2ND JAIL BOTCH BY COURT CLUCKS
A Bronx clerk made a glaring paperwork mistake that allowed a shooting suspect to be freed from Rikers Island, authorities said Thursday — less than a week after another error let an accused murderer to be released.
Nikim Meekins, 22, was arrested on March 10 in connection with two incidents, the more serious a Nov. 3 shooting, for which he was charged with attempted murder and was supposed to be held on $300,000 bond or $100,000 bail.
Meekins appeared Monday in a Bronx courtroom on the lesser gun charges, stemming from an incident last summer, and bail was reduced to $1 in that case, a court spokesperson said.
But the clerk mistakenly marked that Meekins should be released without bail for the attemptedmurder case, the spokesman said.
“The clerk annotated the paperwork as $1 bail on the gun case correctly but mistakenly indicated ROR [released on own recognizance] on the attempted-murder case,” the spokesman said.
A spokesman for the city Department of Correction, Peter Thorne, said in a statement that “based on the documentation provided by the courts, the release from custody was proper and in accordance with our policy.”
The judge, after being told of the error, issued a bench warrant for Meekins on the attempted-murder case Thursday. The NYPD was looking for Meekins, who is due back in court Monday.
“We will be addressing the clerical error from a personnel and training perspective,” the court spokesman said.
“While this was a serious mistake, and will be dealt with, New York Criminal Court, over the last year, has conducted tens of thousands of arraignments and felony waver proceedings, with judges, clerks and court officers keeping the system functioning under very trying circumstances.”
The latest mistake comes as authorities continue to search for Christopher Buggs, 26, who was prematurely released from the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers last week.
Buggs was awaiting trial for a 2018 Brooklyn murder when a judge sentenced him to time served on a new, unrelated criminal-contempt case, police sources told The Post last week.
Someone saw the new charge and released Buggs, not realizing that he should have still been held on the murder charge, the sources said.
Corrections officials also waited 12 hours before they informed the NYPD of his accidental release, according to the sources.
Mayor de Blasio said during last Wednesday that “this should never happen again.”
“We’re going to get a full review of this immediately,” the mayor said. “We are confident he will be re-apprehended shortly.”