Widespread Abuses at Rikers Prison Demand Immediate Change of Guards

  • by: Susan V
  • recipient: New York Department of Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte

Guards at New York’s Rikers Island Prison have been found repeatedly responsible for serious physical abuse and neglect of inmates. But there’s no evidence that all guilty guards are being discharged.

This past January, the New York Times reported a New York State Commission of Correction finding that correction officers, guards and a private health provider, Corizen, had all contributed to the 2013 death of a diabetic inmate after he was deprived of proper care - or of any care at all. In fact Mr. Ballard had been locked in his cell for over a week without access to food or running water and deprived of insulin.

According to the Times, the NYSCC report “describes how a warden, an assistant deputy warden, guards, doctors, mental health clinicians, nurses and others made at least 57 visits to Mr. Ballard’s cell as he slowly deteriorated... but did nothing to assist him,”

Fast forward to a few days ago, when yet another report of a diabetes-related death was released by New York Daily News. This report says Carlos Mercado “fell face-first out of a holding pen filled with a dozen other inmates when Correction Officer Eric Jacobs opened the door.” Then, says a lawsuit, “Jacobs stepped over Mercado, 45, twice and never helped him.” Mercado died hours later, and the cause was insulin deprivation.

DN adds that NYSCC placed “the death of Carlos Mercado squarely on the shoulders of correction officers,” Yet, according to this same report, despite the gross negligence involved, the New York Department of Correction investigation called for the guards to “undergo retraining,” rather than replacing them. Likewise, according to the earlier Times report, “It is not clear…whether anyone received significant punishment.”

Insist that Commissioner Ponte remove all guards involved in serious neglect or abuse of inmates and replace them with guards who are properly trained.

We, the undersigned, say the abominable abuses at Rikers Island call for immediate dismissal of any and all guards involved in these and any similar incidents.


Rikers Island is notorious for its record of prisoner abuse. Even worse, the guards involved in these inmate deaths and abuses, some of the victims, children, have also been cited over and over for attempting to cover up their crimes.


According to a another Daily News report it took persistence by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to finally bring charges in June this year against three guards accused of killing inmate Ronald Spear, who was allegedly kicked and beaten to death by one guard, while two other guards restrained Spear, after he complained of not getting treatment for a kidney disease. A Huffington Post Report noted earlier that Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson had refused to prosecute the officers involved in Spear's death, even after a coroner's report “deemed Spear's death a homicide caused in part by 'blunt force trauma to the head,' as well as 'consistent' witness statements from inmates who said they saw the confrontation,” The guards in this case allegedly went to great lengths to cover up their role in Spear’s death, accusing the victim of swinging a cane at them, and even going to a supply room to find a cane to present as false evidence, adds the report.


Even more tragic, another young man, Kalief Browder, killed himself last June. His death is considered to be directly related to the abuse he suffered at Rikers after being incarcerated there, waiting three years for trial for allegedly stealing a backpack, at age 16.


According to a report on Browder’s suicide in the Guardian, Browder’s attorney, Paul Prestia told the LA Times that he believed “…what caused the suicide was his incarceration and those hundreds and hundreds of nights in solitary confinement, where there were mice crawling up his sheets in that little cell….Being starved, and not being taken to the shower for two weeks at a time … those were direct contributing factors … that was the pain and sadness that he had to deal with every day, and I think it was too much for him.”


According to numerous reports on this hell hole called Rikers, children, mentally and physically ill inmates are being repeatedly traumatized, abused, deprived of medical needs, beaten, brain-damaged and killed.


A June, 2015 report in the New York Times says New York and the Justice Department were expected to agree “on a reform plan that is intended to end the barbaric abuses that have long dominated the Rikers Island jail complex.” But a reform plan is simply not sufficient to address the scope of the atrocities being committed at Rikers.


There IS NO EXCUSE to allow this to continue one second longer. Any guard who has not been properly trained should be removed until that training has been completed and any guard found to be responsible for abuse or neglect of an inmate must be permanently removed.


We insist that these changes, with no more excuses from the NY DOC, be made immediately.

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