In John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, the U.S. has walled off Manhattan and left the inmates to their own devices. Interestingly, New York City did that long ago with Rikers Island in the East River north of La Guardia, making it the hugest jail complex in the U.S. Lately, what with workers needing more naps, NYC is moving on to leave inmates to their own devices part of the movie.
From the New York Post:
Inmates run wild on Rikers Island, answer phones, destroy equipment
By Gabrielle Fonrouge
August 23, 2021 8:56pm UpdatedRikers Island is facing a staffing shortage which has led to inmates running wild
Inmates are running wild on Rikers Island amid an ongoing staffing crunch that’s left charges free to stab each other, answer the phones and run through corridors destroying maintenance equipment, The Post has learned.
What’s the phone number for Rikers Island?
On Sunday morning, three inmates from the Folk Nation gang jumped a Bloods member and slashed him in the face inside an unmanned housing area at the Anne M. Kross Center, the jail’s largest facility, internal records obtained by The Post show.
At the time, 26 corrections officers were working quadruple shifts, 35 were on triple shifts and 30 patrol posts across the AMKC were unmanned as the jail grapples with an ongoing staff shortage, internal communications show.
A day earlier at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, another Rikers facility, a group of inmates ran wild through the corridors and destroyed a bunch of fire safety equipment before officers could stop them, according to an internal email seeking “emergency maintenance.” …
“One of my captains in AMKC called a housing area and the inmates answered the phone,” Ferraiuolo recounted.
“[The inmate] said ‘Hey how you doing captain? The officer went home, he was tired, he was going into his triple or fourth tour and he left, he left us here alone.’ So it’s a housing area with no correctional officer watching over them… this is an everyday occurrence,” he continued.
“It’s just been a nightmare.”
Last month, The Post obtained pictures of a corrections officer’s log book that had been filled out by an inmate who lamented the lack of supervision when he was left in an unmanned housing area.
“No officer on post. No fan on post. This is outrageous. Something needs to be done. Now!” read one of the entries in the book, signed “inmate.”
“All inmates are stressed… No officer for 2 days… Department of Corrections needs to get it together. Please!!”
Last week, corrections officers and captains protested outside the jail and lambasted what they called the worst working conditions in the jail’s notorious history — conditions that DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi admitted were serious.…
The DOC has blamed the staff shortage for the issues and said approximately 3,000 out of 8,800 staffers either called out sick in July or weren’t working with inmates, and “thousands more” went AWOL. …
