New York City is setting aside more than $700,000 to go towards testing the uniforms of Rikers Island jailers. According to the Department of Corrections, at least one guard a day is “splashed” by inmates with bodily fluids.
The proposed budget for the DoC released by Mayor de Blasio’s
office on Monday this week calls for $733,248 in funds for a
forensic program that will “test department uniforms as a result
of splashing incident,” the New York Observer reported.
“Splashing,” as it’s known at the city’s main jail complex, is
when inmates throw feces and urine at Rikers staffers, Correction
Commissioner Joseph Ponte told reporters at a press conference
this week.
The DoC says that there have already been 179 splashing incidents
since the start of the year, or an average of 1.19 occurrences a
day.
READ MORE: Rape ‘endemic’ by Rikers Island prison
officers – lawsuit
Inmates can get in trouble for dousing employees with anything,
but officials can bring felony charges if they can prove that the
substance “splashed” their way is more than just water.
“If we can test whatever’s on the shirt or the uniform, it makes
it a felony, a chargeable crime rather than if it was
water,” Ponte told the paper. “So it increases the
penalty to the inmate.”
Ponte added that he doesn’t think the nearly quarter-of-a-million
dollars will end the wave of splashing incidents, but being able
to test substances will “expedite” the process for bring
hefty charges.
“It’s not common,” he said. “It doesn’t happen every
day, but it’s a problem.”
Nevertheless, the Observer acknowledged that, according to the
Twitter account for the Correction Officers Benevolent
Association, “splashing” happened at Rikers within hours of
Monday’s announcement.
NSeabrook: DOC last 24 2 COs sent to ER 15 Inmates fight; sprayed w/ OC to stop 4 COs splashed w/ feces-urine-blood #NYCDOClast24
— COBA (@NYCCOBA1) June 2, 2015
“2 Cos [correction officers] splashed w/ feces-urine-blood,”
Norman Seabrook, the head of COBA, wrote on Twitter.
According to a lawsuit filed last month, it isn’t just jailers on
the receiving end of assaults at Rikers, though. Attorneys
representing two female Rikers inmates alleged in court that at
least eight guards have sexually abused inmates there during the
last few years.
"This abuse is only possible because, in the face of repeated
warnings, the City of New York has enabled a culture of
complacency to perpetuate at Rikers Island and thereby consented
to the abuse of women in its custody," the lawsuit reads in
part.