Who Built A Secret Room In Rikers Island? No One Knows, Report Says

QUEENS, NY — Who built a secret room in Rikers Island found bedecked with leather couches, a giant TV and 17 snowblowers?

No one knows.

Or at least that's according to a Daily News report Monday that detailed the heretofore publicly unknown late 2020 discovery inside a shuttered jail building.

The secret room, apparently used as a lounge and likely built by as-yet-unknown Department of Correction workers, prompted a scathing condemnation by advocates.

"While the depth of corruption and lawlessness in the Department of Correction revealed by this report is extreme, even more troubling is that City officials have known about this for years and held nobody accountable," said Mary Lynne Werlwas, director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society, in a statement.

"The construction of a rogue bunker from stolen equipment in the heart of Rikers Island is a declaration of war on authority - and the perpetrators got away with it."

Investigators found the secret room inside the James A. Thomas Center, which was condemned in 2015 because of lead and asbestos contamination, the Daily News reported.

Whoever built the room used plywood to raise a floor inside the building, hacked into plumbing and electrical lines and installed both wall-to-wall parquet-style carpeting and a bathroom, the report states, citing a Department of Investigation memo.

The secret area's builders also stashed hundreds of thousands of dollars of jail equipment inside, including 17 $2,000 snowblowers and stacks of air conditioners, the report states.

The brazen corruption is "astounding," especially given the troubles facing detainees in Rikers, said Werlwas.

“While incarcerated people suffer in heat emergencies in non-air conditioned cells, facilities are crumbling from lack of repair, and programming is cut for budget reasons, staff were hiding taxpayer funded supplies behind hidden walls," she said.

Read the New York Daily News' report here.