Juanita Holmes Shifts Probation Department Focus Toward Law Enforcement

NEW YORK (Daily News/TNS) — In the nine months since Mayor Eric Adams tapped ex-NYPD chief Juanita Holmes to run the city Probation Department, she has ordered officers to carry guns, pushed for offenders to be charged more often with probation violations, and slashed funding to well-regarded programs.

Critics worry she’s shifted the agency from an emphasis on social work to a more aggressive law enforcement footing.

“Probation developed a national reputation for its thoughtful, reform-oriented approach,” said City Councilman Lincoln Restler, a co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucus. “And I think she’s going in the wrong direction and sending the wrong message.”

But Holmes says the changes are aimed at making the agency do a better job ensuring people on probation are working, attending school or meeting other requirements of their non-jail sentences.

Appearing before reporters recently, Holmes suggested some programs funded by the city have failed to show they were helping probationers — and, in her view, justified their funding merely by showing they had enrolled people in their programs.

“If you were a mentorship group, as long as you had 16 names, that was success,” Holmes said. “It didn’t add up to me.”

Holmes says she wants “key performance indicators” to show people enrolled in mentorship groups and other probation programs are going through the steps required by the terms of their sentences — steps she hopes will keep probationers from becoming repeat criminal offenders.

Her aim with probationers, she said, is “to plug them into the needs that they have. To me those are successful outcomes. We have program evaluators that we look at monthly, and if we see something deficient, we speak with them.”

The Holmes era at Probation began March 9, weeks after she fell afoul of then-Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell in her previous job as the Police Department’s director of training. Sewell was reportedly frustrated that over her objections, Holmes went to Adams in an effort to change the NYPD’s physical training standards. Also, Sewell was irked that Holmes had invited a celebrity to a Police Academy event.

Adams’ decision to move Holmes to Probation — with its $17 million budget and caseload of 13,400 adults and 600 youths — was seen as an effort to give an old ally a soft landing.

At first, it didn’t seem as though Holmes wanted big change in the department. During City Council testimony March 23 — early in her tenure — Holmes praised the agency’s “holistic” approach. Next to her were longtime probation officials — Michael Forte, Sharun Goodwin, Wayne McKenzie and Gineen Gray.

Only Goodwin is still at the department today.

Forte left after Holmes diminished his role, insiders said. McKenzie departed for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. And Gray left after a blowup with Holmes over the direction of the agency, sources said. Gray did not return phone messages.

Holmes, meanwhile, brought to Probation’s top ranks several current and former NYPD officers, none with probation experience.

She tapped retired lieutenant Shamik Walton as her chief of staff eight days into her tenure. Walton’s hiring was controversial because during a fight in 2005, he shot and killed a tenant in a Brooklyn building he owned. Walton was off-duty at the time.

Walton was acquitted at trial and cleared by the NYPD. He retired in 2011. But in 2015, the city paid $500,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the dead man’s family. On Nov. 8, Walton abruptly resigned from the Probation Department job, which paid him $179,000 per year on top of his police pension.

Holmes also brought over William “Red” Manderson, a detective first grade she promoted who had worked for her when she was leading the NYPD’s Training Bureau and before.

Manderson, one of about 200 NYPD detectives first grade, is Holmes’ driver and personal aide, three insiders told the Daily News. In fiscal 2023, which includes the first six months of this year, he made $192,547, including $51,896 in overtime, city payroll records show.

Retired NYPD sergeant Robert Maldonado was hired in August as a deputy commissioner to oversee programming at a salary of over $160,000, which he collects on top of his police pension. As a cop, Maldonado worked for the NYC Emergency Management, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, his LinkedIn page shows.

After Maldonado retired in 2012, he founded a firm called East Coast Security that snagged a contract with NBC Universal, the page shows.

Probation’s new top lawyer, Bridget Hamblin, previously worked for nearly 15 years at the Fire Department.

Restler said at the Sept. 29 Council meeting that Holmes’ recruits with law enforcement backgrounds lack the insight and knowledge of those pushed out of the Probation Department early in her tenure.

“We’re replacing them all with people who don’t have probation experience,” Restler said.

“I’m not concerned, councilmember,” Holmes responded. “I think we have the expertise that we need.”

Evidence of Holmes’ emphasis on running the agency with more of a law enforcement approach came Sept. 1, when she ordered probation officers to wear a “mandatory” uniform shirt, a raid jacket and “BDU” (battle dress uniform) pants, to carry firearms at all times including on home visits starting Oct. 1, and to undergo mandatory “active shooter” training, an internal memo obtained by the Daily News shows.

“They do conditional searches. They’re recovering firearms,” she explained to the City Council. “They’re going into a precarious situation.”

In July, for the first time, probation officers began getting official credit for arrests in the NYPD’s online booking system, records show. “This will help us to statistically capture our role,” Holmes’ aides wrote to staff.

Holmes also directed staff to issue probation violations to people who aren’t attending school or working. As a result, agency insiders say, the number of violations has risen. From March 9 to Oct. 9, probation violations issued to juveniles — youths from ages 12 to 17 — rose 44%, data obtained by the Daily News show.

The increase has been driven by a jump in “technical” violations, which rose from 34 between March 9 and Oct. 9, 2022, to 64 in the same period of 2023 — a rise of 88%, the figures show. Probation officers in Family Court are now less likely to give a break to youthful offenders who don’t make curfew, said Natalie Peeples, director of Youth Justice Policy at the Legal Aid Society.

“It seems a lot more punitive now,” Peeples said. “Those lines of communication are shut down, and we are first hearing about problems after a violation is filed.”

“When you bring police thinking into probation, it affects trust,” said a retired probation officer.

But violations issued to adults on probation during Holmes’ tenure have declined 23% — from 362 to 279, the Probation Department figures show.

Holmes killed Next Steps, a decade-old mentoring program for youth in often crime-troubled New York Housing Authority developments. Next Steps’ demise was announced in an email to 17 nonprofits that work with the agency sent on Aug. 24 — one week before the $3 million program was scheduled to be renewed.

Holmes said later: “The last nine years that Next Steps has been with us, it’s almost been a check-the-box renewal process.”

Holmes’ ax also fell on a 20-year-old home-based program that provided services to young people with criminal and family court cases. On Sept. 25, just as the nonprofit CASES was about to relaunch the program under the name “Impact,” Holmes ordered the contract canceled effective Oct. 9.

“No other details were provided. No conversation was had,” wrote Sophia Morel of CASES in an email to other providers. “It is unprecedented. … We were not given a rationale.”

Pressed by City Council members at the Sept. 29 hearing, Holmes characterized herself as “unraveling” a system involving the nonprofits that hadn’t been accountable.

“There weren’t any true outcomes. The only metric that I was provided was that ‘10 people attended,’” Holmes added.

But officials with the nonprofits disputed that claim in the hearing, saying data is carefully tracked and Holmes didn’t ask for it before making the cuts.

“We were never given an opportunity to provide the data that DOP was looking for,” said Andy Collado of RiseBoro Brooklyn, one of the nonprofits that lost Next Steps funding. “We were dismissed as a casualty of war.”

Most recently, Holmes also cut $1 million a year from the well-regarded ARCHES mentoring program for people ages 16 to 24. The cut, which amounts to one-third of the program’s annual budget, was attributed to the city’s budget woes.

Restler, in a Dec. 14 council hearing, drew a connection between that cut and the increase in the juvenile jail population, which has risen 30% in 2023, records show.

“We are slashing programs that keep people out. It is an absolutely backwards set of administration priorities,” he said.

But Holmes’ efforts appear to have the support of Adams and his top staff.

At her Dec. 1 City Hall appearance, Holmes was with Deputy Mayor Philip Banks, who oversees law-enforcement issues for Adams. Banks lauded the “wealth of experience” Holmes brings to her new job from her three decades in the NYPD.

“For many years, we looked at arresting people as the only way to actually (prevent) disorder,” said Banks.

“But so many of these people can be saved if we give them the proper resources,” he said. “I’m happy and pleased you bring a ‘different way to look at it’ approach to probation.”