DEPT. OF CORRECTION TO START SUBJECTING OFFICERS TO FRISKS AND X-RAYS TO AVOID SMUGGLING CONTRABAND

The city’s Department of Correction is treating their own officers like the perps they incarcerate, using an X-ray machine to scan their lunch bags for contraband when they arrive to work and frisking them, an internal memo reveals.


The controversial order goes into effect on Sept. 1 in an effort to stop correction officers and civilian employees from smuggling razors and scalpels into Rikers Island and other DOC facilities.

Integrity control officers have also been dispatched to the front gates of every city jail to spy on guards conducting the scans and pat downs to make sure they’re doing their jobs, the sources said.

“Officers are flipping out because they will end up getting searched like inmates just to go to work,” said one correction source.

“Imagine telling your fellow officer to put your hands against the wall so I can pat frisk you. Oh thanks buddy for coming, see you after work for beers,” the source mockingly said.

The memo was issued after several officers got caught trying to sneak weapons into Rikers for inmates, correction sources said.

“The guards hid the weapons in their own lunches so they could sneak it in, but their plan backfired on them,” said one source.

The order specifies that all officers assigned to front gates must run DOC employees’ food through an X-ray machine.

“If their sandwiches don’t clear the machines, then they are pat frisked,” the source said.

DOC workers are terrified that their food will be exposed to radiation while being x-rayed.

“Correction supervisors have always said don’t run food through x-ray machines because of the radiation. Now you have to because it’s an order,” said the source. “Everything is totally ass backwards in this department.”

The DOC has been under fire for months.

In June, more than twenty inmates and two prison guards were busted in a massive sweep at Rikers that netted a cache of drugs and weapons.

Investigators found marijuana, tobacco and knives hidden in the walls of inmates’ cells.

They also referred a dozen more cases involving correction officers and their supervisors to prosecutors.

Earlier this month, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara released a scathing 79-page report calling Rikers a “broken institution” where guards commonly use excessive force and the civil rights of teen inmates are routinely violated.

The report, which was sent to Mayor de Blasio and DOC Commissioner Joseph Ponte – asked for immediate reforms at Rikers — in particular at its three juvenile jails.

It was revealed this week that correction officials have allowed magician David Blaine and several notable rappers to perform at city jails for killers and rapists.