Cold-blooded
Rikers inmates beaten in freezing gym – suit
TWENTY-TWO inmates at Rikers Island filed a lawsuit alleging they were brutally beaten by a group of emergency response correction officers last February after enduring hours of captivity in a freezing gym.
The inmates claim they were moved into the gym at dinnertime because the officers had discovered the cell doors in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center failed to properly lock on Feb. 16.
The locks actually broke four days earlier, according to the lawsuit, dated June 27.
One of the inmates suing in Brooklyn Federal Court says inmates at the facility were ordered to stay inside their unlocked cells for a half-day the first day, and then all day the next three days, as the doors were being fixed.
“It was very stressful,” Isiah Foster, 24, one of the litigants, recalled. “It made me feel like a caged animal.”
On the day of the alleged mass beatdown, Foster said, the inmates were told by correction officers to go to the gym, but were not given a reason. The order came just as the food cart was arriving, but the officers said the meals would be sent to the secured gym instead, Foster said.
After waiting several hours, the roughly 50 inmates became anxious and tried to get the attention of officers stationed at an exit door.
That’s when a team of socalled “turtle” officers in thick riot gear raced in and forced all the inmates to the ground, the court papers allege. “They were throwing inmates off the bleachers,” Foster said. “It was unbelievably terrifying. . . . bodies everywhere crying out in pain and agony like a bomb had gone off.”
The city Law Department plans to “review the facts and respond accordingly once we are served,” spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said.
The de Blasio administration has struggled to reduce violence inside the city’s jails.
“These men were kept in a cold gym in February with nothing but shorts and T-shirts. They were denied food and water. This is a pervasive culture of violent dehumanization,” charged lawyer Raoul Zaltzberg, who is representing the 22 inmates.
A Correction Department spokesman maintained that the locks were fixed within 24 hours and said there is “zero tolerance with regard to the mistreatment of any inmate.”