Cops to fill in for ‘sick’ jail guards

The hellish conditions on Rikers Island have gotten so bad that Mayor de Blasio will transfer 100 NYPD officers from crime-fighting duties and into courts to replace correction officers who are needed in the notorious lockup.

Correction officers escort inmates to court appearances and guard them before and after the proceedings. Now cops will take over many of those duties.

“We’ll use overtime as necessary to help ensure that we can get the most done with minimal impact on other work the NYPD is doing,” de Blasio said Tuesday.

The move drew a rebuke from law-enforcement officials.

“Right now, cops are being denied days off because the NYPD is too understaffed to meet the needs on our streets,” said Pat Lynch, president of the 24,000-member Police Benevolent Association.

“This is no time for the mayor to pull additional personnel away to cover for his mismanagement of another agency. It’s just more proof that ‘Defund the Police’ was a hollow slogan, because City Hall can’t solve any problem without dragging in the NYPD,” Lynch said.

De Blasio also said he’d be using private security contractors at Rikers to fill the gap left by correction officers who are calling out sick en masse as part of an alleged protest to jail conditions.

“We’re going to bring in private security as well, we’ll get all those numbers they’re still shaping up,” he said.

A rep for Benny Boscio Jr., head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said the move to privatize security duties at Rikers violates a state law that makes the jobs “a non-transferable governmental responsibility.”

De Blasio “is the one public employer who failed to meet his obligation to maintain safe staffing levels by refusing to hire more correction officers for nearly three years even as jail violence soared and the inmate population increased by 57 percent alone last year,” Boscio said.

“His negligence has created a humanitarian crisis,” said Boscio.