferguson , Missouri , spread across the country starting in 2014 .
In New York City , despite little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police-community relations , O ’ Neill ’ s neighborhood policing initiative was replicated across precincts , and earlier this year , Shea announced a new youth-focused police initiative modeled after the Neighborhood Coordination Program .
Earlier this month , before capitulating to protesters ’ demands that the city cut the NYPD ’ s budget , Mayor Bill de Blasio again touted community policing as the reason why the NYPD ’ s resources couldn ’ t be cut .
“ I do not believe it is a good idea to reduce the budget of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us safe and the agency that is instituting neighborhood policing , ” said the mayor , calling the initiative a “ game-changer ” and the “ future of policing.
” But the NYPD had plenty of opportunity to show that community policing works , or that , as Bratton and Shea have both claimed , police can reform from within .
The latest protests , in New York as elsewhere , are yet more evidence of the failures of police reform — but those who have been calling for radical changes to policing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is calling a seismic shift may in fact be a distraction to appease the protesters before returning to the old status quo under a new name .
Community policing , they say , is particularly insidious because of the false image it evokes .
“ It ’ s a word that they ’ ve clearly polled and workshopped , ” said Bandela .
“ So by calling it community policing , they ’ re basically pitching an idea to people that feels good and sounds good .
But what we know , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the continued over policing of our community.
” Assigning police to community outreach work , she added , “ continues to broaden the job description of police officers.
” “ There are people for whom , that ’ s their passion , they went to school for that , they dreamed of being that their whole lives , ” she said .
“ We should resource them… Continuing to adjust police officers ’ job description to justify their excessive budget has to stop.
” Instead , advocates say , reform should happen at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protests started , New York state legislators passed two major bills that had been on the table for years : one banning chokeholds and the other repealing a law , known as 50-a , that has long protected officers accused of misconduct from public scrutiny .
This week , legislators are expected to vote in favor of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act , or POST Act , another piece of legislation that advocates for greater police transparency have lobbied in favor of for more than three years .
“ Right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policing reform legislation posed to pass in New York City and New York state than in the past decade combined , ” said Cahn .
“ I think lawmakers know that it ’ s not a matter of whether they can take on NYPD , it ’ s that they have to take on the NYPD if they want to keep their jobs.
” In 2018 , an investigation by The Intercept found that the anti-crime officers Shea is now assigning to detective work and community policing shot people to death at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Analyzing data from the Fatal Encounters project , the investigation found that despite their relatively small numbers , plainclothes NYPD cops were involved in nearly a third of the city ’ s lethal police shootings recorded in the nearly two decades after Diallo was killed .
“ I think we can do better , ” the commissioner told reporters , noting anti-crime ’ s “ disproportionate ” representation in shootings and civilian complaints .
“ I think policing in 2020 is not what it was five , 10 , or 15 years ago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he began reviewing the unit ’ s impact on communities last year .
“ It was always in the back of my mind.
” Unlike uniformed patrol officers , whose work is largely dictated by 911 calls that come over the radio , anti-crime units are self-directed , meaning that they spend much of their time prowling neighbors in unmarked cars looking for “ activity ” to respond to .
The units are plainclothes but not undercover — while they are not dressed in NYPD blue , they are not in disguise either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1990s , anti-crime units have been known to wear civilian gear — T-shirts , patches — that mark their allegiance to a militarized strain of modern American law enforcement .
When anti-crime officers gunned down Saheed Vassell in Brookyln in the spring of 2018 , for example , one of the officers involved was seen wearing a Punisher T-shirt — the comic book vigilante ’ s logo is one of the most popular symbols of warrior-style policing .
The Vassell killing was one of several high-profile incidents anti-crime officers have been linked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , anti-crime officers in the hyperpoliced neighborhood of Flatbush shot 16-year-old Kimani Gray to death as his friends and neighbors watched , sparking days of protests .
The police claimed that the teen had a gun .
Eyewitnesses said Gray was empty-handed and begging for his life when he was killed .
During a historic federal trial later that year , challenging the NYPD ’ s stop-and-frisk practices , anti-crime officers were often linked to some of the department ’ s most egregiously unconstitutional policing .
The following summer , anti-crime Officer Daniel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death in Staten Island , sparking another round of protests .
The NYPD is seeking to distance itself from this violent legacy , Shea said .
“ This is 21st century policing , ” the commissioner explained .
“ Intelligence , data , ShotSpotter , video , DNA , and building prosecutable cases.
” Shea added that , in his view , the decision to disband anti-crime marked a “ closing of one of the last chapters of stop , question , and frisk.
” “ I think it ’ s time to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this city , ” the commissioner said .
“ We can do it with brains , we can do it with guile , we can move away from brute force.
” Shea added that plainclothes units will continue to serve in the department for the purposes of surveillance , drug enforcement , “ or things of that nature.
” But the NYPD ’ s announcement that former anti-crime unit members would shift toward intelligence and technology-driven policing was a red flag , advocates noted .
That shift has been underway for years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ruling that found stop-and-frisk to be unconstitutional , the NYPD largely moved from arbitrarily stopping New Yorkers in mostly black and Latino communities toward surveilling those same communities under the guise of anti-gang policing .
Starting in 2012 , with the launch of the anti-gang “ Operation Crew Cut , ” the NYPD started devoting large resources to track the social media activities of many of the same people officers used to stop and frisk in the past .
As The Intercept has previously reported , the surveillance effort led to a series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up dozens of young people based largely on those they interacted with online and off .
It also led to the severe expansion of a secretive “ gang ” database maintained by the NYPD , which as of 2018 included some 42,000 people , based on a set of arbitrary criteria and often in the absence of criminality .
Much of what the NYPD does as part of what it calls “ intelligence and technology-driven policing ” is shielded from public scrutiny , noted Cahn , who added that the expected passage of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on those practices .
“ We have absolutely no idea how intelligence resources are being allocated because they ’ re able to circumvent public oversight and purchase many of these systems with private and federal funds , and not even tell the city council what sorts of systems they ’ re using , ” he said .
“ I ’ m terrified that this will mean more reliance on facial recognition , more reliance on ShotSpotter , more reliance on the so-called gang database , which was explicitly built out as a digital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of more surveillance-based policing , with little public accountability , was particularly worrisome at a time when the NYPD faced some of the greatest challenges to its legitimacy as tens of thousands of New Yorkers took to the street to protest them for more than two weeks .
“ We ’ re absolutely terrified that we ’ re going to see people going into NYPD databases for years , ” said Cahn , “ simply because they exercised their First Amendment right to protest .
”

Facing massive ongoing protests against police brutality, the New York City Police Department announced on Monday that it is disbanding a hyperaggressive and notoriously trigger-happy plainclothes unit.
A majority of the roughly 600 officers in the department’s “anti-crime” units would be immediately moved to other assignments, NYPD Commissioner Dermot F. Shea said in a press conference, though a portion would continue to patrol the city’s subways. The reassigned officers will take up positions in the detective’s bureau and the department’s community policing efforts, Shea said, as the NYPD replaced its prior emphasis on “brute force” with an embrace of intelligence and technology-driven policing.
“This is a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this great city,” Shea told reporters. “It will be felt immediately in the communities that we protect.”
But it was hardly the first time the NYPD had promised change, and the announcement was met with a great deal of skepticism by advocates wary of empty talk of reform. Monifa Bandele, vice president of criminal justice campaigns at MomsRising and a member of the policy leadership team for the Movement for Black Lives, called the move a “shell game” and a “distraction,” aimed at diverting New Yorkers’ attention from growing calls to defund the NYPD.
“It’s moving around resources and actual police officers, shuffling them around within the department to make it look like what we’re asking for, but we’re actually calling for a much larger systemic shift,” Bandele told The Intercept. “We’re not talking about shuffling resources and people within the police department. We’re talking about moving around resources within the citywide budget in a way that makes our communities safer. That means actually moving money out of the NYPD budget, and moving those resources into education, housing, mental health services, homelessness services.”
“Internal personnel changes don’t really address the fact that our communities are over-policed and under-resourced.”
Albert Cahn, director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, called the move to disband the unit “a publicity stunt.”
“They tried this same tactic before,” Cahn told The Intercept. “It’s simply an easy way for them to take a page out of the NYPD PR handbook and avoid real structural reform. And if these officers are simply doubling down on the NYPD bias and broken surveillance of communities of color, it’s going to result in more police violence.”
“I’ve seen this cycle play out before, where you have outrage and then the NYPD claims it will fix it,” he added. “And then they do a mild change.”
Indeed, while the disbanding no doubt reflected the immense pressure that more than two weeks of sustained protests have had on the decision-making of even the largest police department in the country, the move was also infused with a bit of déjà vu.
The modern anti-crime units in New York City were born in a similar period of unrest more than two decades ago. On a winter night in February 1999, four plainclothes NYPD officers roaming the south Bronx spotted a 22-year-old man stepping out of his apartment. The man’s name was Amadou Diallo: He was a West African immigrant who sold socks and gloves in Manhattan to make money for his family back home. The officers would later claim that Diallo made “furtive gestures.” They opened up on him, firing 41 shots, 19 of which hit their target.
Diallo’s killing was a critical moment in New York City policing history. In the aftermath, there were protests and litigation — including a lawsuit that, 14 years later, would find that the NYPD had engaged in a widespread pattern of racial profiling and give the current mayor an issue on which to propel himself to office. At the center of the civil turmoil was the supposedly elite police crew behind the shooting: the Street Crimes Unit.
Reform From Within
The plainclothes cops were the rough face of a new form of numbers-driven policing, supported by the latest in law enforcement technology and undergirded by an increasingly fashionable theory of policing called “broken windows.” A 2000 report by the Cato Institute described the culture of the unit as “militaristic,” with officers talking of “retaking neighborhoods.” Members even designed T-shirts to represent their clique. Borrowing a line from Hemingway, they read: “Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.”
In 2002, with the Street Crimes Unit tied up in litigation stemming from the Diallo killing, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that the officers would be rolled into newly emerging, borough-wide units that, according to the New York Times would, “perform much the same function as the Street Crime Unit, patrolling in unmarked cars looking for criminals.” The name of the new units was anti-crime.
More than a decade and a half later, the NYPD is now saying that anti-crime, too, has got to go. In the press conference announcing the decision, Shea praised the “thoughtful discussions about reform” that emerged from two weeks of protests. The commissioner went on to highlight a number of bills passed at the state and local levels.
“The truth is that most of these bills will not have significant impact on day-to-day operations of the NYPD — I say this because most of what is codified in these bills was already being practiced by policies and procedures of the NYPD,” Shea claimed. “We welcome reform, but we also believe that meaningful reform starts from within.”
It was hardly the first time a police commissioner had promised the department would reform from within. In 2016, two-time NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, argued on his last day before retirement that police reform couldn’t be legislated and that only police could change themselves.
“There are police reformers from outside the profession who think that changing police culture is a matter of passing regulations, establishing oversight bodies and more or less legislating a new order,” Bratton wrote in an op-ed then. “It is not. Such oversight usually has only marginal impact. What changes police culture is leadership from within.”
Those who have been calling for radical changes to policing for years warn that what the NYPD is calling a seismic shift may in fact be a distraction to appease the protesters before returning to the old status quo under a new name.
And as Shea is doing now, Bratton’s successor, James O’Neill, promised a new era of “community policing” in New York City. Before being appointed commissioner, O’Neill had spearheaded the city’s Neighborhood Coordination Program, New York’s version of a nationwide push toward what proponents had promised would be a gentler, friendlier police presence. The pivot towards community policing, aided by significant federal investment in local departments, came as the Obama administration’s response to the protests that from Ferguson, Missouri, spread across the country starting in 2014.
In New York City, despite little evidence it had done anything to improve police-community relations, O’Neill’s neighborhood policing initiative was replicated across precincts, and earlier this year, Shea announced a new youth-focused police initiative modeled after the Neighborhood Coordination Program. Earlier this month, before capitulating to protesters’ demands that the city cut the NYPD’s budget, Mayor Bill de Blasio again touted community policing as the reason why the NYPD’s resources couldn’t be cut. “I do not believe it is a good idea to reduce the budget of the agency that is here to keep us safe and the agency that is instituting neighborhood policing,” said the mayor, calling the initiative a “game-changer” and the “future of policing.”
Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
But the NYPD had plenty of opportunity to show that community policing works, or that, as Bratton and Shea have both claimed, police can reform from within. The latest protests, in New York as elsewhere, are yet more evidence of the failures of police reform — but those who have been calling for radical changes to policing for years warn that what the NYPD is calling a seismic shift may in fact be a distraction to appease the protesters before returning to the old status quo under a new name.
Community policing, they say, is particularly insidious because of the false image it evokes. “It’s a word that they’ve clearly polled and workshopped,” said Bandela. “So by calling it community policing, they’re basically pitching an idea to people that feels good and sounds good. But what we know, in essence, is that it is just the continued over policing of our community.”
Assigning police to community outreach work, she added, “continues to broaden the job description of police officers.”
“There are people for whom, that’s their passion, they went to school for that, they dreamed of being that their whole lives,” she said. “We should resource them… Continuing to adjust police officers’ job description to justify their excessive budget has to stop.”
Instead, advocates say, reform should happen at the budgetary and legislative levels. Since the protests started, New York state legislators passed two major bills that had been on the table for years: one banning chokeholds and the other repealing a law, known as 50-a, that has long protected officers accused of misconduct from public scrutiny. This week, legislators are expected to vote in favor of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act, or POST Act, another piece of legislation that advocates for greater police transparency have lobbied in favor of for more than three years.
“Right now we have more state and local policing reform legislation posed to pass in New York City and New York state than in the past decade combined,” said Cahn. “I think lawmakers know that it’s not a matter of whether they can take on NYPD, it’s that they have to take on the NYPD if they want to keep their jobs.”
21st Century Policing
In 2018, an investigation by The Intercept found that the anti-crime officers Shea is now assigning to detective work and community policing shot people to death at a considerably higher rate than their colleagues. Analyzing data from the Fatal Encounters project, the investigation found that despite their relatively small numbers, plainclothes NYPD cops were involved in nearly a third of the city’s lethal police shootings recorded in the nearly two decades after Diallo was killed.
“I think we can do better,” the commissioner told reporters, noting anti-crime’s “disproportionate” representation in shootings and civilian complaints. “I think policing in 2020 is not what it was five, 10, or 15 years ago,” Shea said, adding that he began reviewing the unit’s impact on communities last year. “It was always in the back of my mind.”
Anti-crime units are self-directed, meaning that they spend much of their time prowling neighbors in unmarked cars looking for “activity” to respond to.
Unlike uniformed patrol officers, whose work is largely dictated by 911 calls that come over the radio, anti-crime units are self-directed, meaning that they spend much of their time prowling neighbors in unmarked cars looking for “activity” to respond to. The units are plainclothes but not undercover — while they are not dressed in NYPD blue, they are not in disguise either. Like the Street Crimes Unit of the 1990s, anti-crime units have been known to wear civilian gear — T-shirts, patches — that mark their allegiance to a militarized strain of modern American law enforcement. When anti-crime officers gunned down Saheed Vassell in Brookyln in the spring of 2018, for example, one of the officers involved was seen wearing a Punisher T-shirt — the comic book vigilante’s logo is one of the most popular symbols of warrior-style policing.
The Vassell killing was one of several high-profile incidents anti-crime officers have been linked to in recent years. In 2013, anti-crime officers in the hyperpoliced neighborhood of Flatbush shot 16-year-old Kimani Gray to death as his friends and neighbors watched, sparking days of protests. The police claimed that the teen had a gun. Eyewitnesses said Gray was empty-handed and begging for his life when he was killed. During a historic federal trial later that year, challenging the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, anti-crime officers were often linked to some of the department’s most egregiously unconstitutional policing. The following summer, anti-crime Officer Daniel Pantelo choked an unarmed Eric Garner to death in Staten Island, sparking another round of protests.
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The NYPD is seeking to distance itself from this violent legacy, Shea said. “This is 21st century policing,” the commissioner explained. “Intelligence, data, ShotSpotter, video, DNA, and building prosecutable cases.” Shea added that, in his view, the decision to disband anti-crime marked a “closing of one of the last chapters of stop, question, and frisk.”
“I think it’s time to move forward and change how we police in this city,” the commissioner said. “We can do it with brains, we can do it with guile, we can move away from brute force.”
Shea added that plainclothes units will continue to serve in the department for the purposes of surveillance, drug enforcement, “or things of that nature.”
But the NYPD’s announcement that former anti-crime unit members would shift toward intelligence and technology-driven policing was a red flag, advocates noted.
That shift has been underway for years as, mostly in response to the ruling that found stop-and-frisk to be unconstitutional, the NYPD largely moved from arbitrarily stopping New Yorkers in mostly black and Latino communities toward surveilling those same communities under the guise of anti-gang policing. Starting in 2012, with the launch of the anti-gang “Operation Crew Cut,” the NYPD started devoting large resources to track the social media activities of many of the same people officers used to stop and frisk in the past. As The Intercept has previously reported, the surveillance effort led to a series of mass raids and indictments that caught up dozens of young people based largely on those they interacted with online and off. It also led to the severe expansion of a secretive “gang” database maintained by the NYPD, which as of 2018 included some 42,000 people, based on a set of arbitrary criteria and often in the absence of criminality.
Much of what the NYPD does as part of what it calls “intelligence and technology-driven policing” is shielded from public scrutiny, noted Cahn, who added that the expected passage of the POST Act should shed some light on those practices.
“We have absolutely no idea how intelligence resources are being allocated because they’re able to circumvent public oversight and purchase many of these systems with private and federal funds, and not even tell the city council what sorts of systems they’re using,” he said. “I’m terrified that this will mean more reliance on facial recognition, more reliance on ShotSpotter, more reliance on the so-called gang database, which was explicitly built out as a digital version of stop-and-frisk.”
And the prospect of more surveillance-based policing, with little public accountability, was particularly worrisome at a time when the NYPD faced some of the greatest challenges to its legitimacy as tens of thousands of New Yorkers took to the street to protest them for more than two weeks.
“We’re absolutely terrified that we’re going to see people going into NYPD databases for years,” said Cahn, “simply because they exercised their First Amendment right to protest.”


theintercept--2020-06-17--GEO Group’s Blundering Response to the Pandemic Helped Spread Coronavirus in Halfway Houses

the first to get sick .
“ It was like flu symptoms , ” recalled a resident of the women ’ s dorm at the Grossman Center , a federal halfway house in Leavenworth , Kansas , run by the private prison company GEO Group .
Two women began coughing , getting cold sweats , and running a fever around mid- to late April .
By the end of the month , they had been taken to the hospital and tested positive for the coronavirus .
“ And that ’ s when they started testing all of us.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half-dozen residents had been working at Triumph Foods , a pork processing plant in St. Joseph , Missouri , some 40 miles north of the halfway house .
“ Honestly , it was horrible , ” said one woman who had a job cutting meat on an assembly line .
The space was crowded , and she was constantly cold even beneath layers of protective gear , which required her to arrive early in order to get dressed .
The locker rooms would get so full , another worker said , that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before she could go in .
The first two positive cases at the Triumph plant were confirmed on April 20 .
Soon there were hundreds more .
Workers launched a Change.org petition in Spanish and English , asking that the plant be temporarily closed , and warning of the threat to the surrounding community .
By early May , a worker had died and the plant had been linked to rising coronavirus cases in and around Kansas City .
“ I ’ m really concerned about this , ” the local health department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gives you a good example that there are a lot more cases out there that we don ’ t know about.
” Across the border in Kansas , after the first two halfway house residents got sick , almost all the women who worked at the plant tested positive too .
Those who tested negative were moved , first upstairs to the room that had been used to quarantine the sick women , and then downstairs to a space usually reserved as a job center .
“ That was horrible because it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four of us , ” one of them recalled .
Despite the attempts at quarantine , a week later , she tested positive too .
Meanwhile , on the men ’ s side , residents were notified that the coronavirus had made its way into the Grossman Center .
One former resident was at work on April 30 when he got a phone call ordering him to return to the halfway house .
When he got there , a quarantine dorm was being set up — residents were being moved to clear space @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next day .
But that same night , he said , two new people arrived .
Both men had been transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton , Ohio — a well-known coronavirus hot spot .
The men were placed in a crowded unit ; “ 22 of us living in the area of a three-car garage , ” the former resident recalled .
The next morning , on Friday , May 1 , they were all tested for Covid-19 .
When the results came back the following Monday , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In other words , the former resident said , he had been infected before arriving at the halfway house .
Even more alarming , as they awaited test results over the weekend , everyone had remained mixed together , without knowing who might be exposing whom .
On Monday , the same day he found out he ’ d tested negative , the resident began to feel under the weather : “ a little dry cough , a headache , and a scratchy throat.
” He reported his symptoms to staff to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he woke up drenched in sweat , yet so cold his teeth were chattering .
After that , “ the body aches came .
All this stuff came in waves and they were so severe .
I got ta be honest with you , I didn ’ t think I was gon na make it.
” That man recuperated and has since been placed in home confinement , along with dozens of other residents .
Today , the Leavenworth County Department of Health says that everyone who tested positive at the Grossman Center @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the outbreak remains impossible to measure .
Leavenworth County was home to one of the state ’ s largest Covid-19 outbreaks — and part of a regional cluster in Kansas alone that included thousands of cases .
At the Lansing Correctional Facility just south of the Grossman Center , at least 835 cases were recorded .
Two prison workers and four incarcerated people died from complications related to Covid-19 .
Although the number of confirmed cases at the Grossman Center is much smaller than at the prison or meatpacking plant , residents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ posed a similar danger to the surrounding community .
Even as the pandemic forced the country into lockdown beginning in March , residents still cycled in and out of the facility through the end of April .
Those forced to leave their posts at the Triumph plant after the coronavirus was discovered there were nevertheless allowed to get other jobs — including one woman who would eventually test positive for Covid-19 .
Another resident , who arrived at the Grossman Center in late April , was about to start a job at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house was finally locked down .
That resident tested positive too .
Although it has since been surpassed by other facilities , the Grossman Center was for weeks the hardest hit federal halfway house in the country , according to the Bureau of Prisons .
The local health department counted 67 cases — higher than the bureau ’ s tally , which does not include staff or people in the custody of other agencies .
According to residents and others familiar with the situation — all of whom spoke to The Intercept on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — even the director of the Grossman Center reportedly contracted the virus .
Geo Group did not respond to questions about this or any aspect of its handling of the pandemic .
As national attention turned from the coronavirus to the protests over racist police violence following the murder of George Floyd , Covid-19 has continued to spread across federal prisons and halfway houses , including those run by GEO Group .
With the BOP continuing to transfer people from prison to halfway houses across the country throughout the pandemic — and with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases — the risk is far from over .
The Grossman Center is located northwest of Kansas City , not far from where the Missouri River forms Kansas ’ s eastern border .
A 2017 audit describes the building as “ a metal structure with two floors , ” with six dormitory-style housing units containing a total of 144 beds .
Outside there ’ s a recreation area with a basketball hoop and picnic tables .
A resident handbook from 2013 lays out a list of Resident Rights , including “ the right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protection from harm , ” and the “ right to be treated with dignity and respect.
” Like all halfway houses , the Grossman Center is supposed to assist people returning from prison in finding jobs and housing , to ease their transition back into society .
In GEO Group ’ s corporate parlance , this is part of its ever-expanding Continuum of Care Division , “ enhanced in-custody offender rehabilitation programming … integrated with post-release support services.
” Last year , the corporation reports spending some $ 10 million on the Continuum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ GEO ’ s contribution to criminal justice reform.
” Of course , GEO Group is most famous for its primary business , private prisons , and especially for incarcerating undocumented immigrants for the federal government .
In recent years , the company has fought attempts to ban its facilities and been forced to defend its reputation ; last year , a PR firm cut ties with the corporation just two months after landing the contract after its own employees revolted .
Halfway houses have been largely overlooked during the coronavirus crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country ’ s carceral landscape , they are also uniquely suited to be vectors for the virus .
At the federal level , the number of RRCs with confirmed cases has ticked steadily upward , as have the total number of residents testing positive for Covid-19 .
In late May , the BOP counted 230 Covid-19 cases across 42 RRCs .
Today it counts 275 cases across 48 RRCs .
Yet even these numbers are a partial picture at best .
For one , the BOP tally does not count residents who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offices , such as U.S .
Probation and Parole .
Nor does it count halfway house staff — a significant omission .
The tallies linked to individual facilities have also wavered inexplicably .
With the BOP tracking “ Inmates Positive ” as well as “ Inmates Recovered , ” the total cases tied to a given RRC should continue to go up or otherwise stay steady even as residents go from the former to the latter .
Instead , the numbers are dropping ; the Grossman Center previously showed 57 cases .
Today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ residents of federal halfway houses have died of Covid-19 , according to the BOP , tripling the numbers seen in late May .
As with previous deaths at RRCs , no further information has been released about the fatalities .
Three of the fatalities are linked to GEO Group , including the most recent , which took place at a halfway house in Houston , the second at that facility .
The other was a resident at a GEO facility in the Bronx .
The company has not responded to questions about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the country have reported positive cases to the BOP , along with two CEC halfway houses .
Multiple residents of a GEO Group halfway house in Oakland , California , described a dysfunctional response to the crisis , telling The Intercept that its first positive case in mid-April was met with silence from the facility ’ s director .
Before a second case was discovered a few days later , residents whose jobs were deemed essential were allowed to continue going to work .
Staff tried to keep the case a secret @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to take additional precautions — including from the man ’ s former roommates , who were simply told they had to remain isolated without explanation .
After asking about the case , one resident recalls being told , “ We don ’ t know what you ’ re talking about.
” As the Grossman Center was scrambling to contain the virus , GEO Group executives were projecting confidence that the company had things under control .
“ From the outset of this global pandemic our corporate regional and field staff have implemented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risks of Covid-19 to all of those in our care , ” GEO Group founder and CEO George Zoley told investors during a quarterly earnings call held on April 30 .
The health and safety of those inside its facilities “ has always been our No .
1 priority , ” he said , adding that “ all of our facilities operate safely and without overcrowded conditions.
” Like everyone forced to answer for halfway houses in an official capacity , GEO Care President Ann Schlarb said the company ’ s reentry facilities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Disease Control and Prevention .
Along with increased personal hygiene products , she said , “ we have deployed special sanitation teams to sterilize high-contact areas of our facilities and have developed special schedules and procedures for the cleaning and disinfecting of facility spaces using sanitation products that are proven health care-grade disinfectants.
” On a less positive note — and despite the fact that GEO Group provides an “ essential government service ” — Zoley reported that “ Covid-19 has also negatively impacted our projected revenues and cash flows for the year.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and U.S .
Marshals facilities , “ our GEO Reentry Services business has also seen an occupancy decline beginning in late March , ” he said , though “ we hope the trends will improve later this year.
” In a subsequent Q & A , investors sought details about the corporation ’ s financial outlook .
One asked whether the prospect of a Democratic administration might be bad for business and was reassured that it would not .
Another caller noted that “ your industry is under attack by a certain group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying that he ’ d like to see “ more good-feeling publicity ” around endeavors like GEO ’ s Continuum of Care division .
After all , “ you don ’ t create prisoners , you house them.
” Zoley concurred .
“ We take care of them .
… And we ’ re proud that we have what we believe is possibly the finest offender rehabilitation program in the world.
” On the same day as the call , Grossman Center residents were being shuffled to different sections of the facility .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ worse , residents said , emphasizing that the virus spread not in spite of the facility ’ s efforts to contain it , but because of it .
One resident sent photos showing men in a crowded bunk ; some wore masks but most did not .
He also sent photos of the meal packets that were provided in place of hot food after kitchen staff stopped coming to work : plastic pouches containing mackerel fillets , saltines , and peanut butter crackers .
Contrary to the claim that GEO Group was prepared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic , one resident who arrived at the Grossman Center in March said the facility had done “ absolutely nothing ” to mitigate the virus , apart from suspending the 42-hour passes that allow residents to go see family , as ordered by the BOP .
At one point , he said , “ they taped up these benches and said that we had to sit , like , a certain distance apart from one another .
… But you have to understand , they have us in these units that are super @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of bathroom stalls , sinks , and showers .
“ So basically regardless of the protocols they try to do outside the unit , inside the unit , they literally have us shoved in on top of each other .
So there ’ s really no way for us to have any type of distancing .
It ’ s impossible.
” In early May , as the cases at the Grossman Center shot up , a woman got a series of messages from her partner , a resident at the halfway house .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ protect us from contracting the virus , ” he wrote .
“ We are in the same areas as the ones who are tested positive.
” Moreover , as the halfway house moved the residents from dorm to dorm , he said that residents had to clean the areas themselves , swiping cleaning supplies that they were not technically even allowed to use .
He also reported that staff were getting sick , although some were trying to hide it .
At least one employee continued to come to work despite not feeling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symptoms under wraps , he told her .
At one point , the director disappeared from the halfway house .
Although The Intercept was not able to confirm it , six different sources said they were told that he had contracted Covid-19 .
In mid-May , after weeks of resistance from the halfway house and BOP , dozens of residents were finally allowed to go to home confinement .
Those who remained at the Grossman Center late last month said they felt abandoned .
“ There was a lot of staff when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Now it ’ s like nobody ’ s barely here.
” That resident arrived at the facility in late April , following a long and crowded Greyhound bus trip after being released from prison .
Having received instructions to self-quarantine at home for 14 days prior to arriving at the facility , the resident then reported to the halfway house .
But shortly after getting a job , the outbreak began .
“ I tested negative at first , ” the resident said .
But like so many others , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ My family doesn ’ t understand why they made me come to this facility if they have this virus here.
” All of the residents told The Intercept that they were disturbed by the lack of urgency in providing medical care .
“ It ’ s pretty tough dealing with being so sick with Covid-19 in this facility because the people that run it have no concern for the fact that we ’ re actually sick , ” one man said .
“ It ’ s just like statistical number processing.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Mentally I ’ m going crazy , ” they said .
Despite the outdoor recreation area , they were not being allowed out for fresh air .
“ We ’ re in this room with only one window , and they have film over the window , so we can ’ t see outside.
” Today most of the people who spoke to The Intercept are no longer in the halfway house .
The director has returned to work , and people are going back to work on the outside — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Otherwise , “ it doesn ’ t seem like much has changed as far as their safety measures go , ” one resident said .
The population is starting to go up again , too .
On the men ’ s side last week , one resident said , some 23 new people were transferred to the facility .
And there is a group of women poised to arrive as well .

The women were the first to get sick. “It was like flu symptoms,” recalled a resident of the women’s dorm at the Grossman Center, a federal halfway house in Leavenworth, Kansas, run by the private prison company GEO Group. Two women began coughing, getting cold sweats, and running a fever around mid- to late April. By the end of the month, they had been taken to the hospital and tested positive for the coronavirus. “And that’s when they started testing all of us.”
In the women’s dorm, a half-dozen residents had been working at Triumph Foods, a pork processing plant in St. Joseph, Missouri, some 40 miles north of the halfway house. “Honestly, it was horrible,” said one woman who had a job cutting meat on an assembly line. The space was crowded, and she was constantly cold even beneath layers of protective gear, which required her to arrive early in order to get dressed. The locker rooms would get so full, another worker said, that she had to wait for others to exit before she could go in.
The first two positive cases at the Triumph plant were confirmed on April 20. Soon there were hundreds more. Workers launched a Change.org petition in Spanish and English, asking that the plant be temporarily closed, and warning of the threat to the surrounding community. By early May, a worker had died and the plant had been linked to rising coronavirus cases in and around Kansas City. “I’m really concerned about this,” the local health department director told the press. “This gives you a good example that there are a lot more cases out there that we don’t know about.”
Across the border in Kansas, after the first two halfway house residents got sick, almost all the women who worked at the plant tested positive too. Those who tested negative were moved, first upstairs to the room that had been used to quarantine the sick women, and then downstairs to a space usually reserved as a job center. “That was horrible because it was like a really small area for all four of us,” one of them recalled. Despite the attempts at quarantine, a week later, she tested positive too.
Meanwhile, on the men’s side, residents were notified that the coronavirus had made its way into the Grossman Center. One former resident was at work on April 30 when he got a phone call ordering him to return to the halfway house. When he got there, a quarantine dorm was being set up — residents were being moved to clear space. His unit would be tested the next day.
But that same night, he said, two new people arrived. Both men had been transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton, Ohio — a well-known coronavirus hot spot. The men were placed in a crowded unit; “22 of us living in the area of a three-car garage,” the former resident recalled. The next morning, on Friday, May 1, they were all tested for Covid-19. When the results came back the following Monday, one of the men from Elkton had tested positive. In other words, the former resident said, he had been infected before arriving at the halfway house.
Even more alarming, as they awaited test results over the weekend, everyone had remained mixed together, without knowing who might be exposing whom. On Monday, the same day he found out he’d tested negative, the resident began to feel under the weather: “a little dry cough, a headache, and a scratchy throat.” He reported his symptoms to staff to no avail. By Wednesday morning, he woke up drenched in sweat, yet so cold his teeth were chattering. After that, “the body aches came. All this stuff came in waves and they were so severe. I gotta be honest with you, I didn’t think I was gonna make it.”
That man recuperated and has since been placed in home confinement, along with dozens of other residents. Today, the Leavenworth County Department of Health says that everyone who tested positive at the Grossman Center has recovered. Yet the full toll of the outbreak remains impossible to measure. Leavenworth County was home to one of the state’s largest Covid-19 outbreaks — and part of a regional cluster in Kansas alone that included thousands of cases. At the Lansing Correctional Facility just south of the Grossman Center, at least 835 cases were recorded. Two prison workers and four incarcerated people died from complications related to Covid-19.
Although the number of confirmed cases at the Grossman Center is much smaller than at the prison or meatpacking plant, residents at the halfway house describe conditions that posed a similar danger to the surrounding community. Even as the pandemic forced the country into lockdown beginning in March, residents still cycled in and out of the facility through the end of April. Those forced to leave their posts at the Triumph plant after the coronavirus was discovered there were nevertheless allowed to get other jobs — including one woman who would eventually test positive for Covid-19. Another resident, who arrived at the Grossman Center in late April, was about to start a job at a nursing home in Lansing before the halfway house was finally locked down. That resident tested positive too.
Although it has since been surpassed by other facilities, the Grossman Center was for weeks the hardest hit federal halfway house in the country, according to the Bureau of Prisons. The local health department counted 67 cases — higher than the bureau’s tally, which does not include staff or people in the custody of other agencies. According to residents and others familiar with the situation — all of whom spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation — even the director of the Grossman Center reportedly contracted the virus. Geo Group did not respond to questions about this or any aspect of its handling of the pandemic.
As national attention turned from the coronavirus to the protests over racist police violence following the murder of George Floyd, Covid-19 has continued to spread across federal prisons and halfway houses, including those run by GEO Group. With the BOP continuing to transfer people from prison to halfway houses across the country throughout the pandemic — and with many states currently experiencing a resurgence of cases — the risk is far from over.
A Partial Picture
The Grossman Center is located northwest of Kansas City, not far from where the Missouri River forms Kansas’s eastern border. A 2017 audit describes the building as “a metal structure with two floors,” with six dormitory-style housing units containing a total of 144 beds. Outside there’s a recreation area with a basketball hoop and picnic tables. A resident handbook from 2013 lays out a list of Resident Rights, including “the right to a humane environment that provides reasonable protection from harm,” and the “right to be treated with dignity and respect.”
Like all halfway houses, the Grossman Center is supposed to assist people returning from prison in finding jobs and housing, to ease their transition back into society. In GEO Group’s corporate parlance, this is part of its ever-expanding Continuum of Care Division, “enhanced in-custody offender rehabilitation programming … integrated with post-release support services.” Last year, the corporation reports spending some $10 million on the Continuum of Care program, which it describes as “GEO’s contribution to criminal justice reform.”
Of course, GEO Group is most famous for its primary business, private prisons, and especially for incarcerating undocumented immigrants for the federal government. In recent years, the company has fought attempts to ban its facilities and been forced to defend its reputation; last year, a PR firm cut ties with the corporation just two months after landing the contract after its own employees revolted.
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Amid such backlash — and with the rise of criminal justice reform as a mainstream policy goal — GEO Group has moved increasingly into reentry and alternatives to incarceration. In 2017 it acquired Community Education Centers, gaining thousands of reentry beds. Along with CoreCivic, it also vocally supported the federal First Step Act passed in 2018, which pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to expanded reentry services. Today GEO Group counts 45 residential reentry centers, or RRCs, as part of its wholly owned subsidiary, GEO Care. Although most contract at the state level, at least 14 have contracts with the BOP, including the Grossman Center. Another set still operate under the CEC name, although the precise number is unclear.
Illustration: The Intercept
Halfway houses have been largely overlooked during the coronavirus crisis. Although they are a speck in the country’s carceral landscape, they are also uniquely suited to be vectors for the virus. At the federal level, the number of RRCs with confirmed cases has ticked steadily upward, as have the total number of residents testing positive for Covid-19. In late May, the BOP counted 230 Covid-19 cases across 42 RRCs. Today it counts 275 cases across 48 RRCs. Yet even these numbers are a partial picture at best. For one, the BOP tally does not count residents who are in the custody of other federal offices, such as U.S. Probation and Parole. Nor does it count halfway house staff — a significant omission. The tallies linked to individual facilities have also wavered inexplicably. With the BOP tracking “Inmates Positive” as well as “Inmates Recovered,” the total cases tied to a given RRC should continue to go up or otherwise stay steady even as residents go from the former to the latter. Instead, the numbers are dropping; the Grossman Center previously showed 57 cases. Today it shows 48.
Although halfway houses are a speck in the country’s carceral landscape, they are also uniquely suited to be vectors for the coronavirus.
At least six residents of federal halfway houses have died of Covid-19, according to the BOP, tripling the numbers seen in late May. As with previous deaths at RRCs, no further information has been released about the fatalities. Three of the fatalities are linked to GEO Group, including the most recent, which took place at a halfway house in Houston, the second at that facility. The other was a resident at a GEO facility in the Bronx. The company has not responded to questions about the deaths.
Another three GEO Group RRCs across the country have reported positive cases to the BOP, along with two CEC halfway houses. Multiple residents of a GEO Group halfway house in Oakland, California, described a dysfunctional response to the crisis, telling The Intercept that its first positive case in mid-April was met with silence from the facility’s director. Before a second case was discovered a few days later, residents whose jobs were deemed essential were allowed to continue going to work. Staff tried to keep the case a secret rather than make everyone aware of the need to take additional precautions — including from the man’s former roommates, who were simply told they had to remain isolated without explanation. After asking about the case, one resident recalls being told, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A Blundering Response
As the Grossman Center was scrambling to contain the virus, GEO Group executives were projecting confidence that the company had things under control. “From the outset of this global pandemic our corporate regional and field staff have implemented comprehensive steps to address and mitigate the risks of Covid-19 to all of those in our care,” GEO Group founder and CEO George Zoley told investors during a quarterly earnings call held on April 30. The health and safety of those inside its facilities “has always been our No. 1 priority,” he said, adding that “all of our facilities operate safely and without overcrowded conditions.”
Like everyone forced to answer for halfway houses in an official capacity, GEO Care President Ann Schlarb said the company’s reentry facilities were following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Along with increased personal hygiene products, she said, “we have deployed special sanitation teams to sterilize high-contact areas of our facilities and have developed special schedules and procedures for the cleaning and disinfecting of facility spaces using sanitation products that are proven health care-grade disinfectants.”
On a less positive note — and despite the fact that GEO Group provides an “essential government service” — Zoley reported that “Covid-19 has also negatively impacted our projected revenues and cash flows for the year.” Along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Marshals facilities, “our GEO Reentry Services business has also seen an occupancy decline beginning in late March,” he said, though “we hope the trends will improve later this year.”
In a subsequent Q&A, investors sought details about the corporation’s financial outlook. One asked whether the prospect of a Democratic administration might be bad for business and was reassured that it would not. Another caller noted that “your industry is under attack by a certain group of people in our country,” saying that he’d like to see “more good-feeling publicity” around endeavors like GEO’s Continuum of Care division. After all, “you don’t create prisoners, you house them.” Zoley concurred. “We take care of them. … And we’re proud that we have what we believe is possibly the finest offender rehabilitation program in the world.”
Do you have a coronavirus story you want to share? Email us at coronavirus@theintercept.com or use one of these secure methods to contact a reporter.
On the same day as the call, Grossman Center residents were being shuffled to different sections of the facility. But the blundering response only made things worse, residents said, emphasizing that the virus spread not in spite of the facility’s efforts to contain it, but because of it. One resident sent photos showing men in a crowded bunk; some wore masks but most did not. He also sent photos of the meal packets that were provided in place of hot food after kitchen staff stopped coming to work: plastic pouches containing mackerel fillets, saltines, and peanut butter crackers.
Contrary to the claim that GEO Group was prepared from the outset to respond to the pandemic, one resident who arrived at the Grossman Center in March said the facility had done “absolutely nothing” to mitigate the virus, apart from suspending the 42-hour passes that allow residents to go see family, as ordered by the BOP. At one point, he said, “they taped up these benches and said that we had to sit, like, a certain distance apart from one another. … But you have to understand, they have us in these units that are super small,” with a limited number of bathroom stalls, sinks, and showers. “So basically regardless of the protocols they try to do outside the unit, inside the unit, they literally have us shoved in on top of each other. So there’s really no way for us to have any type of distancing. It’s impossible.”
In early May, as the cases at the Grossman Center shot up, a woman got a series of messages from her partner, a resident at the halfway house. “They have literally done nothing to protect us from contracting the virus,” he wrote. “We are in the same areas as the ones who are tested positive.” Moreover, as the halfway house moved the residents from dorm to dorm, he said that residents had to clean the areas themselves, swiping cleaning supplies that they were not technically even allowed to use.
“They have literally done nothing to protect us from contracting the virus.”
He also reported that staff were getting sick, although some were trying to hide it. At least one employee continued to come to work despite not feeling well, while trying to keep their symptoms under wraps, he told her. At one point, the director disappeared from the halfway house. Although The Intercept was not able to confirm it, six different sources said they were told that he had contracted Covid-19.
In mid-May, after weeks of resistance from the halfway house and BOP, dozens of residents were finally allowed to go to home confinement. Those who remained at the Grossman Center late last month said they felt abandoned. “There was a lot of staff when I got there,” one resident said. “Now it’s like nobody’s barely here.” That resident arrived at the facility in late April, following a long and crowded Greyhound bus trip after being released from prison. Having received instructions to self-quarantine at home for 14 days prior to arriving at the facility, the resident then reported to the halfway house.
But shortly after getting a job, the outbreak began. “I tested negative at first,” the resident said. But like so many others, the virus eventually caught up with them. “My family doesn’t understand why they made me come to this facility if they have this virus here.”
All of the residents told The Intercept that they were disturbed by the lack of urgency in providing medical care. “It’s pretty tough dealing with being so sick with Covid-19 in this facility because the people that run it have no concern for the fact that we’re actually sick,” one man said. “It’s just like statistical number processing.” Another resident called it worse than prison. “Mentally I’m going crazy,” they said. Despite the outdoor recreation area, they were not being allowed out for fresh air. “We’re in this room with only one window, and they have film over the window, so we can’t see outside.”
Today most of the people who spoke to The Intercept are no longer in the halfway house. The director has returned to work, and people are going back to work on the outside — although not at the Triumph plant. Otherwise, “it doesn’t seem like much has changed as far as their safety measures go,” one resident said.
The population is starting to go up again, too. On the men’s side last week, one resident said, some 23 new people were transferred to the facility. And there is a group of women poised to arrive as well.


theintercept--2020-06-17--Poll Claims Mondaire Jones Is New York Dems Best Chance to Stop Onetime Turncoat Candidate

The question facing local Democratic voters intent on stopping Carlucci , then , was which of the viable candidates was the smartest to strategically consolidate behind .
For that , they wanted their own independent poll .
So the Greenburgh Town Democratic Committee commissioned Public Policy Polling , a progressive polling firm , to survey the race .
“ With no incumbent in the race and so many candidates , many without any previous electoral track record , we were all hearing a lot of questions from voters , and even asking ourselves within the local party here in Greenburgh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Dan Weinfeld , speaking on behalf of the Greenburgh Dems , told The Intercept .
“ Obviously , assessing the threat of the IDC candidate ’ s chances played a big role too .
With no local media offering independent polling , we figured that if we didn ’ t commission a poll from a reputable independent firm , no one would.
” The progressive polling operation Data for Progress released a poll in early June showing four candidates bunched together at the top , all within the margin of error @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15 points ; former Defense Department official Evelyn Farkas and former federal prosecutor Adam Schleifer just behind at 13 percent ; and Mondaire Jones , who ’ d been endorsed by local and national progressive groups , at 12 percent .
The poll helped set off alarm bells and the progressive consolidation behind Jones hastened , with Sen. Bernie Sanders joining Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in backing Jones , culminating in a recent endorsement by the New York Times editorial page .
Jones has racked up endorsements from Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Democracy for America .
Jones ’ s campaign raised $ 350,000 since Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him on June 5 , including $ 290,000 since Sanders ’ s endorsement last week , according to his spokesperson .
With a half-dozen or more viable challengers , state Sen. David Carlucci — who is well known in the southern New York district , home to wealthy enclaves like Chappaqua , and has a base of support in Rockland County — has been considered the frontrunner .
City and State previously reported that several internal polls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the start of the race .
Carlucci was a leader of the IDC , a band of breakaway Democratic senators who caucused with Republicans in Albany , before most of them were wiped out in 2018 .
The notion that Carlucci could get a promotion to Congress was anathema to many local Democrats .
Concerned that a crowded field of candidates could lead to the accidental nomination of a former leader of the Independent Democratic Conference in a New York congressional race , local Democratic officials took the unusual step of commissioning their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the race .
The survey of 1,141 likely primary voters found Jones up by a surprising 11 points , at 25 percent , with Farkas and Schleifer tied for second at 14 percent , and Carlucci at fourth at 11 .
The undecided number had fallen to just 24 percent from 38 when DFP had surveyed .
Asked for a second choice , 16 percent of voters named Farkas , while 11 percent named Jones .
One in 10 voters said they had already sent in a ballot , and only a quarter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Day , with the rest either voting by mail or early voting .
Nearly a third of Jones supporters said they had already voted , by far more than his opponents , suggesting that Jones ’ s supporters are enthusiastic and/or he ’ s winning over the most plugged-in party activists and voters .
The survey was conducted from June 15 to 16 .
The poll showed a sharp divergence between landline and text respondents , with Jones beating Farkas by 20 points among text-based survey takers , and by 4 points among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 4 percent among voters under the age of 46 , but was the favored candidate among those over 65 .
Landline respondents made up 56 percent of the poll .
Jones initially entered the race to primary incumbent Rep. Nita Lowey , who later announced her retirement , leading to the crowded field .
The district is deep blue and also one of the wealthiest in the country , which poses a question to Democratic voters as to what kind of party they want to be .
Jones , who would be the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was raised by a single mother who cleaned homes in the district before he went on to Harvard Law School .
Jones represents one path that wealthier Democratic districts can go , while the other candidates represent different directions .
Farkas , running to join other women in Congress with roots in the national security establishment , has the backing of controversial donors like John Negroponte and stumbled in the campaign when it emerged that she had fabricated a high-profile claim on MSNBC .
Farkas had said that she had encouraged her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collect evidence related to Russian interference in the 2016 election , but when she testified behind closed doors , she told investigators she knew of no such evidence and had “ made a leap.
” Over the course of his career , Carlucci received roughly $ 125,000 in contributions from law enforcement groups .
In a petition circulated earlier this month , the advocacy group MoveOn called on Carlucci to return donations from interest groups that opposed police reforms and to answer to his record of having failed to advocate for criminal justice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Carlucci ’ s record with the IDC is proving to be a liability in other ways as well .
The Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion is sending mailers and making robocalls urging voters not to support Carlucci , noting that he blocked pro-abortion legislation for years as a member of the IDC .
Carlucci is one of several congressional and state-level candidates who appear to be getting endorsements from the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York , according to a screenshot of the PBA ’ s private endorsements tweeted by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early June .
The list of endorsements , which have not yet been made public , includes Carlucci ; Michele Caruso-Cabrera , who is running against Ocasio-Cortez in the 14th District ; and Rev .
Rubén Díaz Sr. — who is proudly homophobic and opposes abortion rights — in the 15th District .
Díaz confirmed the endorsement late last month .
Carlucci ’ s campaign did not confirm or deny the endorsement by the time of publication .
Neither did Caruso-Cabrera ’ s .
The PBA did not respond to requests for comment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has outraised all of his opponents except Farkas , who has received significant funding from the defense industry and brought in $ 1.3 million , according to her campaign .
Carlucci has raised $ 366,431 so far .
Buchwald , who is worth between $ 2.9 and $ 4.2 million , according to disclosures , has raised $ 981,510 , including $ 550,000 of his own money .
Schleifer , the son of a pharmaceutical billionaire who founded Regeneron , is self-funding his campaign , having so far poured in nearly $ 4 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a wealth tax , and he has between $ 26 million and $ 55 million in pharma holdings , including at least $ 25 million from Regeneron .
Farkas has backing from prominent Republicans and defense industry donors , including Negroponte , who was George W. Bush ’ s director of national intelligence , as well as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations , where he helped make the case for the invasion of Iraq .
Farkas is the only candidate to outraise Jones this quarter .
She is also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contributions from a Republican political action committee , Gen Equity Federal PAC .
The group also gave $ 2,800 in August to California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Panetta ’ s campaign .
Farkas and Panetta are the only two Democratic House candidates the PAC has contributed to since 2014 .
Its top GOP recipients this cycle include Republican Sens .
Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona , and Republican congressional candidate Michelle Steel , who ’ s running against California Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda in the 48th District .
One of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic contributions was in 2016 to the Democratic Fearless PAC , which is affiliated with Colorado Gov .
Jared Polis , for $ 1,000 .
EMILY ’ s List , the establishment-aligned group that supports pro-abortion women for office , endorsed Farkas in early May and made an independent expenditure against Schleifer this month .
Schleifer is now targeting Farkas in return .
“ Evelyn Farkas might be running as a Democrat , but she is bought and paid for by special interests in Washington , most notably a Republican PAC called Gen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ congressional allies , ” said Chris Scribner , Schleifer ’ s spokesperson .
“ Farkas should immediately return the money to her GOP backers and denounce Gen Equity ’ s efforts to obstruct progressive policies in Congress.
” Asked for comment , Farkas ’ s campaign manager suggested that The Intercept ’ s resources ought to be dedicated to investigating Carlucci , Schleifer , or Jones , rather than focusing on Farkas .

Concerned that a crowded field of candidates could lead to the accidental nomination of a former leader of the Independent Democratic Conference in a New York congressional race, local Democratic officials took the unusual step of commissioning their own survey to assess the contours of the race.
With a half-dozen or more viable challengers, state Sen. David Carlucci — who is well known in the southern New York district, home to wealthy enclaves like Chappaqua, and has a base of support in Rockland County — has been considered the frontrunner. City and State previously reported that several internal polls have shown Carlucci in the lead since the start of the race. Carlucci was a leader of the IDC, a band of breakaway Democratic senators who caucused with Republicans in Albany, before most of them were wiped out in 2018. The notion that Carlucci could get a promotion to Congress was anathema to many local Democrats.
The progressive polling operation Data for Progress released a poll in early June showing four candidates bunched together at the top, all within the margin of error, with Carlucci at the top with 15 points; former Defense Department official Evelyn Farkas and former federal prosecutor Adam Schleifer just behind at 13 percent; and Mondaire Jones, who’d been endorsed by local and national progressive groups, at 12 percent. The poll helped set off alarm bells and the progressive consolidation behind Jones hastened, with Sen. Bernie Sanders joining Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in backing Jones, culminating in a recent endorsement by the New York Times editorial page. Jones has racked up endorsements from Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, the New York Working Families Party, and Democracy for America. Jones’s campaign raised $350,000 since Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him on June 5, including $290,000 since Sanders’s endorsement last week, according to his spokesperson.
The question facing local Democratic voters intent on stopping Carlucci, then, was which of the viable candidates was the smartest to strategically consolidate behind. For that, they wanted their own independent poll. So local Democratic officials and donors pooled resources to commission Public Policy Polling, a progressive polling firm, to survey the race. “With no incumbent in the race and so many candidates, many without any previous electoral track record, we were all hearing a lot of questions from voters, and even asking ourselves within the local party here in Greenburgh, about the direction of the race,” Dan Weinfeld, speaking on behalf of the Greenburgh Dems, told The Intercept. “Obviously, assessing the threat of the IDC candidate’s chances played a big role too. With no local media offering independent polling, we figured that if we didn’t commission a poll from a reputable independent firm, no one would.” The poll was funded by private donors, Weinfeld said, as well as the Greenburgh Town, Irvington, Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown Democratic Committees.
The survey of 1,141 likely primary voters found Jones up by a surprising 11 points, at 25 percent, with Farkas and Schleifer tied for second at 14 percent, and Carlucci at fourth at 11. The undecided number had fallen to just 24 percent from 38 when DFP had surveyed. Asked for a second choice, 16 percent of voters named Farkas, while 11 percent named Jones. One in 10 voters said they had already sent in a ballot, and only a quarter said they planned the vote on Election Day, with the rest either voting by mail or early voting. Nearly a third of Jones supporters said they had already voted, by far more than his opponents, suggesting that Jones’s supporters are enthusiastic and/or he’s winning over the most plugged-in party activists and voters. The survey was conducted from June 15 to 16. The poll showed a sharp divergence between landline and text respondents, with Jones beating Farkas by 20 points among text-based survey takers, and by 4 points among landline respondents. Farkas polled at just 4 percent among voters under the age of 46, but was the favored candidate among those over 65. Landline respondents made up 56 percent of the poll.
Jones initially entered the race to primary incumbent Rep. Nita Lowey, who later announced her retirement, leading to the crowded field. The district is deep blue and also one of the wealthiest in the country, which poses a question to Democratic voters as to what kind of party they want to be. Jones, who would be the first openly gay black man in Congress, was raised by a single mother who cleaned homes in the district before he went on to Harvard Law School. Jones represents one path that wealthier Democratic districts can go, while the other candidates represent different directions.
Farkas, running to join other women in Congress with roots in the national security establishment, has the backing of controversial donors like John Negroponte and stumbled in the campaign when it emerged that she had fabricated a high-profile claim on MSNBC. Farkas had said that she had encouraged her staffers and others on the Hill to collect evidence related to Russian interference in the 2016 election, but when she testified behind closed doors, she told investigators she knew of no such evidence and had “made a leap.”
Over the course of his career, Carlucci received roughly $125,000 in contributions from law enforcement groups. In a petition circulated earlier this month, the advocacy group MoveOn called on Carlucci to return donations from interest groups that opposed police reforms and to answer to his record of having failed to advocate for criminal justice reform over his decade in office.
Carlucci’s record with the IDC is proving to be a liability in other ways as well. The Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion is sending mailers and making robocalls urging voters not to support Carlucci, noting that he blocked pro-abortion legislation for years as a member of the IDC.
Carlucci is one of several congressional and state-level candidates who appear to be getting endorsements from the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, according to a screenshot of the PBA’s private endorsements tweeted by Queens Eagle Managing Editor David Brand in early June. The list of endorsements, which have not yet been made public, includes Carlucci; Michele Caruso-Cabrera, who is running against Ocasio-Cortez in the 14th District; and Rev. Rubén Díaz Sr. — who is proudly homophobic and opposes abortion rights — in the 15th District. Díaz confirmed the endorsement late last month.
Carlucci’s campaign did not confirm or deny the endorsement by the time of publication. Neither did Caruso-Cabrera’s. The PBA did not respond to requests for comment.
With $1.1 million, Jones has outraised all of his opponents except Farkas, who has received significant funding from the defense industry and brought in $1.3 million, according to her campaign. Carlucci has raised $366,431 so far. Buchwald, who is worth between $2.9 and $4.2 million, according to disclosures, has raised $981,510, including $550,000 of his own money. Schleifer, the son of a pharmaceutical billionaire who founded Regeneron, is self-funding his campaign, having so far poured in nearly $4 million. He has said he opposes a wealth tax, and he has between $26 million and $55 million in pharma holdings, including at least $25 million from Regeneron.
Farkas has backing from prominent Republicans and defense industry donors, including Negroponte, who was George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence, as well as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations, where he helped make the case for the invasion of Iraq. Farkas is the only candidate to outraise Jones this quarter.
She is also the top Democratic recipient this cycle of contributions from a Republican political action committee, Gen Equity Federal PAC. The group also gave $2,800 in August to California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s campaign. Farkas and Panetta are the only two Democratic House candidates the PAC has contributed to since 2014. Its top GOP recipients this cycle include Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona, and Republican congressional candidate Michelle Steel, who’s running against California Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda in the 48th District. One of Gen Equity’s only other recent Democratic contributions was in 2016 to the Democratic Fearless PAC, which is affiliated with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, for $1,000.
EMILY’s List, the establishment-aligned group that supports pro-abortion women for office, endorsed Farkas in early May and made an independent expenditure against Schleifer this month.
Schleifer is now targeting Farkas in return. “Evelyn Farkas might be running as a Democrat, but she is bought and paid for by special interests in Washington, most notably a Republican PAC called Gen Equity that supports Donald Trump’s congressional allies,” said Chris Scribner, Schleifer’s spokesperson. “Farkas should immediately return the money to her GOP backers and denounce Gen Equity’s efforts to obstruct progressive policies in Congress.” Asked for comment, Farkas’s campaign manager suggested that The Intercept’s resources ought to be dedicated to investigating Carlucci, Schleifer, or Jones, rather than focusing on Farkas.