Report: Inmates Out of Control on NYC’s Rikers Island amid Staffing Shortage

Inmates are reportedly out of control on Rikers Island due to a staffing shortage that has left them free to stab one another, answer phones, and run along corridors destroying maintenance equipment, according to the New York Post.

On Sunday, three inmates from the Folk Nation gang reportedly jumped a Bloods member and cut his face inside an unmanned housing area at the Anne M. Kross Center, according to internal records obtained by the Post:

At the time, 26 corrections officers were working quadruple shifts, 35 were on triple shifts and 30 patrol posts across the AMKC were unmanned as the jail grapples with an ongoing staff shortage, internal communications show. A day earlier at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, another Rikers facility, a group of inmates ran wild through the corridors and destroyed a bunch of fire safety equipment before officers could stop them, according to an internal email seeking “emergency maintenance.”

The disorder continued Monday, according to Patrick Ferraiuolo, who is president of the Correction Captains’ Association.

“One of my captains in AMKC called a housing area and the inmates answered the phone,” Ferraiuolo noted.

“[The inmate] said ‘Hey how you doing captain? The officer went home, he was tired, he was going into his triple or fourth tour and he left, he left us here alone.’ So it’s a housing area with no correctional officer watching over them… this is an everyday occurrence,” he continued, adding, “It’s just been a nightmare.”

Last week, corrections officers and others protested outside Rikers Island over what they said were dangerous working conditions, Pix 11 reported:

“The DOC has blamed the staff shortage for the issues and said approximately 3,000 out of 8,800 staffers either called out sick in July or weren’t working with inmates, and ‘thousands more’ went AWOL,” the Post article read.

The agency recently implemented a sick policy requiring staff members to get a doctor’s note if they were going to be absent.

“The officers are not coming to work because they can’t, they’re doing three tours and then they’re expected to come back 10 hours later because the guidelines give them 10 hours between tours to come back and do three more tours,” Ferraiuolo noted.

“They’re physically exhausted, that’s why they’re calling in sick and quitting on a regular basis. It’s terrible,” he concluded:

In March, 11 corrections officers were injured during several inmate attacks at Rikers Island jail, Breitbart News reported.