‘Busts’ after Rikers health-risk releases
More than 100 inmates cut loose from incarceration on Rikers Island over coronavirus concerns in late March have had run-ins with the law since being released, The Post has learned.
The roughly 110 inmates have accounted for 190 arrests since the pandemic took hold of the Big Apple, according to police.
Of those arrests, 45 — roughly a quarter of the total — were for burglaries, helping drive the 43percent spike in break-ins over the last month, according to NYPD data.
Police sources believe the number of recidivists — which accounted for about 7 percent of the 1,500 released in March — doesn’t paint the whole picture, because hundreds more inmates have been released since.
Yet the NYPD is still cross-referencing recently arrested suspects to lists of released inmates provided by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.
One such alleged repeat criminal is Jerard Iamunno, who was picked up by cops Sunday night after allegedly robbing a 59-yearold man at knifepoint at an ATM in Harlem.
Iamunno is accused of blocking the victim from leaving an ATM vestibule on West 123rd Street near Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and pulling a knife, cops said.
The man handed over the $20 he had just taken out of the ATM, according to police. Iamunno, 37, was cut loose March 25 after pleading guilty to grand larceny and a drug charge in January in two separate cases, records show.
He has 13 total convictions, 11 for misdemeanors and two for felonies, police said. The alleged knifepoint robbery did land Iamunno back in jail, with bail set at $10,000, court records show.
He faces felony charges for robbery and criminal possession of a weapon, records show.
The majority of burglaries accounting for the spike in break-ins over the last month have occurred in Manhattan, according to NYPD records.
Patrol area Manhattan South has recorded the largest jump in burglaries with a 70-percent hike from 100 to 171 over the last four weeks, according to the figures.
The northern section of the borough also recorded a 60-percent jump in burglaries over the last month, with 141 recorded, the numbers show.
One suspect accused of driving up the numbers is alleged serial burglar Terrance Brown, who was busted Sunday for breaking into a string of restaurants that are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, police said.
Brown, who has 20 previous arrests, is suspected of 18 burglaries at closed eateries from April 21 to May 4.
In several of the break-ins, the suspect wore a surgical mask and cut through vinyl coverings of restaurant vestibules before breaking through the front doors, cops said.
When Brown was finally charged for the break-ins Sunday, he immediately was returned to the street after his arraignment because of New York’s controversial bail-reform laws, according to police sources and court records.