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Rikers Guards Allegedly Orchestrated And Covered Up Assault On Inmate
By
Emma Whitford
Published Sep 18, 2015
Modified Sep 18, 2015
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By
Emma Whitford
Published Sep 18, 2015
Modified Sep 18, 2015
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Two Rikers correction officers are facing up to seven years in prison for allegedly convincing four inmates to assault a fellow prisoner last January, and then filing false paperwork in an attempt to cover it up.
The NY Times reports that Officers Nakia Gales, 39, and Herman Jiminian, 41, allegedly recruited four inmates at the Vernon C. Bain Center, a jail barge at Rikers called "the Boat," to beat up inmate Gilbert Bacallao after he "talked trash" to a third officer. According to court documents, Gales has "ties" to the Bloods gang, as do two of the four inmates she recruited.
Gales, who was arraigned yesterday, pled not guilty to assault, falsifying records, and official misconduct. The News reports that she allegedly "lured" Bacallo into an empty vestibule in the Boat, claiming that there was a package waiting for him there. Bacallo was locked inside the vestibule, where four inmates were waiting to attack him. Gales allegedly watched the whole incident from her perch inside an operations-and-control room.
The two officers then filed a false "use of force" report. According to Capital, it stated that Bacallo had attacked Gales in the vestibule, and that Jiminian had intervened to help her.
“This is a stunning example of correction officers conspiring with the very inmates they guard to use violence in settling a personal score, according to the charges,” said Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters in a Statement. "There is no tolerance for this type of thuggish behavior. We will find it; we will root it out; we will see that it is prosecuted.”
Both officers have been suspended from their jobs without pay. Earlier this year, in a rare move, the Department of Correction fired a captain and five correction officers for hogtying and beating a handcuffed, mentally ill inmate in 2012.
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