A group of inmates briefly took control of the intake unit on Rikers Island Tuesday after breaking into a captain’s closet and stealing riot gear amid a tumultuous 24 hours at the notorious jail, The Post has learned.
The detainees, all of whom recently arrived at the jail, had been out of their holding pens around 7:53 a.m. and were able to bust into a captain’s office and put on the riot gear stashed inside, jailhouse sources said.
The inmates tried to assault the workers, who immediately called the city Department of Correction’s Emergency Services Unit for help, according to the agency and the sources.
The elite officers, trained to handle such disturbances, got the gear back from the rogue detainees and placed the situation under control “within minutes,” the sources and a DOC spokesperson said.
Staffers immediately took cover as the inmates ran around the facility, sources said Corbis via Getty Images
The inmates stole riot gear from a captain’s office, sources said. AP“Earlier today there was a detainee disturbance within the intake area at the Eric M. Taylor Center. The intake staff with support from our Emergency Services Unit defused the situation within minutes,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“Our staff has one of the toughest jobs in law enforcement and we have zero tolerance for detainees who assault our staff for simply doing their jobs. We will be pursuing rearrest of the individuals involved.”
It’s not clear how many detainees were involved but the intake unit sees about 45 new admissions a day, and detainees are not supposed to be in the facility longer than 24 hours.
Crowded conditions at the previous intake unit on Rikers Island.
The area is prone to disturbances because it is one of the most fluid parts of Rikers Island, the DOC said. It’s where all new admissions are processed, where detainees are sent to court and where people are processed for release, the agency said.
No staff or people in custody were injured, the DOC said.
“They did go a little crazy. … Why they are out of the pen is a whole different story, a whole new question,” a source said.
“ESU was called, and they gave it up.”
The incident comes just hours after a detainee died of a suspected overdose at the Anna M. Kross Center and a correction officer was stabbed around a dozen times by a murder suspect in the same facility.
The DOC has clocked 18 deaths in custody so far this year, up from 16 recorded in all of 2021.
