480 LB MAN SUES RIKERS ISLAND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR MAKING HIM WEAR BED SHEETS AS CLOTHES

RIKERS ISLAND

A 480-pound Rikers Island inmate had to wear bed sheets after another prisoner stole his clothes –- because the Department of Correction had “nothing in my size,” he said in a claim filed with the city comptroller’s office.

Freddie Harvin, locked up at the Anna M. Kross Center on arson charges, alleges an inmate stole his entire prison wardrobe — including two pairs of pants, three pairs of underwear, four shirts and three pairs of socks — when he left the jail for two days to go to the hospital on May 21.

“The property in my cell was packed by an inmate who apparently was unsupervised because all of my things were taken,” Harvin wrote in the claim. “I am a very large man weighing (480) four hundred and eighty pounds. My clothes are really irreplaceable and the Dept. of Corrections has nothing in my size and I am walking around in sheets.”

Harvin claims $30 of his commissary money and a Sony radio were also taken.
Harvin was indicted on arson, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief charges after allegedly lighting a towel on fire last September and tossing it into a bathroom in a Crown Heights home.

The 6-foot-1 Harvin, whose been locked up since last October, may have slimmed down during his jailhouse stay — he was listed as weighing 520 pounds at the time of his arrest, according to the Department of Corrections.

He is being held on $200,000 bond and returns to court in August 13.

A spokesperson for the comptroller’s office said it “doesn’t comment on pending claims or ongoing litigation.”