It’s “Rikers Island: The Movie,” starring real inmates.
Unsupervised Rikers Island detainees recently posted two short movies to YouTube giving a remarkable view of life behind bars, including depictions of a slashing and open drug use in a cell with pictures of naked women on the walls.
The only jail staff appearing in the roughly 10-minute videos, titled “Locked In Loaded,” are correction officers spied on through cracked cell doors.
Two 10-minute movies on YouTube allegedly show life behind bars at Rikers Island. (YouTube)
“I’m on Rikers, as you can see. A lotta n-----s can’t make it here,” the narrator, who goes by Teflon Da Don, says as he smokes. “I seen n-----s get their face torn off, I seen n-----s get stabbed until they motherf---ing intestines come out they stomach. I done seen it all in this s--t.”
Correction sources said the videos were shot in the Anna M. Kross Center using smuggled cellphones. The footage was then transmitted and edited outside the jail. The production is sophisticated enough to bleep out names.
On Wednesday, Mayor Adams touted a renewed security effort in Rikers. The videos, however, depict an unsupervised jail completely out of control. The walls are stained and chipped. The floors are flooded. Bed sheets are in tatters.
Much of the dialogue is inaudible or full of so much slang it’s hard to decipher. But the movies show inmates smoking drugs and flashing a stash of small baggies. Another scene shows a slashing that appears to be staged, though it’s unclear how the inmates would have made fake blood.
“Man, they just violated me, bro,” the supposedly slashed inmate says.
In one scene, the inmates are holding internal Correction Department paperwork and seem to be discussing rival detainees.
“If this is legit, the lack of supervision depicted in the videos is absurd,” said a retired DOC gang investigator who said the men appeared to be Bloods gang members. “They’re gambling, they’re covering their windows with five guys sitting together in a cell getting high, walking around with weed and cigarettes. They seem to just have free movement.”
DOC spokesman Jason Kersten confirmed the department is aware of the videos and is investigating. A June 16 search in the Kross Center recovered numerous contraband items believed to be associated with the videos, including weapons and a cellphone.
“We take the possession of contraband in our facilities extremely seriously, and we are pursuing rearrests,” Kersten said. “Any staff found to be in dereliction of duty in relation to the supervision of these individuals will be held accountable.”
The video makers could not be reached over email.
A screengrab from one of two YouTube videos claiming to show life at Rikers Island. (YouTube)
In one particularly stunning scene, a man in a cell demands another smoke a drug from a thin tube.
“Inhale all that. You better get all that. Smoke that. Take that on the hop,” he says.
As the smoker begins to nod out, a third detainee says, “Don’t f---ing overdose in my cell.”
The smoker continues to nod out.
“What the f--- you gave this n----a?” the third detainee asks.
At least four people overdosed in 2021 in the city jails and at least three more so far this year.
Much of the action in the movies takes place in dirty cells featuring graffiti and pictures of scantily clad women on the walls. "We The Army," a jail source said, is a slogan used by a Bloods gang. (YouTube)
Mike Phillips, a professor of media studies at Southern Illinois University, said it was hard to say for sure, but agreed that a majority of scenes appear staged.
“These videos are in a tradition of independent Black American filmmaking that mixes documentary and fiction to tell stories that are too real for Hollywood,” Phillips said.
The academic noted text that appears in one of the movies.
“For me, the caption ‘Free the Real’ says it all. It’s about liberating the perspective of the incarcerated from strict censorship and gaining freedom from the misery of Rikers through creative activity.”
Another scene shows detainees smoking what appears to be narcotics and drinking an alcoholic concoction as loud hip-hop music blasts in a cell.
An inmate boasts about being able to move freely in the jail. “I knocked on every dorm in the light side, the dark side and the west,” he says, using nicknames for sections of the Kross Center.
Entryways and windows in doors are covered with sheets. The detainees close their cell doors for private meetings about delivering drugs.
“I can definitely get to anyone, anywhere you want,” one detainee says. “Let me know when we doing this. You said move it.”
The second episode includes a shot of a man lying semiconscious on the floor with apparent blood covering his T-shirt and his face covered by a large bandage.
The “Locked In Loaded” series even includes a “behind the scenes” video and a “coming soon” teaser for an upcoming episode.
“There ain’t nothing luxury about this,” Teflon Da Don says.
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News