•Ex-inmates Camillo Douglas and Luis Soriano are suing the city, claiming that Bloods assaulted them last year at RNDC after guards purposely opened their cell doors after bedtime to allow the beatings to take place, their lawyer, Julia Kuan, says.
When Douglas alleged to the Voice that the Bloods controlled the housing unit, Correction officials pooh-poohed it, and he was ignored.
Illustration by Ward Harkavy
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But in September, the Voice obtained internal Correction Department documents showing that top officials at RNDC were aware that Bloods indeed controlled the housing area.
"Gang members known as Bloods are in fact giving orders to other inmates," wrote Captain Belinda Nicks. "They conspired to attack and assault Douglas and Soriano."
Assistant Deputy Warden Zina McLean wrote in her report, "Bloods were trying to manipulate the feeding with distribution of the portions."
And a May 2007 report written by the RNDC warden, Gregory McLaughlin, says the same thing in more muted tones: "It is evident that this incident was a result of Bloods attempting to influence the feeding and telephone use with other inmates."
•Back in 2000, Bloods got into the cell of Bronx teen Matthew Velez and fatally beat him. Correction officers broke policy in opening his cell door and then either ignored his cries for help or failed to do the required security checks.
During a 2002 trial, one of Velez's killers testified the unit was a "Blood house" and that an accomplice actually asked an officer for permission to "make it hot" — or beat up Velez.
"In the house I was in," he testified, "it's very common. You go to [certain] officers. Every day, there's a fight."
Little seems to have changed since then. Within the past several weeks, correction sources say, inmates in one RNDC housing area were obliged to ask permission from another inmate to enter and leave the dayroom.
"We do get complaints about gang violence and collusion with officers in distributing contraband and quote, enforcing discipline, close quote, by inmates at RNDC," says Jonathan Chasen, a lawyer with Legal Aid's Prisoners Rights Project.
RNDC may be more vulnerable to that kind of behavior, jail observers tell the Voice, because youthful inmates are more vulnerable than adult inmates, they don't speak up as often, and they are seen as easier to coerce by the staff.
•RNDC has been the site of three suicides in the past two years, including two in the highly secure close-custody wing, where inmates are locked in their cells for 23 hours. One of the suicides was 18-year-old Steven Morales, who hanged himself with a towel after his girlfriend dropped him. The incidents have raised obvious questions about the quality of supervision in the jail.
Guard involvement in inmate assaults has been reported at other Rikers jails as well.
In March, 2007, the city agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit involving a near-fatal assault by the leader of a house gang.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Donald Jackson, was punched once in the head by inmate Kirk Fisher in an AMKC mental observation ward in May 2003.
Jackson's head struck a piece of protruding metal on the floor so hard that he developed a blood clot in his brain and almost died if not for an operation at Elmhurst Hospital, records show.
"The inmates tell us it's a really common set-up," said Andrew Stoll, a Brooklyn lawyer who specializes in police and Correction Department cases, at the time. "In a lot of the houses, the correction officers use the house gang as enforcers, and pay them with cigarettes and extra commissary."
Fisher testified that, indeed, he had been "deputized" by correction officers to run the unit — a violation of DOC rules.
"I was the house captain, and it was my job to enforce certain rules," he testified. "Anybody that acted up in the house, it was my job to put them in line."
A deposition given by former correction officer Roger Cullen was even more dismaying.
Cullen, the officer who witnessed the assault on Jackson, testified in the deposition that Fisher told other inmates when to shower, when to lock-in, and when to clean their cells.
"It was like he was in charge," Cullen said, adding, "Any officer knows you're not supposed to do that — it's wrong."
Meanwhile, the mayhem continues. Earlier this month, the Daily News reported that a former inmate named Jeffrey Treffy, of Queens, claimed he was forced to fight another inmate in December 2007 for the amusement of correction officers. Treffy claims that officers allowed him to get medical care only if he told doctors that he hurt himself in a fall.
