NYC Mayor de Blasio defends not speaking with Rikers Island guards during tour: ‘I don’t need to be reminded’

“For a lot of you, I think some of the challenges at Rikers may be new, and I respect that,” he told reporters. “For me, they’re not new … If you or anyone else go in there and you see the facilities, you see the problems — those aren’t the new problems. Those are horrible problems that have existed for years.”