New York City briefs

More staffing changes at Rikers after death

The city's top jailer has disciplined three Rikers Island officials as an internal probe continues over a mentally ill former Marine left alone to die in a cell where temperatures reached at least 100 degrees.

Acting Correction Commissioner Mark Cranston yesterday ordered the facility's warden demoted, the mechanic supervising the heating system transferred and an additional suspension for the guard who neglected to check in on inmate Jerome Murdough, 56.

Murdough, on antipsychotics and anti-seizure medicine, was locked up at Rikers after police caught him seeking warmth in a public-housing stairwell where he didn't belong. He couldn't make the $2,500 bail. He was found dead Feb. 16. Cranston has blamed the excessive heat in the cell block on a malfunctioning heating system.

According to correction spokesman Eldin Villafane: The warden of Rikers' Anna M. Kross Center where Murdough was housed, Rose Agro, is being demoted to a facility that doesn't oversee the mentally ill. The mechanics supervisor, who wasn't named, was transferred to a job where he's not responsible for projects related to inmate housing. The guard who was supposed to check on Murdough every half-hour -- but didn't for up to four hours -- had already been suspended 20 days without pay. Cranston added 10 more days, the maximum allowed under civil-service law. The guard's name hasn't been disclosed, and he could face further punishment.

NYPD canine team to aid in mudslide search

Two NYPD canine team officers yesterday traveled to Washington state to help in rescue efforts there in the wake of devastating mudslides that have killed 30 people, officials said.

Det. Patrick Nee and his partner, Hondo, a 6-year-old German shepherd, and Officer Benjamin Colecchia and his partner, Timoshenko, a 3-year-old German shepherd, who are part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's New York Task Force 1, were activated Tuesday to help respond to the disaster, NYPD officials said in a news release.

Responders are still trying to locate remains of victims of the March 22 landslide that struck a community at Oso, which is about 55 miles north of Seattle, according to The Associated Press. The number of missing people was 13 yesterday, according to AP.

New York Task Force 1 has been deployed to hurricanes Ike, Gustav and Katrina and the Oklahoma City bombing, police said.