Tag: Riker’s Island
On Wednesday, a jury found former Rikers captain Terrence Pendergrass guilty of a civil rights violation in the death of an inmate two years ago. The New York Times reports that Pendergrass is the first officer to be tried for such a crime “in more than a decade.” He may serve up to 10 years […]
An ex-Rikers corrections officer says that his boss repeatedly encouraged disciplining inmates off-the-books, and when one mentally ill inmate ingested a detergent ball that contained bleach, the supervisor let the man die a slow and painful death. Raymond Castro testified in court that his former supervisor at Rikers Island, Capt. Terrence Pendergrass, would routinely endorsed keeping inmate […]
Corrections Officer Carol Lackner has been charged with falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing; both charges are related to Lackner’s lying about the circumstances in the death of inmate Jerome Murdough. The two main charges are felonies, but Lackner has also been charged with various misdemeanors. Murdough, a military veteran who battled mental illness […]
According to documents obtained by the Daily News, the New York City Department of Correction has erroneously released at least 23 inmates since 2009. Most were rearrested in a timely fashion, but at least one, Sidney Bannister, 44, has remained free since 2012. While the DOC noted that the number of errors equal less than half of […]
A new report (PDF) released by the Department of Investigation — an NYC agency that vows to “get the worms out of the Big Apple” — reveals that one of its investigators was able to smuggle various types of illegal contraband into the jails at Rikers Island. The New York Times reports that the investigator […]
Turhan Gumusdere aka TRIKE1 is an old-school graffiti writer who used to bomb NYC subway trains in the 70s and is now the warden of Rikers’ biggest jail. Although this promotion happened in early June and was announced via an official press release (PDF), the New York Post is just putting it all together now […]
At long last, one of the men at the center of the mass cover-up of violence within Rikers Island has resigned, reports The New York Post. William Clemons, the Chief of the Department of Corrections, has “submitted his resignation Monday under pressure from Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte,” according to the Post’s sources. Clemons became warden […]
Rikers Island is a mess. In addition to the systemic abuse of minors and the “culture of violence” at the correctional facility, it seems that officials lie about inmate deaths that result from neglect. According to a report by DNAinfo, at least four families of patients who died while at Rikers in the past decade […]
According to an internal memo, the New York City Correction Department will stop putting 16- and 17-year-old inmates into solitary confinement by the end of 2014, the New York Times reports. There are currently 51 adolescents in solitary confinement at Rikers Island, where it is used as “a primary form of punishment” of teens. In the memo dated September 25th, the correction […]
If you needed proof that New York’s jail system is rotten to the core, the New York Times has just obtained a confidential report which reveals edits made to a Rikers Island audit back in 2011. It proves that, contrary to the reports at the time, violence in the prison hadn’t actually decreased. Instead, data was manipulated, tracks were covered […]
