Rikers Guards Smuggled Drugs Into Jail For Bribes, Prosecutors Say

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Six people were indicted Tuesday in connection with schemes to smuggle drugs and cellphones into Rikers Island, prosecutors said, the latest scandal to hit the beleaguered jail complex.

Those arrested include two city corrections officers, three women accused of bribing the officers, and two Rikers prisoners who are alleged members of the Bloods gang.

Starting in October 2020, one of the officers, Katrina Patterson, received a combined $34,090 in payments through the Cash App from one of the defendants, Imani Matthews, according to prosecutors. Matthews, a 25-year-old Bronx resident, is the mother of a child fathered by Michael Ross, who was incarcerated on Rikers at the time.

For those payments — along with others that were blocked by the Cash App — Patterson smuggled contraband to Ross inside the jail, prosecutors say. Meanwhile, starting that same month, Ashley Medina — a 24-year-old Bronx woman who also has a child with Ross — paid Patterson $3,300, prosecutors say.

Within weeks, about 50 grams of marijuana and a Samsung cell phone were found inside Ross's cell, authorities say — a violation that caused him to be placed in solitary confinement.

The operation continued through March 2021, when surveillance footage showed Patterson meeting Ross in a "day room" within the cell and placing an item in an area of the room not visible to security cameras, authorities say. Prosecutors also describe text messages sent between Patterson and Matthews, where Matthews instructs the guard to smuggle "4 black joints in 1 paper."

"4 black joints it better be wrapped so many times I don’t want to smell it," Patterson replied, according to authorities.

Separately, starting last July, prosecutors say that Rikers officer Krystle Burrell accepted $9,780 in bribes from unspecified people in exchange for smuggling cellphones to Terrae Hinds, a prisoner and alleged member of the Bloods gang known as "Tomato Sauce," prosecutors say.

Ross is now imprisoned at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, N.Y., serving a 16-year sentence for criminal possession of a weapon. Hinds, who is awaiting trial on a weapons possession charge in connection with a shooting, was detained at Rikers between May and October 2021, when she was released on bond.

"The charges detailed in today’s federal complaints reflect an intolerable betrayal of public trust – including by those who allegedly abandoned their sworn oath to uphold the law,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a statement Tuesday, when the indictments were unsealed.

The investigations were carried out by city's Department of Investigation, the NYPD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's investigations unit.

They come weeks after THE CITY reported that drug seizures ramped up inside the Rikers Island complex between April 2020 and May 2021, even after visits were suspended during the pandemic — suggesting that Corrections staff were smuggling drugs inside.

Meanwhile, three prisoners have died at Rikers so far this year, on top of 15 last year, amid squalid and violent conditions at the mismanaged complex.