VICIOUS ATTACK AT RIKERS
Guard loses 10 teeth in battering
An accused murderer beat a New York City correction officer — knocking out 10 of his teeth — on Rikers Island this week, according to law enforcement sources.
The officer was searching for contraband at around 12:50 p.m. Wednesday when Julius Allen, 23, allegedly started pummeling him in the face, knocking him to the floor, the sources and a Department of Correction spokesperson said.
Two jail guards managed to restrain Allen and stop the attack, according to the sources — but not before 10 of the officer’s teeth were knocked out.
Photos obtained by The Post show a large wound on the officer’s head, which was treated with stitches, and a bruised eye. He was treated at a local hospital.
“This incident was an abhorrent, unprovoked assault on a Correction Officer who was doing his job and carrying out his duty. We are pursuing re-arrest of the person in custody responsible,” a DOC spokesperson said in a statement.
“Assaulting a staff member in a jail is as much a crime as it is out in the community, and attacks on our staff will never be tolerated.”
Allen was arrested on Feb. 27 in connection with a murder in Brooklyn, online records show.
Police said at the time that he shot a 26-year-old man, Anthony Ponce, in the head and torso in the fifth-floor hallway of a building on Shore Parkway near East 102nd Street in Canarsie on Nov. 2.
He was ordered held without bail, with his next court date scheduled for February 2023, records show.
The incident is under investigation, the DOC said.
“This heinous, unprovoked attack on our officer who was simply doing his job comes at a time when over 1,200 officers have been assaulted,” Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said in a statement.
Boscio criticized a law before the City Council that would drastically limit solitary confinement for detainees accused of infractions.
Currently, inmates in New York City correctional facilities can’t be held in solitary confinement longer than 15 days, but the council’s bill would limit it to just eight hours a night and two hours during the day in any 24hour period. In the event of an immediate conflict, detainees could be placed in solitary for longer periods of time before they’re moved to restrictive housing, the bill states.
“If their legislation passes, one of our officers may get killed and they will have blood on their hands. We are not this city’s sacrificial lambs!” Boscio said.