Metro

Mayor not helping to protect Rikers officers: union head

The president of the city’s corrections officers union said Sunday that Mayor de Blasio’s handling of Rikers Island is worse than anything in decades, declaring that even embattled Mayor David Dinkins did a better job in the 1990s, when the jail was bursting at the seams.

Correction Officers Benevolent Association head Elias Husamudeen drilled in on the city’s elimination of punitive segregation for inmates 21-years-old and under as a policy shift that’s resulted in more violence against his members.

“He seems to want a New York City corrections officer to be murdered,” Husamudeen charged of de Blasio Sunday on John Catsimatidis’ AM 970 radio show.

“This didn’t happen under Mayor Bloomberg. And it definitely didn’t happen under Giuliani. And, believe it or not, it never even happened under David Dinkins.”

De Blasio announced in October 2016 that the city Department of Correction would end punitive segregation for younger inmates. But violent attacks against both prisoners and corrections officers have prompted Husamudeen and others to call on de Blasio to revisit his decision.

A state Correction Commission report released last week revealed that inmate assaults on Rikers staff jumped to 1,479 for most of 2017 compared to 1,104 during the same period in 2016.

Gang members beat one jail guard to a bloody pulp last week in an attack that left him with a broken neck. Husamudeen said they assaulted the officer because he wrote them a ticket for violating rules.

“The mayor has dug in,” Husamudeen said. “He’s decided he is not going to reinstate punitive segregation because it’s damaging to the minds of the inmates, and nevermind that this corrections officer is suffering.”

De Blasio announced an update to his plan to shutter Rikers Island once and for all, revealing that he intends to move inmates to a new jail in the Bronx and three already existing jails in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

“The mayor cares about officers,” said de Blasio spokeswoman Natalie Grybauskas. “He’s invested $200 million in officer safety, including $4.5 million announced this week for new security measures.”