BY ZACHARY R. DOWDY
Newsday
NEW YORK — A veteran New York City correction officer may face up to 15 years in prison for organizing teenage Rikers Island inmates to attack others and for himself striking an inmate with a stick, said authorities who announced the officer’s 11-count indictment yesterday.
Lloyd Nicholson, 35, of the Bronx, was arraigned on the indictment yesterday in State Supreme Court in the Bronx before Acting Justice Steven Barrett, said Steven Reed, spokesman for Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson. Nicholson was released on $100,000 bond and is due back in court March 25.
Nicholson, a correction officer for nearly seven years, faces multiple counts of second-degree gang assault, second- and third-degree assault and official misconduct charges stemming from what prosecutors said was “a systematic program” in which Nicholson personally selected “a group of inmates to maintain order and enforce discipline,” officials said.
They added that Nicholson devised the program to manipulate inmates at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Rikers Island into becoming his personal attack force in exchange for preferential treatment, including “allowing them to extort commissary and telephone privileges and personal property from other inmates.” Inmates at the center are ages 16 to 18.
Nicholson, Johnson said, may have used the scheme to allow him to leave his post during his overnight tour.
“This correction officer was supposed to maintain order at the correctional facility,” said Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the Department of Investigation, which launched a probe into Nicholson’s actions after a warden alerted authorities. “Instead, these charges stem from an investigation that showed that he used force and violence during his tours of duty and brazenly manipulated adolescent inmates to do his bidding in exchange for favors.”
A grand jury indicted Nicholson on Feb. 14 and Nicholson surrendered with his attorney, Peter Troxler, for arraignment yesterday. The top charge, gang assault, a Class C felony, carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Neither Nicholson nor Troxler could be reached for comment.
The charges flow from two separate assaults on inmates in May and June of last year. On June 10, the indictment said, Nicholson ordered six inmates to attack two others. In that beating, one of the inmates suffered a collapsed lung and was treated at a hospital.
In the other attack, the indictment said, Nicholson himself struck an inmate with a stick.
The six inmates who prosecutors said participated in the assault on two inmates have been indicted on second-degree gang assault charges and second- and third-degree assault charges.
“If true, these charges tarnish the good work and the well-deserved reputation of the vast majority of our officers who do their work conscientiously each day,” said Department of Correction Commissioner Martin F. Horn.
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