April 7, 2023 Of the 20 injured, 15 were corrections officers and staff.
By Graham Rayman, Emma Seiwell Source New York Daily News (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Fire erupted Thursday in a Rikers Island unit that houses detainees in solitary confinement as correction officers searched for contraband while state legislators visited Rikers jails.
Twenty people were injured in the blaze, 15 of whom were treated and five of whom refused medical attention, said the Fire Department. The injured included 15 Correction Department staffers and three detainees, said a Fire Department source. The identities of the other two injured people were not immediately clear.
Most of the injuries involved smoke inhalation, said a Correction Department source. The Correction Department did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.
Trouble began Thursday morning in the North Infirmary Command, which houses the island’s sickliest detainees, said lawyer MK Kaishian, who has a client there.
“When everyone woke up, everything was normal until about 9 a.m.,” said Kaishian.
But the legislators issued a news release about their visit at around 8:30 a.m. By 9 a.m. the elected officials were starting to arrive on their surprise visit, aimed at pushing back against Gov. Hochul’s proposed bail reform rollbacks, Kaishian said.
The contraband search by the Correction Department Emergency Service Unit began around then, said Kaishian.
Kaishan said her client noted detainees’ shoes, mattresses, bed sheets, privately-purchased undershirts and underwear, and other items sent from loved ones were seized in the search.
“Everyone was very upset by the treatment. Their only worldly possessions were being taken away, and it was in retaliation because of the legislators’ visit,” Kaishian said. “They were about to get a tiny political platform, and they were getting it taken away from them.”
As it turned out, the legislators visited other Rikers units — the George R. Vierno Center and Anna M. Kross Center.
The blaze erupted around 1:35 p.m. on the North Infirmary Command’s second floor, sources said.
A Correction Department source said the blaze was set by one detainee in his cell, and that staffers tried to douse it with a fire extinguisher but then had to use a hose. The detainee who set the fire was seriously injured, the source said.
Among the detainees injured was Marvens Thomas, who in August 2021 was charged with attempted murder for attacking a correction officer who was searching his cell by flashlight, said sources. Thomas, 30, suffered severe burns in Thursday’s blaze, the sources said.
Sixty firefighters responded to the scene and brought the flames under control by 2:15 p.m. Fire marshals were still investigating the cause of the fire Thursday, FDNY said.
Kaishian said her client refers to the cells searched on Thursday as “kennels” which are unofficially used for solitary — despite promises by Correction Commissioner Louis Molina and other officials that the city has essentially phased out the use of solitary confinement.
She believes the morning search was meant to provoke an emergency that would limit the legislators’ visit.
“What happened to them [the detainees] was horrific and seemed designed to prevent people from the outside from coming in,” Kaishian said. “It’s completely unsurprising if they are manufacturing these concerns to avoid oversight.”
An internal Board of Correction report from October 2020, showed over half of the fires in city jails at the time started inside restrictive housing units, including those in the North Infirmary Command.
The Board’s discussions with DOC staff suggested detainees light the fires in an effort to get moved from restrictive cells.
They “feel they have no other way to bring attention to their concerns about conditions in the unit and feel they have no way of controlling their own lives,” the memo read.