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| FILE - In this May 17, 2011 file photo, a bus drives past the the entrance to Rikers Island in New York. Nearly a third of Rikers Island inmates who said their visible injuries came at the hands of a correction officer last year had suffered a blow to the head, a tactic that is supposed to be a guard's last resort because it is potentially fatal, according to an internal report obtained by The Associated Press. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- Nearly a third of Rikers Island inmates who said their visible
injuries came at the hands of a correction officer last year had
suffered a blow to the head, a tactic that is supposed to be a guard's
last resort because it is potentially fatal, according to an internal
report obtained by The Associated Press.
The
report, acquired by the AP via a Freedom of Information request, also
found that an average of three inmates a day were treated for visible
injuries they claimed were caused by correction officers and 20 others
each day suffered injuries primarily from violent encounters with other
inmates.
Inmate advocates said the report
shows that not enough is being done to stop violence at the notorious
12,000-inmate jail, by far the largest of New York City's lockups.
"The
New York City jails are extremely violent," said Legal Aid Society
attorney Mary Lynne Werlwas, who is representing Rikers inmates in a
class-action lawsuit that alleges a pattern of excessive force by
officers. "We should not be seeing these numbers of head shots. We
should not be seeing this degree of facial injury. ... It's a problem
the department has known about for some time."
The
report, prepared by New York City health department officials, found
8,557 verified injuries among Rikers' inmates between April 2012 and
April 2013. Of those, 1,257 injuries allegedly resulted from
use-of-force by corrections officers. The rest were attributed primarily
to inmate-on-inmate violence. It classified 304 of the injuries as
serious, meaning they were fractures or other injuries that required
more than first-aid treatment.
Among the injuries blamed on guards, 28 percent involved a blow to the head.
Referred
to as "head shots" in corrections parlance, blows to the head are
supposed to be used by officers as a last resort because they can be
potentially fatal. Under department policy, officers are instructed to
use less forceful measures first, such as issuing verbal orders, using
pepper spray or stun guns and grasping or pushing inmates.
Correctional
health emergency care logs acquired by the AP in a separate records
request show that head and facial injuries included nose and cheek bone
fractures as well as cuts to the eyes, lips and face.
In
issuing the violence report, a city lawyer stressed the injuries
attributed to use-of-force by officers hadn't been substantiated.
City
Department of Correction officials said in a statement most injuries
from use of force last year were treated with over-the-counter first
aid. The department also said that, given the number of inmates in the
system, it considers the rate of serious violence to be relatively low
and continues to look for ways to reduce it further, such as stepping up
investigations and adding nearly 2,000 security cameras in recent
years.
New York's isn't the only U.S. jail system to struggle with violence and use-of-force issues.
Sheriff's
deputies in Los Angeles County jails, the nation's largest, have
recently been indicted for alleged crimes that included beating inmates
and even jail visitors. The American Civil Liberties Union has monitored
conditions there since 1985 and released a report in 2012 that found 11
inmates had facial bones broken by deputies between 2009 and 2011.
Comparisons
to other penitentiaries are difficult to make. City jails in general
are considered more dangerous than state or federal prisons, according
to experts. And only 5 percent of the roughly 3,000 jails nationwide
have 1,000 inmates or more, according to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics. In a 2006 study of U.S. jail inmates based on 2002 data, the
bureau found that 7 percent had been injured in a fight during their
time behind bars.
Kip Kautzky, a national
prisons expert who served as head of corrections in Iowa and Colorado,
reviewed the New York City data and said the number of use-of-force
injuries said to be caused by blows to the head appeared to be
startlingly high.
"It just isn't a defensive tactic that is useful or should be allowed," he said.
The
report's findings come as the U.S. Justice Department probes violence
among adolescent inmates at Rikers, particularly those in a youth jail
that houses 16- to 18-year-olds, according to three city officials who
confirmed the inquiry on the condition of anonymity because they weren't
authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Adolescent
inmates accounted for 754 of the verified injuries, according to the
report. About 14 percent of them allegedly involved a correction
officer. One of them likely included Aunray Stanford, who was 18 years
old in May 2012 when, he alleges in a federal lawsuit, his skull was
fractured and his face was cut when Rikers guards beat him at the youth
jail. The city Law Department declined to comment on the ongoing
lawsuit.
A spokeswoman for Manhattan federal
prosecutors, who are conducting the investigation, declined to comment.
The corrections department said it has cooperated with federal
investigators.
Officers decide to use force
based on perceived threats in real time, said Martin F. Horn, a former
city correction commissioner.
Norman Seabrook,
president of the city's 9,000-member correction officers' union, said
correction officers should use "whatever force is necessary to terminate
an aggression." Unlike police officers, correction officers "only have
their hands and/or their batons to use," he said.
Corrections
officers themselves are at risk of injury. Prison guards have one of
the highest injury rates among all occupations, according to the U.S.
Department of Labor.
Seabrook said chronic
understaffing combined with rampant gang violence at Rikers,
particularly among adolescents, has created an environment in which
violence becomes hard to manage.
"Until you've
had human feces thrown at you or have an inmate slash you with a razor
... you have no idea what we deal with," he said.
