A Rikers inmate locked up on an attempted murder charge broke a Correction Officer’s arm during an unprovoked attack at the beleaguered jail — in what the guard’s union called a prime example of why solitary confinement is needed.
The officer, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn’t cleared to talk about his ordeal, said the inmate grabbed his hair and refused to let go while punching him in the face in an unprovoked attack at the city jail on Friday.
“I used a chemical agent but it did not have the desired effect,” the injured officer told The Post.
“He punched me in my face. He was choking me, and pulling my hair because I have dreads. He wouldn’t let go.”
Several other guards pulled the inmate off of the victim. He didn’t realize until later that his right arm had been broken in two places.
“I’m in a lot of pain,” he said, as his girlfriend drove him back to the hospital for pain medicine. “They get away with attacking us because they don’t face any punishment.”
The inmate, Ward Hicks, has been in the pokey on an attempted murder charge from 2022, records show. He allegedly fired at an elevator where a 32-year-old woman was trying to return to her floor in a building on Frederick Douglass Blvd. in Harlem in October of 2022, police said.
He was arrested in January 2023 and charged with attempted murder, criminal possession of a weapon and attempted assault with intent to cause serious injury with a weapon, cops said. The relationship between him and the woman wasn’t known, but she received a protective order against him, according to court records.
The City Council banned solitary confinement, also known as punitive segregation, in December, but that move was vetoed by Mayor Eric Adams. City Council members could now override the veto.
Banning solitary confinement would give offenders a “free pass,” said the Correction Officers Benevolent Association.
“This brutal and unprovoked assault on our officer, who was simply doing his job, underscores the critical need for us to be able to separate violent offenders from the general population and it also comes at a time when the City Council is looking to completely ban punitive segregation in our jails and give violent inmates a free pass,” COBA President Benny Boscio said.
“Our officers, who sustain broken bones, stab wounds, and are splashed with bodily fluids, among other serious injuries, are the ones who are being tortured and any City Council Member who votes to override the Mayor’s veto on the punitive segregation ban will be complicit in the attacks on my members and the assaults of non-violent inmates.”