Rikers Island, the most feared prison in the northeastern United States. At Rikers one can expect to have to defend oneself within 24 hours of being admitted. As the saying goes, “you will be tested.” Anyone who disputes this should check out Troy Reed’s excellent documentary Scarface 4 Life. Within the heirarchy of street organizations, whoever is at the top in Rikers basically is the top dog in the streets of NYC. It is a violent and brutal place, there is no doubt about it. We are often told that it is the prisoners who make the place as violent as it is. But is that really the truth? What role does society – represented by the system – have in this violence?

Bronx Assistant DA James Goward says “scores” of adolescent inmates at Rikers Island were victimized by a gang of prisoners following orders from a pair of corrupt jail guards. One inmate,18-year-old Christopher Robinson, wound up dead last October, and an indictment unsealed in January named guard Michael McKie as “the architect of a criminal enterprise that recruited and trained inmates to inflict violence. They turned jail into almost a nightmare environment.”

Almost a nightmare environment?! If getting locked up in Rikers isn’t a nightmare than what is? But while some claim it is a one-time thing, we at Malcolm-Che know better. Apparently some others do too:

“…the pattern of cases suggests that city correction officials have been aware of a problem in which Rikers guards have acquiesced or encouraged violence among inmates.” – New York Times

Remind you of something? How about the gladiator wars (also see here) organized by guards at Corcoran Prison in California? This whole issue of corrections officers inciting violence, participating in it, etc. isn’t just a few bad apples at Rikers, or just limited to Rikers. It is EVERYWHERE. But since we are talking about Rikers, we should note that a former CO from there just got sentenced to 203 years in prison for rape and other charges.

Rikers Guards Accused of Even More Abuse, Corruption

Bronx Assistant DA James Goward says “scores” of adolescent inmates at Rikers Island were victimized by a gang of prisoners following orders from a pair of corrupt jail guards. One inmate,18-year-old Christopher Robinson, wound up dead last October, and an indictment unsealed in January named guard Michael McKie as “the architect of a criminal enterprise that recruited and trained inmates to inflict violence. They turned jail into almost a nightmare environment.”

Christopher Robinson’s mother on the right

With the help of guard Khalid Nelson, McKie is accused of deputizing inmates (often members of the Bloods gang) as “managers, foot soldiers and enforcers”; they allegedly called their operation “The Program.” McKie and Nelson have pleaded not guilty to “enterprise corruption,” and a third officer was also charged with conspiracy. Rose Gil Hearn, commissioner of the city Department of Investigation, tells the Village Voice this is “the worst” she has ever seen in the jails.

The city has been sued repeatedly in recent years by more than a half-dozen Rikers inmates who say they’ve been beaten while guards either looked the other way or ordered the attacks; the city settled one case for $500,000, and another for almost $100,000. According to the Times, a new lawsuit filed yesterday concerns a March 2007 assault by a prisoner who authorities say was used by guards as an enforcer. The adolescent victim, Tyreek Shuford, was beaten, left with his head bleeding, and kept from visiting the infirmary for two days.

In another case, a guard unlocked the cell of an inmate named Camillo Douglas, allowing three prisoners who were members of the Bloods gang to attack him with brooms and metal shanks.

http://gothamist.com/2009/02/04/rikers_islands_guards_accused_of_ev.php

Lawsuits Suggest Pattern of Rikers Guards Looking Other Way

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/nyregion/04rikers.html?_r=1

When two guards were accused last month of encouraging inmates in one Rikers Island jail to police themselves, leading to beatings and in one case the killing of an inmate, correction officials called the situation “an aberration” and said they had not seen such a case in other units involving other guards.

But New York City has been sued in recent years by more than a half-dozen Rikers inmates claiming to have been the victims of beatings by prisoners while guards looked the other way, or worse, ordered the attacks. The city settled one case for $500,000, and another for just under $100,000. A new lawsuit was filed Tuesday.

And last year, Bronx prosecutors charged that a Rikers guard ordered six inmates to beat two prisoners; one victim was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. The guard has pleaded not guilty.

None of the cases include allegations on the scale of those announced last month by officials in the Bronx district attorney’s office, who said that the two Rikers guards had recruited inmates over three months last year to serve as “managers, foot soldiers and enforcers” to maintain order in a housing unit for adolescent men. The guards are also accused of training the inmates in how to restrain and assault their victims, and deciding where and when attacks would occur.

But the pattern of cases suggests that city correction officials have been aware of a problem in which Rikers guards have acquiesced or encouraged violence among inmates.

“These are institutions where inmate activity is monitored 24 hours a day, and it’s astonishing that this kind of behavior should go on for so long unchecked,” said Jonathan Chasan, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society’s prisoners’ rights project, which is co-counsel in the new suit that was filed on Tuesday.

The city’s correction commissioner, Martin F. Horn, said in an interview that his agency was aware of the earlier cases and that he believed that steps had been taken to increase security and make it easier for the authorities to identify corrupt guards and inmates.

“I think it would be a mistake to say that the city was asleep at the switch because I don’t think we were,” Mr. Horn said.

“One could question whether the steps that we took were sufficiently effective. Certainly we are looking back, and we are concerned, and we want to learn from this and step up our efforts and review what we’ve done and say, ‘Was it sufficient? Was it adequate? Was it effective?’ ”

In the case last month, the Bronx district attorney announced charges against three Rikers correction officers and a dozen inmates in connection with what they said was a criminal extortion ring that included assaults, larceny and other crimes that occurred between July and October 2008. The charges followed an investigation into the beating death of an 18-year-old inmate, Christopher Robinson, on Oct. 18 after, the authorities said, he refused to go along with the ring.

Two officers, Michael McKie and Khalid Nelson, were charged with enterprise corruption and were accused of leading the ring; neither was charged with participating in the death of Mr. Robinson. Both men have pleaded not guilty. A third officer was also charged with conspiracy.

There have been at least seven lawsuits filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing guards of complicity or acquiescence in inmate violence at Rikers, a complex of 10 detention facilities which, along with several other jails around the city, hold about 13,000 prisoners, most of whom are pretrial detainees.

None of the seven suits have gone to trial. In the three that were settled, the city admitted no liability or wrongdoing.

The $500,000 settlement, reached in 2007, concerned a 2003 assault on an inmate named Donald Jackson.

His lawyer, Andrew B. Stoll, said Mr. Jackson was punched by another prisoner with the acquiescence of a guard, that his client fell and hit his head. Although he “was bleeding badly, and unconscious,” the lawsuit said, “the officers delayed in obtaining medical treatment.”

In another case, the city agreed last year to pay $97,500 to Schmi Caballero, who said in his suit that a guard became angry that he was taking too long on a call to his mother.

As punishment, the guard had another inmate attack him with a broomstick, the suit said, and Mr. Caballero was beaten in the face, and left with a broken nose and blurred vision.

Mr. Caballero’s lawyer, Joel Berger, said he believes gangs were being allowed to control certain Rikers units. “Sometimes the officers are afraid to do something about it,” he said.

Another lawyer, Julia P. Kuan, whose firm has two pending suits involving Rikers assaults, in 2006 and 2007, said, “The city’s been on notice because these lawsuits have been pending for quite some time, and the fact patterns are so similar.”

In one case, a guard unlocked the cell of an inmate named Camillo Douglas, allowing three prisoners who were known members of the Bloods gang to enter, the suit said. They struck Mr. Douglas repeatedly with brooms and metal shanks; they also attacked another inmate who rushed to his aid, the suit said.

Norman Seabrook, president of the union representing about 8,000 correction officers, declined to comment on the suits, except to say he believes that the officers are innocent of wrongdoing. He said that to the extent problems exist, “the managers in this agency are not properly supervising and training officers.”

The latest suit describes an assault in March 2007 by a prisoner that the authorities say was used by guards as an enforcer in the Rikers jail for adolescent males, the Robert N. Davoren center. The inmate, Tyreek Shuford, was beaten and left with his head bleeding and then was not allowed to visit the infirmary for two days, the suit said.

Jonathan S. Abady, another of Mr. Shuford’s lawyers, said the case suggested there was “an intractable culture of permissiveness” among officers, “coupled with a disturbing attitude of denial by higher level supervisors.”

Mr. Horn disputed contentions that his agency was not addressing security, saying the agency was moving in the right direction, and when compared with jails in other large cities, “we are safer by far.”

10 thugs charged in Rikers beatdown

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/01/28/2009-01-28_10_thugs_charged_in_rikers_beatdown.html

The mother of a Rikers Island inmate beaten to death sat in court Wednesday as 10 prisoners accused of belonging to a brutal club called “The Program” were arraigned.

Two of the defendants were charged directly with the fatal October attack on Christopher Robinson, 18, who was jailed on a parole violation when he was killed.

“Its absolutely horrible to know that I’m living here every day without my only child,” his mother, Charnel, said during a break.

Her lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, called for a federal investigation into whether the beating was an “isolated incident” or a sign of systemwide abuse.

A city probe into Robinson’s death revealed correction officers in his Rikers cellblock joined forces with a cabal of prisoners to keep order, prosecutors said last week.

The three officers called the scheme “The Program” and dubbed their inmate cohorts “The Team.” The inmates allegedly were allowed to shake down and beat other prisoners.

A dozen Rikers inmates were indicted along with Officers Michael McKie, Khalid Nelson and Denise Albright last week, and some of them were formally charged Wednesday.

Inmates Anquant Bryant and Shaddon Beswick, both 18, were hit with manslaughter charges in connection with Robinson’s death.

Beswick’s lawyer, Xavier Donaldson, said his client was in the One Main housing area – where “The Program” allegedly took place – for a single day, so the conspiracy charges related to the scandal don’t make sense.

“The conspiracy is supposed to have covered from July 10 to Oct. 18,” Donaldson said. “My client, based on the information that I know, had not been in One Main for more than 24 hours.”

He would not comment on the manslaughter charge.

This article touches on 2 key points that we at Malcom-Che constantly point out:

1)  Corrections Officers help bring in contraband to the prisons and are part and parcel of the illegal culture inside prisons.

2)  Prisons are schools for crime, not places for rehabilitation, and this article points out that many people go into prison unaffliated and leave as Bloods.

We’d also like to point out that this article states that 51% of all gang members incarcerated in N.J. are Bloods (as of July ‘08), something that is very interesting.

Bloods inmates exploiting N.J. jails

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20081119_Bloods_inmates_exploiting_N_J__jails.html

TRENTON – In some ways, the Bloods gang wields more power in Burlington County’s Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility than the corrections officers do, according to a former inmate.

Most of the inmates are Bloods. They smuggle drugs and cell phones into the Bordentown prison and extort protection money from other inmates. Corrections officers rarely bother inmates belonging to the gang; some even abet their crimes – and a few are Bloods themselves.

That’s according to sworn statements given to a state official by an unnamed inmate who said a group of Bloods there held a glass shard to his throat, threatened to kill him, and forced him to pay about $300 in protection money.

A video of his testimony was shown as part of a five-hour statehouse hearing yesterday on a 20-month investigation revealing the ease with which incarcerated gang members exploit vulnerabilities in New Jersey’s prison system.

The State Commission of Investigation found that despite hundreds of arrests in recent years that sent gang members to prison in record numbers, they were freely organizing crime from their jail cells. Weaknesses in the way prisons handle inmates’ financial accounts and visitation policies, along with a small group of corrupt corrections officials, have allowed gangs to retain their power even with key leaders behind bars, investigators found.

Law-enforcement officials, SCI investigators and inmates (by video) testified yesterday to the agency’s commissioners. The commission is expected to release a full report with recommendations early next year, and the state Department of Corrections already is enacting some reforms, the commission said.

The current system is “ripe for abuse,” SCI Special Agent Kenneth Cooley told the commissioners. Gang members “can operate in the same fashion inside the prison system that they operated in outside the prison system,” he said.

The investigation focused on the growing ranks of the Bloods in state prisons. Commission figures show Bloods went from 34 percent of incarcerated gang members in January 2004 to 51 percent in July 2008.

“These are horribly violent, evil people operating at a sophisticated level,” said Gary Hilton, former deputy commissioner of the Department of Corrections.

New Jersey prisons have become recruiting grounds for the Bloods. Inmates who join the gang there usually stay gang members when they return to society, SCI officials said.

One inmate jailed for drug possession, for instance, was forced to join the Bloods while he was in prison, following an initiation in which four men gave him a broken nose and black eye, according to testimony shown at the hearing.

The reason he joined: “You really don’t have a choice, because you are surrounded by them all day.”

Stressing that most corrections officers perform a tough job well, investigators said a small number have been smuggling cell phones and drugs in for the Bloods either because the Bloods paid them off or threatened – often subtly – their families with violence.

Cell phones are one of the gangs’ most potent weapons in prison, and they are a hotter item than drugs, sometimes going for as much as $1,000, officials testified. Gang members use the phones, smuggled in by visitors or prison officials, to call inmates in other prisons or gang members on the street to coordinate or order crimes.

Analyzing confiscated cell phones, investigators found that calls were going out across the state and the country, including to Los Angeles, where the Bloods gang took root in the 1960s and ’70s. Inmates also have gamed the prison telephone system, in one case holding a six-way conference call that included inmates at other prisons.

Another concern: the state prison system’s lax policies on inmates’ financial accounts, according to officials. Each inmate has an account, in which money comes from friends and relatives or is earned through prison labor. But prison business managers approve almost every inmate disbursement, even when the ostensible purpose is suspicious, according to testimony.

And it is too easy, officials testified, for anyone to walk in and drop off a money order for an inmate’s account. The SCI’s investigation uncovered that between fiscal years 2004 and 2008, inmates at all 14 state prisons received $63.8 million in their accounts.

Some is money they extorted from inmates or their families. The inmate who was threatened at the Wagner facility in Bordentown, for instance, said he was forced to send money to an address given to him by the Bloods. The reason he gave prison officials: paying fines in Pennsylvania.

Some of you might remember Aqeela from the American Gangster episode (from BET) about Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams.  Both of these activists are doing great work to promote peace among “gangs.” Note that the name of their organization conjures up Malcolm and that Aqeela is a former revolutionary black nationalist. 

Rival Gang Members Join Together in Peace

http://www.independent.com/news/2008/oct/02/rival-gang-members-join-together-peace/

Thursday, October 2, 2008

When gang members try to do something good for people, they are still demonized by mainstream politicians and media. 

Bloods gangsters offer to save libraries before mayor blasts back

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20128465&BRD=1697&PAG=461&dept_id=44551&rfi=6

TRENTON – Last night’s City Council meeting lurched between surreal and surly when a self-proclaimed Bloods gang member offered his organization’s help in ending a budget crunch that could potentially close four library branches.

The gangster’s offer received applause.

Smelling of liquor – but apparently earnest in his delivery – a tattooed man calling himself “Eugene” and identifying himself as a high-ranking officer in the city’s 9-Trey Bloods set said he could help.

“If it’s money you need I can make some phone calls, maybe get some rappers here and have a concert,” Eugene said.

Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer delivered a stinging rebuttal last night by phone after community activist Paul Harris laid into City Council President Paul Pintella for allowing Eugene a free pass on his address.

“If gang members want to help this city they can start with a renouncement of their gang affiliation, get legitimate jobs and stop the violence that terrorizes our communities, which forces our young kids to use libraries as safe havens,” Palmer told The Trentonian. “Our streets would be safe havens if the gang members stopped their nonsense.

“Tell the gang members thanks but no thanks regarding helping Trenton. If (Eugene) wants to help then he should get his brothers to stop selling drugs, stop the killing. Maybe they can stop the violence so that people won’t have to give a second thought about being shot while sitting on their front porch or running in the playground.”

Eugene described his 9-Trey set as a “non-violent group that does a lot for the community that people never hear about.

“The only thing they ever hear are bad things that the media writes about us. Forget the perception that others have about me. You can’t judge a book by its cover. Every gangbanger ain’t always violent.”

Eugene followed 9-year-old Al Haqq at the City Council microphone after the young boy voiced his plea for saving branches at Briggs, East Trenton, Cadwalader and Skelton.

Haqq predicted that a closure of libraries will lead many city youth toward gangs and violence. Eugene said he didn’t want young kids like Haqq to turn to violence, drugs or death.

His oratory completed, Eugene then received supportive applause, much to the dismay of Pintella.

“That surprised me a little, but it’s understandable because some of the people were with him,” Pintella said.

Pintella also recalled how in the past year the city’s downtown main branch had served as a meeting place for gang members. “But if they want to help, then first they need to get out of the gangs. I don’t know that we are going to deal with reputed drug dealers and thugs,” he said.

But that’s what a community activist alleged with his analyzation of Eugene’s delivery.

“Everything (Eugene) said was disrespectful to City Council. As soon as he stood up there and proclaimed himself as a top gang member it should have been over. That’s like a known terrorist going before the United Nations,” Harris said.

“No matter what he said, there is a perception that exists about his gang. They are about guns, drugs and violence – and that’s it as far as I’m concerned. There is nothing positive about that.”

Harris did side with Pintella after the meeting ended, both saying that Eugene had a right to speak his opinions.

“This is still America,” Pintella said. “You may not like what a person says, but I will always defend his right to say what he thinks.”

As west coast gangs like the Bloods and Crips spread across America, many wonder how it is happening so fast.  As this article makes clear, imprisonment is one of the most useful tools for gang members to spread their ideology.  The sociological theory ‘differential association’ says that prison is a school for crime, not a place for rehabilitation as its proponents would have us believe.  As one of my friends said recently, “When I was locked up I had to either mind my own business and read on my own or chill with the dudes inside and learn how to be a better criminal… so I minded my own business and just did my time.”  The following quote is a good part of this article that speaks to my point:

The ranks of the two gangs appear to be growing locally, in part, because of men returning from jail or prison who joined the gangs for protection behind bars. In Trinidad, some of those men are persuading neighborhood crews to affiliate with a gang, police said.

This is not political, but it is interesting to note that they shot at the cops.

2 Brooklyn Teens Arrested For Shooting At Officer

http://www.wnbc.com/news/17309061/detail.html

NEW YORK — Two Brooklyn teens have been charged with attempted murder in an incident that could have left a uniformed police officer dead or wounded.

The incident was caught on surveillance video Sunday in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Police said the “Bloods” street gang members fired five rounds but missed a police officer.

Keith Myers, 19, is charged with attempted murder. A 15-year-old is also charged, allegedly for luring the officer into the line of fire.

—————————————————————————–

Bloods gang member Keith Myers, allegedly fired at the cop from across the street. Myers, who claimed he was firing at a different car with a Crips member pointing a gun at him, was charged with attempted murder and weapons possession. The other teen, also a member of the Bloods, was charged with attempted murder, acting in concert and reckless endangerment.