Criminal Justice New York State

Naps, Pink Eye, a Bee Sting: How a Hochul Appointee Got Himself Kicked Off the Parole Board

Brandon Stradford lasted two months on New York state’s Board of Parole. He continued collecting a paycheck for another seven.

Chris Gelardi · October 28, 2024

Brandon Stradford video calls into his state Senate confirmation hearing to join the New York Board of Parole, June 9, 2023. | Screenshot: New York State Senate | Illustration: New York Focus

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He was late more often than he was on time. He fell asleep during trainings and high-stakes hearings. He sometimes didn’t show up for hours, with barely an explanation. One of his colleagues surmised that he was a “narcissist.”

Brandon Stradford’s time on New York state’s Board of Parole involved one frustration after another, and documents about his removal process, obtained by New York Focus through a public records request, illustrate the full extent of the now-former commissioner’s dysfunction.

“Mr. Stradford was late nearly twenty times, unresponsive to set up trainings, and sleeping or disappearing” during board interviews with incarcerated people and crime victims, according to a document recommending his removal.

Three empty seats inside of a wood-paneled hearing room.

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Board officials placed him on leave 10 weeks after he started, and it took another seven months to formally remove him, the records show. That entire time, the state continued paying him a salary.

Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Stradford, a local bureaucrat and failed politician, as a commissioner in June 2023. His isn’t the only one of Hochul’s parole board nominations to end in blunder. New York Focus reported last month that three of her seven known parole board nominations have failed, though none as spectacularly as Stradford.

Board staff attempted to help Stradford rise to the occasion by offering him one-on-one mentorship, time off, and mental health resources. He didn’t even make it through training.

The parole board mishaps are high-stakes. The $170,000-a-year commissioner job is a powerful one: Every year, the board decides whether to release thousands of incarcerated people who’ve hit their minimum prison sentences.

For at least a decade, the state parole board has been several commissioners down from its full capacity of 19, contributing to caseloads that often mean commissioners have to deliberate over someone’s freedom after mere minutes of hearing their case. In early 2022, not long after Hochul became governor, she promised to change that.

The board is still operating with three empty seats nearly three years later — partly because of Stradford’s removal, and partly because of an ideological struggle between Hochul and legislators eager to reform the parole process.

Hochul’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment. Reached by phone, Stradford asked New York Focus to send him the documents used to report this article — exhibits from a removal hearing he didn’t show up to. After receiving them, he didn’t respond to follow-up requests for comment.

Stradford’s parole board tenure was chaotic before it even began.

Hochul tapped him to serve a 20-month term on the board. He didn’t know she was considering him for the job until a day after the 2023 legislative session was scheduled to end.

State senators, who must confirm the governor’s nominations, didn’t know until then, either. It was an extreme version of an Albany tradition: Each year, the executive waits until the final days of session to issue dozens of nominations for board seats, commissioner positions, and judgeships — which lawmakers must vote on before heading home for the year. Senators have expressed frustration at the practice. With such little time to consider candidates, they often end up rubber stamping them.

Senators happened to still be in the Capitol addressing a backlog of bills the day they received Stradford’s nomination. They held a confirmation hearing that evening, with Stradford participating over video.

He was eager to talk about himself, albeit in roundabout, at times difficult-to-comprehend ways. Though he didn’t disclose it to the senators, Stradford had for years harbored political ambitions. He ran for state Senate in 2018, coming in last place in the Democratic primary. In 2021, he came in fourth place of five in the primary for Staten Island borough president. He told senators that he had been “preparing” for a seat on the parole board for about two and a half years — essentially since his last failed bid for office.

At several points during his confirmation, the senator leading the hearing urged Stradford to move things along, reminding him that the legislature was debating bills as he spoke.

The Senate confirmed him and three other Hochul nominees the following day.

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Stradford was asleep when a Board of Parole staffer showed up at his Albany hotel to take him to his first day of work in August 2023. He finally answered his phone 20 minutes later and said he’d take a rideshare when he was ready, according to a timeline of events compiled by board staff.

When he arrived at the board office after another hour and a half, he said he’d gotten lost.

Two days later, Stradford fell asleep while a staffer was training him, according to the timeline. Three days after that, he showed up to the office an hour late and missed a meeting with the parole board chair. The following week, he texted a staffer three minutes before a meeting asking to reschedule because there were “issues with his hotel bill.”

After a veteran commissioner, Charles Davis, spent time with Stradford that week, he “expressed his opinion” to another staffer that Stradford was “a narcissist,” according to the timeline.

One day, Stradford’s official government portrait was scheduled for 10 am. A board staffer called him at 10:05, and Stradford asked to reschedule because he had come down with pink eye. (He showed up to the rescheduled photo shoot an hour late and blamed his tardiness on traffic.)

He was supposed to come into the office later that day to file personnel paperwork. But he never showed. “Given the alleged pink eye,” the timeline reads, the board chair sent him home for the week.

As part of his training in September, Stradford began sitting in on interviews with incarcerated people and crime victims at parole offices across the state.

His first full week was in Albany. He was late every day. When he arrived, he was “unfocused,” commissioners reported to board staff. They said he repeatedly stepped out in the middle of interviews “for drinks, bathroom breaks and snacks.”

His next stop was Poughkeepsie. Before he was set to make the hour-and-a-half drive from Albany, a parole commissioner in Poughkeepsie learned that she needed to sign a document that was in Albany to release a man from prison. Staff asked Stradford to deliver it.

He was supposed to arrive in Poughkeepsie before 5:30 pm. But he didn’t show. At 7:30, he called the commissioner who’d requested the paperwork to tell her that he had checked into his hotel and would deliver the document in the morning — when the incarcerated person was scheduled for release.

The next morning, Stradford arrived an hour and a half late. The incarcerated man’s wife had been waiting for her husband in the parking lot.

Stradford claimed he had been stung by a bee. “No other information was provided,” the commissioner in Poughkeepsie, Caryne Demosthenes, wrote in an affidavit.

Stradford brought similar turmoil to training sessions across the state. He inexplicably called a parole board staffer in Albany at 3:11 am. In New York City, he showed up an hour and a half late on his first day. He showed up late to both of his interview observation days in Syracuse.

After Syracuse, it was back to Albany. Stradford skipped the first day, claiming he had two family funerals to attend. When a staffer offered him more time off, he declined, replying that “he has an obligation to the Board,” according to the timeline.

On his day back, he arrived at the office after interviews had already begun. The board chair intercepted Stradford, sent him back to his hotel, and removed his name from the interview schedule.

A jail cell with keys in the lock seen through a dirty window.

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On October 30, the board chair, Darryl Towns, met with Stradford. He handed him a memo with the subject line “Professionalism.”

“On a nearly weekly basis, you have been late for almost every meeting and Board panel,” the memo reads. “It is tremendously disruptive to arrive while a panel is conducting interviews.”

He framed the meeting as Stradford’s final chance to get his act together. Stradford signed the memo, but not before handwriting two amendments explaining some of his tardiness, including the bee sting.

Around that time, Towns began mentioning to Stradford the state’s Employee Assistance Program, which offers referrals for those going through personal, mental health, or other crises. “I did not want to make any assumptions” about Stradford’s absentmindedness, Towns later testified.

Stradford was scheduled to conduct some of his own parole interviews two days later, starting at 8:15 am. Once again, he never showed, according to the documents. It wasn’t until after 1 pm that he called board staff, claiming that he’d been hospitalized with Covid.

That was the final straw. “To preserve the integrity of the board,” Towns placed him on leave.

While Stradford’s appointment to the parole board was a rush job, his removal was a slog.

In early November, after a call with Towns about returning his car and other state-issued property while he was on leave, Stradford emailed him a medical clearance letter from his doctor, as well as a note saying he’d reached out to the Employee Assistance Program.

He wrote to Towns “that he looks forward to discussing his return to work,” according to the timeline.

But he wasn’t coming back. Three months later, Hochul instructed the state Division of Criminal Justice Services to launch an investigation and hearing into whether she should formally remove Stradford from the parole board. It was the first time a governor had ever tapped DCJS to conduct such a hearing, an agency spokesperson said. A DCJS official emailed a notice to Stradford, who replied that he was in the emergency room “with poor internet connection,” but would respond later.

All the while, Stradford continued to gather a parole commissioner paycheck, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the parole board’s umbrella agency. (Asked if he was being paid the same rate while he was suspended, the spokesperson directed New York Focus to file a public records request, which the department typically takes months to fulfill.)

DCJS scheduled a May 1 hearing and again served Stradford with a notice. The day before the hearing, Stradford emailed the division asking to delay so he could retain a lawyer. Then, three days before the new hearing, a lawyer claiming to represent Stradford emailed the agency asking to again reschedule. This time, officials refused.

On May 20, they held a video hearing. Neither Stradford nor his lawyer showed up.

Nine days later, Hochul fired him.