YIKERS! JAILS FOOLS FREE ‘KILLER’
Waltzes out after screwup
An imprisoned murder suspect’s crude sexual insult toward a Brooklyn judge turned into a shocking get-out-of-jail free card.
Accused killer Christopher Buggs was the target of a manhunt Wednesday after his bungled release from Rikers Island — an epic Correction Department failure defying both logic and jails protocol. The fugitive, considered armed and dangerous, was turned loose despite a judge’s order holding him without bail in a 2018 killing.
“This guy had a murder charge,” said a former Correction Department employee. “Sometimes there has to be some common sense. Somebody didn’t have their thinking cap on. Somebody should have said, ‘Wait a minute.’ ”
Buggs’ mind-boggling road to release began with a Feb. 16 court appearance via video hookup from Rikers Island before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Guidice, sources said. The defendant exploded when his latest bail application in the threeyear-old killing was shot down, according to a court transcript.
“Suck my d—-, you f——-g f——t,” shouted Buggs. After the judge held him in contempt, Buggs shouted back: “F—- about no contempt, n——-s. Suck my d—-.”
Del Guidice slapped Buggs with two 30-day contempt-of-court sentences, setting the monumental mishandling of the inmate’s case in motion.
The lesser sentence on the minor charge was wrongly recorded as the resolution of his murder arrest, leading to the 5-foot-5, 130-pound defendant’s release after a five-step process where correction officers and supervisors ignored the red flag raised by the homicide charge, according to sources.
Buggs was apparently given cash and a MetroCard before boarding a Correction Department bus for his 2 a.m. Tuesday ride to freedom. A day later, U.S. marshals were leading the search for the missing inmate, who has not been caught.
“It’s a major screwup, there’s no question about it,” said Martin Horn, city jails commissioner in the Bloomberg administration. “The good news is it doesn’t happen frequently. It happens, people make honest mistakes. But it doesn’t happen that frequently.”
Before he was mistakenly freed, Buggs, 26, was behind bars without bail awaiting trial for the January 2018 shooting death of Ernest Brownlee, 55. The victim was
“This guy had a murder charge . ... Sometimes there has to be some common sense. Somebody didn’t have their thinking cap on. Somebody should have said, ‘Wait a minute.’ ”
FORMER CORRECTION DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEE
about to enjoy a plate of pepper steak with rice and beans from a Brooklyn deli when he was shot in the chest.
“They need to find this guy,” Brownlee’s distraught widow, Winifred Mackins, 55, told the Daily News on Wednesday. “I don’t like this. I’m angry.”
The release of any inmate typically requires a series of checks, including a signoff by the assistant deputy warden on duty, according to sources. Each inmate also has an institutional folder and computer records indicating the charges: In Buggs’ case, the outstanding murder rap and the minor contempt charge.
Sources told The News that Buggs was clearly listed in Correction Department records as facing murder charges before his release. Correction officials and Mayor de Blasio vowed a full investigation into the mixup.
“We’re going to put additional safeguards in place to make sure this never happens again,” said the mayor.
“That’s very frustrating. In the meantime, we have a high level of confidence that he will be reapprehended shortly,” he said.
The process of releasing an inmate typically begins with a call to correction officers to get the convict ready to be freed, according to one active and one former correction officer.
The Rikers Island general office then clears the release, followed by approval from three officers at the intake office where inmates check in or out of the jail. An intake captain’s OK is needed for the next step, with the assistant deputy warden giving final approval for freedom.
Joe Russo, president of the union representing deputy and assistant deputy wardens, acknowledged one of his members was involved but laid blame on a clerical error.
“Someone in the courts made a mistake, and it’s a tough mistake for the jail people to spot,” he said. “It’s passing through all of these hands and everyone [in the jails] is seeing ‘time served.’ It’s very misleading, what they saw in those papers.”
But astounded sources agreed the homicide charge was still inexplicably ignored by all involved in Buggs’ undeserved gift of freedom.
“This was a failure at multiple levels,” a source told The News. “They all need to go down.”
When contacted by The News, Buggs’ sister Destiny declined to comment, telling a reporter “you and the Daily News can suck my d--k.”