New York City Council members had 90 minutes on Tuesday to question the city’s jails chief and Mayor Eric Adams' chief counsel about the ongoing humanitarian crisis at Rikers Island, but they declined to ask specific questions or follow-ups about the issues facing the jails complex that have garnered the most public attention.

Among the issues not raised by members of the Council’s committee on criminal justice were systemic problems which may have led to the deaths of nine Rikers detainees so far this year, plus 16 in city custody last year. Councilmember Shahana Hanif did bring up the death of Mary Yehudah, 31, who reportedly overdosed from drugs in her cell in May, but Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina said he couldn’t talk about what happened because the matter was still under investigation.

Three recent deaths may have been connected to correction officers’ failing to render aid, according to an investigation by the oversight Board of Correction, with one man brought to the medical clinic by other incarcerated people after he choked on an orange. Staffing shortages, which the Rikers’ federal monitor has attributed in part to the department’s unlimited sick leave policy, have resulted in a lack of officers available to interact with inmates.

Molina said so far this year he suspended 162 officers for abuse of sick leave — more than last year. And he said there are now about 20 unmanned posts in housing units at any given time, compared to 110 last September.

The hearing was called to get an update on the Rikers Island Interagency Task Force, which Adams created in May, but Brendan McGuire, chief counsel to the mayor, said many of the details of what the task force was working on couldn’t be discussed publicly, and the task force would not issue public reports. He said the group's main role was to support the implementation of the so-called action plan that a federal judge mandated the city put in place, in order to improve conditions at the facility.

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