Rikers inmate tries to escape wearing ill

An assault suspect held in a Rikers Island jail got his hands on a Correction Department uniform Thursday night and walked around pretending to conduct rounds in a possible attempt to escape, according to correction sources, officials and records.

Bokeem Jones, 28, donned the correction officer uniform — including the official shirt, jackets, trousers and boots — in the Otis M. Bantum Correctional Center at some point before 10:30 p.m., the sources said.

After putting on the uniform, Jones walked into an intake area momentarily then left as if he was touring the housing area like an officer.

He then was walking down a corridor when officers “recognized” him at about 10:25 p.m., records show. “Inmate Jones was in a DOC uniform impersonating an officer,” said a preliminary report on the incident obtained by the Daily News.

Department of Correction spokesman Patrick Rocchio said Jones “tried to escape by disguising himself in a DOC uniform and attempting to leave a secure area.”

But officers ordered Jones to stop. He refused and supposedly took a “fighting stance,” records show. Three officers then used pepper spray to subdue him, put him in shackles, and placed him in an intake holding cell.

“Officers identified the detainee in a hallway and quickly took him into custody,” Rocchio said.

New York City Department of Correction officer at Rikers Island. (James Keivom/New York Daily News)

The incident was reported just over an hour later, at 11:46 p.m., to DOC’s Central Operations Desk. The ensuing investigation kept the entire jail locked down until early Friday morning, the sources said.

Sources told The News that Jones found the uniform discarded in garbage bags in a Bantum Center gym.

When the Bantum Center was temporarily shut down about a year ago, some staff items, including clothing, were left behind in the gym, said the sources.

The jail was partially reopened earlier this year. On Thursday, detainees using the gym for recreation came across the items, and that was where Jones found the uniform, the sources said.

“When you re-open a jail, there are security checks that should be done,” a correction source said. “It wouldn’t be unfair to question why the items were left in the gym and what staff assigned to the rec area was doing.”

Rocchio said Friday that the incident was under investigation.

Jones has been on Rikers since his arrest in January 2022 for first-degree assault and robbery in Brooklyn. He is accused of shooting another man once in each leg after snatching his backpack containing $800 in cash, court records show.

The episode recalled the 2009 escape of Ronald Tackmann from the holding cells at the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Tackmann, wearing a suit for a court appearance, convinced an officer he was a lawyer.

Tackmann was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison on robbery and escape charges, and died in state custody in 2020.

In 2013, Matthew Matagrano pleaded guilty to twice posing as a jail investigator to sneak into Rikers, where he groped detainees on two occasions.

Rikers Island Prison (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The security breakdown at the Bantum Center comes amid a new controversy that highlights possible disagreements between Correction Department leadership and the correction unions.

Earlier this week, DOC ordered a cap on overtime for officers of all ranks, records show. Assistant deputy wardens are now capped at 42 hours a month, captains at 47 hours and correction officers at 57 hours, records show.

“Effective immediately, there will be absolutely NO OVERTIME FOR ALL staff that have reached their overtime limits,” wrote Assistant Commissioner Ned McCormick in a memo seen by The News.

However, the corrections unions have been sounding alarm bells over short staffing from the end of the de Blasio era throughout the Adams era.

Earlier this week, after several officers were injured in two separate attacks by inmates, correction officers union head Benny Boscio said, “It’s time for the leadership of this agency to hold assaultive inmates accountable for their crimes instead of suspending our members who are dealing with impossible situations.”

Boscio also said, “After 16 monitor reports, correction officers remain sitting ducks for repeat violent offenders who continue to be coddled by this agency.”

A correction officer on guard. (Anthony DelMundo/New York Daily News)

In one incident, inmate Michael Megginson slashed three officers with a piece of a broken pipe. The News previously reported that Megginson had assaulted dozens of officers over the past year, but little had been done.

Instead, as The News also first reported, Correction Commissioner Louis Molina ordered the suspension of Captain Awais Ghauri merely for writing an internal email pleading for more help with a security plan for handling Megginson.

In the past two weeks, the alliance has been shaken further by a sea change in the question of whether an outside receiver should be appointed to run the jails as the rates of violence and staff uses of excessive force continue to remain much higher than they were eight years when the federal monitor was first appointed.

First, the monitor in the case strongly recommended to Laura Taylor Swain, the judge in the case, that she initiate contempt proceedings against the city.

Then last week, US Attorney in Manhattan Damian Williams said he would seek a court-appointed receiver.

Meanwhile, there have been three jail deaths this month, bringing the total so far in 2023 to seven. The most recent death, that of Curtis Davis early on Sunday, led to suspensions of three officers for unspecified procedural violations.

There were 19 deaths in the jails in 2022 and 16 in 2021.