NEW YORK — Correction officers are so unhappy in NYC jails that 324 have flocked to another place since 2019 where enormous discontent has led employees to recently flee in historic numbers — NYPD.
NYPD’s recent class of 555 new recruits sworn in Thursday at the Police Academy contained 42 former correction officers, a police source told the New York Post.
“I can’t imagine how bad Rikers is, because morale in the NYPD is the lowest I have seen in almost 20 years,” said a police source. “I couldn’t imagine quitting a job to come here.”
Among the group jumping ship is Tyliek Dyches, 28, who joined the Department of Correction in June 2017 and worked on Rikers Island.
Dyches learned of his hiring by NYPD on June 28 while vacationing in Miami. He didn’t waste time heading to Rikers to clean out his locker when he arrived home on July 5.
“My last day I worked before I went on vacation, I went into a triple [shift]. And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? My last day before vacation?’” he told The Post.
“So, I walked in there and I walked out with a big garbage bag! And I had my own personal parade going over the bridge!”
Dyches said that “about 15 to 20 people I worked with left corrections and are in the NYPD right now.”
“The bad part about working at Rikers — I’ll be honest with you — it’s not the inmates,” he said.
“It’s the administration. They’re not backing us up and officers are getting hurt.”
Dyches added: “We know that we can get hurt from inmates but it’s getting hurt from inmates and getting hurt from the administration that makes it such a tough job.”
A veteran correction officer told The Post, “This is the worst job in the world.” (NYPD)
The correction officers union last week boycotted Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ticker-tape parade for the “Hometown Heroes” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association took out a full-page ad in The Post on Wednesday to voice their displeasure with Mayor de Blasio and DOC leadership.
The association’s president, Benny Boscio Jr., accused the DOC of “gross mismanagement and sheer negligence” that he said led to more than 1,700 jailers getting infected — nine fatally.
Please see our open letter to Mayor de Blasio published on page 19 of today’s NY POST. We won’t take part in any of your damn photo ops! If you think we’re heroes- then treat us right! Stop triple tours! #essentialnotexpendable pic.twitter.com/5E1UjUETIT
— COBA (@NYCCOBA1) July 7, 2021
“This is the worst job in the world,” one veteran correction officer told the news organization.
“We come into work and we don’t know when we are going home. It is not uncommon to work three or four shifts in a row,” the source said.
“One officer works where there is supposed to be two, and that leads to a lot of unnecessary fights and injuries.”
The DOC’s long-standing issues — deemed “systemic and deep-seated,” and indicative of a “pervasive level of disorder and chaos” by a federal monitor in May — must be unbearable if guards are jumping ship to the NYPD, one Manhattan police officer told The Post.
Starting pay for each each job is fairly comparable, according to information posted on the city’s website.
The 42 correction officers who entered the Police Academy on Thursday exceeded the 34 in the class of 450 recruits that were sworn in on April 21, according to a source, The Post reported.
Last year, there were 119 correction officers in three graduating classes, and there were 129 in the four classes that graduated in 2019, the source said.
DOC has not responded to The Post’s request for comment.
