Rikers Island guard Rodiny Calypso (left) was convicted Wednesday of filing a false report about punching inmate Adnan Masoud (right) in a 2014 incident captured on surveillance footage (center.) TRIAL EXHIBITS
“Prisoners at Rikers Island have the same constitutional rights we all enjoy, and corrections officers do not have the right to abuse inmates in their custody and care,” acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said in a statement Thursday. “Rodiny Calypso’s lies about his use of force undermined the investigation into his brutal beating of a handcuffed, defenseless inmate.” Under NYC Department of Corrections rules, when a restrained inmate is still dangerous to himself and others, force is to be used as a last resort, Kim's office said in a press release.
The defense attorney who represented Calypso says the guard was reacting to Masoud’s aggression—the alleged spit—and that he punched the inmate to protect himself. “The jury felt that he was a professional who was doing his job under very strenuous circumstances,” attorney Joey Jackson tells Newsweek, noting that many Rikers guards have been slashed and hurt by violent inmates. “It was a reaction to what my client perceived as worse to come.”
Calypso’s conviction comes as many New York City politicians agree that Rikers Island should be closed. A report from an independent commission tasked with studying the problem called Rikers a “stain on the city” in March and described the harm the obsolete facility does to correction officers working in dangerous conditions, the approximately 10,000 inmates imprisoned there on an average day and the taxpayers who cough up billions to fund the facility.
The report also recommended the facility be replaced with smaller facilities in each of the city’s five boroughs, saying, “Put simply, Rikers Island is a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” and raised the issue of race, noting that 89 percent of Rikers’s inmates are black or Hispanic, and that the burden of incarceration falls mainly on those minority communities.
Under the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, the DOC has begun offering more officer training to reduce violence, with "Uses of Force" that result in serious injury down by about 50 percent over the past three years, a spokesman said in an email. "The vast majority of our hardworking staff carry out their duties with care, honor, and the highest levels of professionalism. The actions of this one officer do not reflect the entire department," spokesman Peter Thorne said in an emailed statement.
Calypso, who was suspended from the DOC after he was arrested and will be fired now that he's been convicted, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced November 30, though it is unlikely he’ll receive that harsh a punishment. Masoud is serving a 15-year-sentence for manslaughter in a New York state prison not far from the Canadian border.
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