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 "Somebody's leaving in an ambulance tonight," Eliseo Perez, an
assistant chief for security at New York's Rikers Island jail
complex, told inmates after a rash of attacks on guards, according
to prosecutors.
Then he allegedly instructed five subordinates to take prisoner
Jahmal Lightfoot into a room and kick his teeth in, an attack that
left him with facial fractures.
The ongoing trial of nine correction officers for the alleged 2012
assault and a subsequent cover-up is the latest in a string of
prosecutions targeting dozens of Rikers employees over the past four
years.
More than 50 guards at the 10,000-inmate complex, one of the three
largest in the United States by population, have faced criminal
charges since 2012 for assault, falsifying reports and smuggling
contraband, court documents and data from various city agencies
show.
That is about double the rate of prosecution in the prior four
years, as authorities crack down on what they say is a toxic
atmosphere of violence and corruption.
"Rikers is a very troubled institution," said Mark Peters, the
commissioner of the city's Department of Investigation, which leads
most Rikers-related probes. "We are now seeing the result of
systemic neglect."
Rikers houses male, female and adolescent prisoners in 10 separate
facilities, mostly inmates awaiting trial.
RIKERS UNDER MICROSCOPE
Mayor Bill de Blasio has made Rikers reform a priority since taking
office in 2014.
Peters, whom de Blasio appointed two years ago, said he had devoted
one investigative squad exclusively to Rikers and increased its
staff from 20 to 30 members.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, whose office prosecutes most
Rikers-related cases, recently proposed a new prosecution bureau
based at the complex itself.
The list of law enforcement officials whose attention has turned to
Rikers also includes Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.
Next month, federal prosecutors will put two guards on trial for the
fatal beating of an inmate. Brian Coll, a correction officer, is
accused of stomping Ronald Spear to death and enlisting two other
guards to help him conceal the truth. One guard has already pleaded
guilty to the cover-up.
Bharara's office also threw the weight of the federal government
behind a lawsuit brought on behalf of adolescent inmates by the New
York Civil Liberties Union. The case led to a settlement mandating
reforms overseen by a court-appointed monitor.
A two-year investigation by Bharara's office found the correction
department failed to discipline guards adequately for excessive
force from 2011 to 2013, said Sara Shudofsky, the chief of the
office's civil division, in an interview.
In 2014, de Blasio also appointed Joseph Ponte to head the
correction department. Since then, it has pursued internal
investigations more aggressively, with 200 cases ending in
disciplinary charges last year, up from 93 in 2013, according to
department statistics.
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The focus on guards has met stiff resistance from the correction
officers union, which claims the effort hides the true causes of
Rikers' problems.
"It is clear from the department's own statistics that inmates are
attacking correction officers and other inmates at an alarming
rate," the union president, Norman Seabrook, said in a statement.
Seabrook also said visitors, not guards, are primarily responsible
for smuggling contraband, citing the hundreds of visitors arrested
in the last year for bringing illegal items into Rikers.
SMUGGLING SURGE
The Department of Investigation has also pursued broader reforms in
response to the persistent problems, Peters said.
In 2014, an undercover investigator posing as a guard gained access
to Rikers six times despite carrying heroin, marijuana and razor
blades. Another department probe uncovered red flags among
two-thirds of a class of new hires, such as prior felony convictions
or known gang ties.
In response, the correction department has installed drug-sniffing
dogs at Rikers' entrances and increased its "applicant investigation
unit" from 19 employees to 87, to screen potential recruits'
backgrounds and psychological fitness.
Both Peters and Ponte say their departments are now working more
closely to address misconduct. That cooperation was on display this
month, when a guard was caught on video assaulting an inmate who had
thrown a cup of liquid in his direction.
Correction officials turned over the video to investigators
immediately, and the guard was arrested within hours.
But the level of violence still troubles observers. The Lightfoot
trial, which began in March, highlights the difficulties in curbing
incidents by both inmates and officers.
Perez and his team were part of an elite unit assigned to reduce
inmate attacks, but prosecutors say their solution was to turn to
assault themselves.
Defense attorneys have argued at trial that the guards simply
defended themselves when Lightfoot attacked them with a weapon.
Prosecutors have said that assertion is false.
"They decided they were going to set the tone that night," Assistant
District Attorney Pishoy Yacoub said at the start of the trial.
(Editing by Scott Malone and Diane Craft)
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