Three Department of Correction officials at Rikers Island were arrested over the alleged cover-up of an assault on a cuffed inmate with a baton, the city’s chief investigator said Wednesday.
The arrests are part of an investigation by the city’s Department of Investigation into violence and drug smuggling at Rikers that has led to more than a dozen people being arrested.
The latest collars were for Moises Simancas, a captain, and two corrections officers, April Jackson of Brooklyn and Tyrone Wint of Brentwood, Long Island.
The DOI alleged that on Oct. 30, 2012, the two officers took the cuffed inmate, who had been verbally abusive to one of the defendants, and brought him to a stairwell where all three defendants beat him with batons. To cover up the beating, the corrections officials allegedly filed use-of-force reports that left out the batons. The contusions the inmate suffered had an imprint of the batons, the DOI said.
The Bronx district attorney’s office is prosecuting the officials arrested in the DOI investigation.
