By: Mario Mancini
The situation of Riker’s continues to deteriorate as violence, short staffing and sexual assault plague the detention center.
Two female officers said they were assaulted by inmates at Rikers Island in New York, New York, the New York Post reported.
The female corrections officers are both single moms in their 30s who support their families by working at the understaffed jail, according to the NYP. One of the officers now walks around the facility with her back to the wall after an inmate put his hands on her, and another woman said she has thought about committing suicide after an inmate assaulted and attempted to rape her.
“I have so much anger built up and so much hurt,” a 34-year-old officer from Queens, New York, told the NYP. She said an inmate rescued her from another man who held down and choked her on the floor of a pantry at the Anna M. Kross Center at Rikers in June 2019.
The officer was transferred out of the men’s facility into a unit holding women and transgender people, but her request to move to a position where she wouldn’t be in contact with inmates was denied, the NYP reported.
Meanwhile the NY Times has picked up on the disaster at Rikers. Karen Zraick reported in the “paper of record” that a male officer said a detainee had grabbed his genitals as he tried to cajole the man into a cell.
New York City’s jails are facing a critical shortage of staff that is contributing to violence and lawlessness at the facilities, and officers say sexual harassment and assault by detainees are compounding the crisis, The Times reported.
Female officers, who account for almost half of the city’s active correction officers, are at particularly high risk. Male officers are affected as well but may be less inclined to speak out because of shame and stigma, Zraick wrote for the Times.
More than 20 Department of Correction employees were sexually assaulted by inmates this year, according to the Correction Officers Benevolent Association union, the NYP reported. Following these incidents, only about half of the inmates were re-arrested and only six were indicted.
Lawmakers agree that increasing of staff is important, and some lawmakers want to increase the penalties for inmates who sexually abuse guards and other prison employees.
Adrienne E. Adams, a Democratic City Council member from Queens said she will introduce a resolution calling on state officials to make forcible touching of a correction officer a felony instead of a misdemeanor, and classifying aggravated sexual harassment of a correction officer, including verbal abuse and lewd gestures, as a misdemeanor rather than a civil infraction, according to the NY Times.
Marc Bullaro, a retired assistant deputy warden at Rikers and adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, blamed changes in jail policies, like limits on the use of punitive segregation, for assaults on officers, NY Times reported
“The uniformed staff have lost all their authority,” said Mr. Bullaro.
In other words, far left, contributed to the hell on Rikers. Meanwhile a radically left extremist City Council candidate (Tiffany Caban) who is poised to win district 22, is running on an anti-police, anti-jail, extremist platform. Leadership such as this, will only compound the situation.
