Rikers Guard Pimps, Deals, and Publishes

Courtesy of the
New York Daily News

NYC Corrections Officer Gary Heyward worked Rikers Island for a number of years. While there, he smuggled in tobacco, liquor, cell phones and drugs, provided muscle for pay back beatings of inmates, and pimped out three female officers, "copstitutes," to inmates and senior management. Or so he says in his just published memoir, "Corruption Officer."

The Daily News profiles the sordid and depressing story of a corrupt C.O. who helped make the Rikers experience all the more miserable. The article provides plenty of salacious details that I won't bother to repeat. Not surprisingly, the DOC says he's exaggerating his stories to sell books. Humorously, they also suggest he's tarnishing the department's good reputation.

Heyward was caught after an accomplice rolled over on him, and spent nearly two years in a state prison before he was supposedly, inconceivably, permitted return to work for the City in an undisclosed position. In what is probably the most outrageous and seemingly unbelievable part of his story, Heyward not only continues to work for the City, but gets to keep his pension too.

These latter claims are easily refutable, if false. The City's silence seems to suggest that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. What nobody can reasonably deny is that Rikers has long been rife with corruption and violence. The only open questions are ones of degree and whether this system can be salvaged.