The city Correction Department has suspended a top official and is seeking to fire him over allegations that he made inappropriate comments to a female subordinate, The City Reporter has learned.
Selwyn Fergus, 66, who was promoted to associate commissioner just last month, allegedly made inappropriate remarks to the employee and bragged about his close ties to Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards, according to multiple jail sources.
Now, his official email address appears to have been shut off.
Fergus and Richards have a long history.
The two met in the third grade, Fergus told the New Yorker magazine; both spent time behind bars on Rikers Island in the late 1980s and later each worked at The Fortune Society, the city’s largest nonprofit serving formerly incarcerated people.
The allegations became public last week during a Board of Correction hearing, when activist Victoria Phillips told the oversight board that someone had contacted her about a senior correction official accused of “sexual things” involving people close to the commissioner.
Phillips did not identify Fergus.
“The reason it came to me is because people do not have faith and people want to make sure that this too is not swept under the rug,” she testified at the end of the nearly three-hour hearing.
After the meeting, three Correction Department sources told The City Reporter that Phillips was referring to Fergus.
“I haven’t seen him around for a few weeks,” one jail insider said.
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Patrick Gallahue, the Correction Department’s chief spokesperson, declined to discuss the matter.
“The Department does not comment on personnel matters,” he said.
It is unclear what Fergus allegedly told the employee or who is leading the investigation. A spokesperson for the city Department of Investigation declined comment.
Fergus did not respond to calls, emails, and texts.
The allegations come as Richards last month was slammed by a court-appointed federal monitor who oversees aspects of the department’s operations for instructing his top staff to evade any informal communications with his team.
In a critical letter to federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain, monitor Steve Martin said recent steps taken by Commissioner Richards and his leadership team to ensure they were informed of all staff communications with the Martin were “among the most specific, direct, and consequential actions” he had seen in more than a decade of monitoring the department.
Martin said Richards — who was appointed to lead the city’s jails by Mayor Zohran Mamdani — told his leadership team not to share ideas or strategies to the monitor or to the court-appointed Rikers Island remediation manager without first telling the commissioner.
As for Fergus, he was first hired by the Correction Department as the administrative director of social services in December 2021, according to a notice in the official City Record.
In that role, he was in charge of the department’s push to register more detainees to vote, The Marshall Project reported in November 2022.
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Commissioner Richards promoted Fergus to associate commissioner just last month, according to an internal department announcement obtained by The City Reporter.
He was expected to “continue to report directly to the commissioner,” the announcement said.
The job entailed overseeing the department’s so-called CARE unit, which provides crisis response to staff injured on the job and other services. He was also expected to lead the agency’s chaplain team and ceremonial units, the memo said.
Most recently, he served as a senior advisor to the commissioner, where he earned $150,000 last year, according to SeeThroughNY, a website which tracks the pay of municipal employees.
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