Rikers prisoners: We had to tend to stab vic

A Rikers Island inmate stabbed in the eye was taken to an infirmary for medical treatment by other inmates — because correction officers were nowhere to be found, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit brought by Rikers Island inmates Joseph Agnew, Anthony Gang, Tyrone Greene and Kamer Reid demands that the Correction Department provide prisoners with urgent medical care.

If the agency can’t do so, it seeks a court order requiring officials to release the most vulnerable detainees from custody.

Inmates were somehow able to find keys to open the cell door of the detainee with the stab wound to the eye, according to the suit, highlighting the egregious security breakdowns at the troubled jail complex.

“The conditions in [Correction Department] facilities are consistently described as ‘deplorable and nothing short of a humanitarian crisis.’ People in the jails suffer serious health conditions that require medical care but are left untreated,” reads the complaint filed in Bronx Supreme Court.

The suit seeks class-action status.

At least 12 people have died in the city’s custody this year at Rikers Island and the Vernon C. Bain floating jail facility in the Bronx, known as “the Barge.”

Mayor de Blasio has cast blame on the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association for causing the jails crisis, saying the union has enabled correction officers to call in sick in unprecedented numbers. The city and a court-appointed federal monitor are implementing reforms aimed at keeping inmates safe once they arrive at Rikers.

Out of the 8,500 uniformed correction staffers, 1,789 were out on sick leave on Sept. 14, with an additional 727 on medically modified status and 68 out citing a personal emergency, according to City Council testimony from the department’s chief of staff, Dana Wax.

Another 93 uniformed officers were AWOL, Wax said.

One of the suit’s plaintiffs, Agnew, 23, has been hospitalized multiple times for asthma. According to the lawsuit, correction staff left him alone on a bus at Rikers in a wheelchair and in handcuffs for 14 hours.

Gang, another plaintiff, has asthma and also a hernia, according to the suit.

A doctor told the 23-year-old in March that he’d need surgery, but correction staff never took him to the hospital, according to the suit. Gang’s condition has worsened, and he’s still waiting for the procedure.

Greene, 47, had stents inserted in his heart in February after two heart attacks. According to the lawsuit, Rikers staff is not providing all his prescription medicine or bringing him to the clinic each day despite doctor’s orders.

Reid, 33, suffered a collapsed lung in a stabbing three months ago and needs hearing aids. According to the suit, Rikers staffers rarely supply him with pain medication or provide him with a second hearing aid.

Rikers’ chief of health care services, Ross MacDonald, has said the 12 men died in custody for reasons that are “jail attributable.”

“I do not believe the city is capable of safely managing the custody of those it is charged with incarcerating in its jails,” MacDonald said in September.

After his remarks, Isa Abdul-Karim, 42, and Stephen Khadu, 24, died in custody.

Veronica Vela, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, one of the public defender groups that filed the lawsuit, said the city has only two options to manage the jails.

“New York City’s jails are in a full-blown humanitarian crisis, resulting in indescribable suffering and at least 12 deaths in 2021, including at least five people who died from suicide,” said Vela.

“[The Correction Department] can no longer deprive our clients of their right to medical care, and if the department is unable to guarantee that right, then the court must immediately consider releasing people.”