Blood-bath
Inmates ravaged by gang-tied slash spree
FOUR CITY inmates were slashed on their faces and arms by rival gang members this week, marking one of the bloodiest two-day stretches in years, the Daily News has learned.
Inmate Dashiem Lindsay, 24, was cut on the left side of his face and right hand and wrist in a bathroom inside the Vernon C. Bain Center on Monday at 10:50 p.m., department records show.
Lindsay, who is being held on burglary and drug charges, was attacked by inmates James Clark, 21, and Jimel Smith, 22, according to an internal Correction Department report.
Clark and Smith, a reported member of the Gangster Killer gang, a Bloods subset, are both in jail on weapons charges.
In a particularly bloody brawl a day later, three inmates were slashed by Malcolm Hinton inside the Brooklyn House of Detention, department records show. Hinton, who is listed as a Bloods gang member, is awaiting trial on robbery charges.
Two of the injured inmates were cut on the face and one was sliced on his left upper arm, department records show.
“When are Mayor de Blasio and (Correction Commissioner Cynthia) Brann going to realize that there can be no reform without control?” asked Sidney Schwartzbaum, former head of the union representing top jail bosses. “The borough jails are not the answer, as is obvious by the recent slashings and unabated violence over the last two weeks.”
Peter Thorne, a department spokesman, said the alleged slashers will be re-arrested and hit with additional charges.
Thorne once again blamed the city’s inability to use high-tech ionizing body scanners to find shivs masked by tape and plastic.
State lawmakers have blocked the DOC from installing the airport-like scanners over radiation fears.
“Slashings like this are exactly the reason we need ionizing body scanners, which we can’t use until state legislators change the law and authorize them,” Thorne said.
But Schwartzbaum, and other jail insiders, contend the problem runs deeper.
“It is obvious that the rule of law has been conceded to the criminal element in our jails, which are no longer safe,” he said.
The slashings come less than a week after a gruesome attack at the Vernon C. Bain Center left inmate Melvin Tineo with a gaping wound from his left eye to earlobe.
“The Bloods are on a cutting spree,” one jail source told The News.