[gears whirring]
- You have the right to remain silent
and refuse to answer any questions, do you understand?
I know, there's a little fly in here.
- In May of 2010, 16-year-old Kalief Browder
was walking home from a party in the Bronx
when he was stopped by the police
and arrested for robbery.
With his family unable to make the bail
he was hauled off to one of the toughest jails in the country,
Rikers Island.
- I wasn't friends with a lot of people in there.
I seen people getting jumped, people getting cut.
There's so much chaos.
- The gang problem is rampant across the island.
- You have to fight for the phone.
You have to fight to be able to sit at the table.
- The officers allow inmates to beat up other inmates.
That's part of "The Program."
- The Program.
Correction officers accused of running an extortion scheme.
- Right and wrong is weird in there.
Like, what's right to them isn't right,
and what's wrong isn't wrong.
- I smuggled cigarettes, liquor, cocaine, razors.
- You don't wanna be on the gang's bad side
and the correction officers' bad side.
That's hell.
- I mean, this seems like "Lord of the Flies."
What's going on here?
- It's easier to win when you're united.
It's difficult to survive when you're by yourself.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- When they sent me to Rikers Island, I was 16.
I would say it was like hell on Earth.
Sometimes, you know, I feel like I'm never gonna be the same.
You know, I smile and I joke a lot
but, you know, deep down, I'm a mess,
because, like, I'm--I'm 21,
and on the inside I feel like I'm 40.
- He was a teenage kid
literally snatched off the street
and charged with robbery.
Kalief Browder has now filed a civil rights lawsuit.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- The police here at the 48th precinct.
♪ ♪
- The Bronx DA's office
is refusing to say anything about this case.
- Returning to New York's Rikers Island jail
once they've served their time.
Last night...
- Kalief Browder may be physically free
but mentally he is still trapped behind bars on Rikers
where every day is a battle.
- He went through hell.
You hear stories
but you don't really hear stories about Rikers.
He told what really goes on there.
- Good morning, Mr. Browder.
- Good morning.
- We are going to go through your time in Rikers in detail.
- Sometimes there's feces on the wall,
there's mice, spoiled milk all over the floor.
I used to beg them to put me in the shower.
They told me they were going to starve me.
I would be screaming out.
He said, "You're gonna feel some pain."
He maced me in the mouth. He punched my ribs.
My back snapped over the rail. He kept laughing.
- Who was the CO?
- His name was West. Phillips. Harris. Heartz.
Deputy Butler. Heyward. It was Captain Mitchell.
- This is about Rikers.
They have this discretion
to just do whatever the f**k they want to these people.
And they did it to Kalief.
- When they sent me to Rikers Island,
they sent me to the adolescents.
They house inmates from the ages of 16 through 18,
and that's when everything started.
[dramatic music]
- My experience on Rikers Island,
I went in as a very young person.
You know, looking back at it now, the bus was full.
And it was all teenagers.
[indistinct shouting]
- There's a lot of energy.
I would have to equate it to like a volcano.
Things can erupt at any time.
- Adolescents is a whole different ball game.
They uncontrollable. They really don't care about the rules.
I could line ten adolescents up
and I go one, two, three, four,
by the time I get to ten, this one already done hit this one,
took his sneakers.
- Adolescents were notorious
for breaking each other's jaws.
♪ ♪
- Rikers Island has a predatory population.
They're usually the younger inmates.
[buzzer]
Those inmates fight, stab, slash.
They light people on fire when they're sleeping.
- Animalescents. That's what the COs called it,
that's what we call it.
It's animalescents, it's just like animals.
Like, that's what they called us, animals.
- Oh, he's an animal.
Oh, he's a menace to society because he fought police,
because he slashed somebody.
That's not how you should look at me.
I'm in a negative environment,
and this is how I survive,
by catching infractions, by fighting, by slashing,
by jumping, by getting jumped.
This is the things I have to go through.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Was there a specific dorm you were assigned to?
- Mod two.
That was the first house I was assigned to.
♪ ♪
- When I talked to Kalief,
he said, "Ma, the COs don't run that house.
The inmates do."
There's a table.
So Kalief would go sit at the table, and they surround him.
What are you doing?
I'm sitting at the table.
You didn't get permission to sit at the table.
- As soon as I first got there,
the other inmates that was running the house
had it in for me.
I would get on the phone and before you know it
the whole house is jumping me.
- How many people were attacking you at once?
- Eight or nine dudes.
- You can be hurt and you can lose your life
over phone time.
I've had friends who lost their life over the phone.
It's a personal thing to me.
A really close friend of mine,
Tran Smith,
he lost his life over the phone.
I've seen this story many times in my life.
Some have come home from Rikers Island with pride,
a badge of honor like, I've been to Rikers Island
and then, you know, I've come home
so now I'm this badass, you know.
The whole thing is just so backwards.
[somber music]
- First time I went to Rikers,
I was in juvenile for a robbery.
♪ ♪
I was in a lot of fights
because I had something to prove.
♪ ♪
You do it for the name and the glory
when you're an adolescent.
You want your name to "ring."
These jails has in crowds and out crowds.
You got the people that's on the team,
then you've got the punks.
Once we smell weakness, we own you.
That's The Program.
- The Program is an identified thing for sure,
and it's been in existence for a very long time.
You either say you're with it or you're not with it.
If you're with it means you're gonna give up your commissary,
you're gonna give up your phone calls,
you're subject to get violations if you don't abide by the rules,
and the violations, of course,
is violence from the other young people.
- It was heavy extortion, sliding notes under your cell,
this is what we want, this is what you gotta get us.
You with it, phone, we need these phones.
I get five muffins on Sunday when it's muffin day.
So you gets nothing.
And if you willing to do that,
then that's when you said you was with it.
So yeah, if you with it, you was considered a punk.
You was a punk.
I was in adolescent with Kalief.
I tried to go up to him like, yo, you gotta do this, do that.
Kalief, he wasn't with it.
He told me, "I'm not jacking none of that.
"Like, I'm not with that.
You better tell that to one of these guys."
- If you decline and say, "No I'm not with it,"
you're subject to getting jumped...repeatedly.
- Describe where you were when you got jumped.
- I was in the dayroom.
The dayroom, that's where you would play your checkers,
you'd play your cards,
you would have your fights.
- How many other people were in the dayroom?
- Everybody.
[rhythmic beeping]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[muffled shouting]
- That's how it operates.
They're gonna keep jumping you until you say,
"I'm with The Program. I'm gonna give up my stuff."
Or they're gonna do something called, put you on a bus.
They're gonna jump you so bad
that you have to get shipped to a different housing unit.
When you get shipped to a different housing unit,
nine times out of ten
you're gonna go through the same thing again.
- How many different houses were you in within Rikers?
- I don't know. I know it was a lot, though.
Three Upper, MOD 2, Five Lower, Main, OBCC,
Three South, Five South, and One Upper.
- Do you know why you were moved to One Upper North?
- 'Cause I was jumped again.
- He said he learned how to just curl up like--like a fetus
to protect his face and his head,
and meanwhile they're kicking and stomping and beating
and--and these are kids.
[cell door slams shut]
[indistinct chatter]
- I remember one of the visits, Kalief was confused
that correctional officers let the inmates beat him up,
and they didn't do anything to stop it.
I could see it was messing with his mind.
You could hear the confusion.
He didn't understand it.
They're not supposed to let this happen.
- A vast majority of correctional officers
allows this to go on.
And they're actually a part of The Program as well.
[indistinct shouting]
[tape rewinding]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- We did unconventional things to get inmates to cooperate.
We always would say, "get with the program."
That was just a phrase, get with the program.
But somebody turned "get with the program"
into a gang.
[camera shutter clicking]
- The Program, also known as the gladiator school.
Correction officers accused of running an extortion scheme,
recruiting inmates in a type of fight club
to beat up other inmates who didn't comply.
- I've seen guys getting pulled out in flex cuffs,
beaten, stomped.
I've seen people come out with bloody faces.
It scares me more
because it's the correction officers doing it.
[cell door slams]
[dramatic music]
- Right now, in the shadows of Wall Street,
in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty,
in the shadows of the skyscrapers
that run the world media,
is an island.
There's no distinction between minors and adults.
There's no protection against assault,
where teenagers being treated like they were in slavery,
right now.
- You wanna start talking about structural racism?
That is a culture
and we've been doing it for years.
- Rikers Island is named after Richard Riker.
Richard Riker was the chief magistrate
in charge of the court system of New York City,
the spider at the center of a web of bounty hunting rings
kidnapping escaped slaves.
[dramatic music]
Even children,
kidnapped and sold into slavery.
- A few years later,
and it's still happening.
- I was having a conversation with one inmate
and he asked me, he said,
"Where are all the white inmates?"
Very seldom did I see a white inmate
come through Rikers Island.
And if they did, they didn't stay long.
- Dominique Strauss-Kahn,
the International Monetary Fund head
charged with sexually assaulting a maid
at an upscale hotel in New York City.
- Dominique Strauss-Kahn's bail was $6 million.
- Strauss-Kahn should be processed
and released from Rikers Island later today.
all: Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
- The strong survive and the weak don't.
Sometimes the weak get slaughtered.
- If you have enough money, you can go home,
but if you're poor, you have to sit here until your trial
or until you plead.
People are sitting in jail for years...
legally innocent but awaiting trial.
Their crime is that they're poor.
- My bail is $100,000.
- 50 over 50, I had no bond.
- $20,000.
- I have a $5,000 bail.
- $1,500.
- The majority of people who are in Rikers
are there because they cannot pay bail of $1,000 or less.
- By the time she had the money, they put a hold on me.
They put a hold on my bail status so I couldn't bail out.
It was horrible just being stuck in my cell
and I can't go nowhere,
I can't do nothing because I was sitting on Rikers Island
to prove my innocence.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- To send a 16-year-old to Rikers Island
and expect that that child
is going to be able to protect themselves
or handle themselves or that any good
is gonna come from that situation,
it's unconscionable.
[dramatic music]
It's been investigated by the federal government
for civil rights abuses.
- The blue pellets you see in these pictures are rat poison.
- Allegedly forced into the food of inmates at Rikers Island.
- The U.S. Attorney, Preet Bharara,
announced findings in this report
conducted from 2011 to 2013.
- The bottom line conclusion is this,
Rikers Island is broken.
- How did this happen for decades, all of this?
How is this tolerated?
- Yeah, yeah.
- If you look at what Giuliani did,
he managed to turn the city's poverty problems,
race problems, homelessness problems
into Rikers Island problems.
And then during the Bloomberg years,
it really expanded with "stop and frisk."
- Mayor Bloomberg had overseen those jails for 12 years
and Mayor Bloomberg paid as little attention to those jails
as he could.
His commissioners couldn't get him on the phone
about Rikers Island.
- It is just amazing that we really are
the envy of the country when it comes to corrections.
- It is a place where beatings are routine,
while accountability is rare.
Where a culture of violence endures,
even while a code of silence prevails.
- When "The New York Times" wrote investigative pieces
on Giuliani's administration or Bloomberg's administration,
they would just ignore them.
They wouldn't respond to those stories and press conferences.
The would just, you know, look right through you.
[applause]
- President! President!
- In 2008 there was a murder.
Officers used inmates to enforce order in the house.
They basically allowed gang members to rule.
And in this case it got out of hand and he ended up dead.
- The death of Charnel Robinson's
18-year-old son, Christopher,
at the adolescent jail on Rikers Island
sparked one of the most sensational scandals
ever to strike a city agency.
- Around the time Kalief was there,
there was a series of scandals about practice of officers
using other inmates as enforcers
in what came to be known as The Program.
- If I had a problem inmate,
I would get the head gang member
that runs that part of the jail
and have him do the dirty work.
If it's documented two inmates had a fight,
so I'm covered because I didn't do it.
- They're pulling out guys, guys are coming out, you know,
with their face swollen and bloody,
their t-shirts ripped up.
- That was basically The Program.
Kalief, he didn't wanna be with it.
So if I catch Kalief and we're all in line,
corridor, mess hall, we fighting.
- Kalief was short.
He was always small.
- People used to start with him since Kalief was little.
- In jail everything is aggressive and physical.
If I can beat somebody up, even as small as Kalief,
then I get a reputation.
I could imagine what he went through,
especially not being a part of the gang and being small.
- I used to tell Kalief, "Don't fight."
You know, just I figured you don't fight,
nobody's gonna mess with you.
Stay to yourself, stay in a corner.
He said, "Ma, you gotta fight."
- The inmates are hyenas,
and the correction officers are the lions.
[growling]
To survive, he's gonna have to become a hyena.
- When you take matters into your hands,
it might work and it might not work.
It's like a double-edged sword.
- Kalief had to change
and this is what the system does to people.
[dramatic music]
- I remember Kalief calling me out.
He said he wanted to fight me individually one-on-one
and mano a mano.
You know me, I said, "All right, come on let's fight."
♪ ♪
Kalief was getting the best of me, matter of fact.
He was kinda fast.
He was like, every jab I threw, he threw like three.
And now, yeah, my man Banger came...
♪ ♪
And then we all just jumped him.
♪ ♪
People say they could get the one-on-one fight,
but most of the time they get jumped.
♪ ♪
Kalief was tough.
He still kept trying to fight.
See, you see the goons?
The goons is coming to help me right now.
♪ ♪
I was just stomping his face in.
There's never no wins when you're by yourself.
I never lose.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- There's so much wrong with this system.
This is supposed to be the United States.
It's New York City.
This is not some third world country,
and this is how we treat our kids once they're locked up.
♪ ♪
- You can't understand it
if you've never been to Rikers Island.
It's not like out here.
Out here you just live life
and go about your business.
In there, there's no living life.
There's no life at all in there.
Nobody wants to hear you.
You're like an unheard voice.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Over the last few years
we were digging into the problems at Rikers Island:
abuse,
violence,
corruption.
- Prisons and jails are hidden away.
They're dark places.
You can't get in and really monitor them.
Even when you get reformers at the top,
they don't know what's going on in the bowels of the jails.
And that gets to the heart of corruption on Rikers.
♪ ♪
- The system is deeply flawed,
there's no two ways about it.
There has been at times
this knee-jerk tendency to oppose reform
rather than attempting to be a part of it.
I think it's a sad story what happened with our union here.
- Hi, I'm Norman Seabrook,
President of the New York City
Corrections Officers' Benevolent Association.
- There's no doubt that the Correction Officers' union
can be very powerful
and they're very politically important,
but under Norm Seabrook
the Correction Officers' union took on a power and influence
that had never existed before.
- We are middle-class workers in this city
and will be treated with respect
or we will shut you down!
[cheers and applause]
This is our city!
- Seabrook's endorsement was coveted by politicians
and he enjoyed that power.
- The Correction Officers' Benevolent Association
is extremely proud to throw our support
behind the next President of the United States,
Senator Barack Obama.
- You know, I believe in unions,
but here we have a union that has done everything possible
to sabotage efforts to hold their members accountable
when they beat people to a pulp.
- I was at the Department of Correction during a rare period
where what was happening there came to light.
I'm a reformer and during my tenure as a deputy commissioner
I started suspending officers who were captured on video
clearly using excessive force against inmates.
That had never been done before,
and Norman Seabrook went on his radio show
and said that he would go after me.
[bagpipe music]
- Time and again Norman Seabrook
and the Correction Officers' Union stymied
and stifled reform.
- Flo was very aggressive, and as a result of that,
he worked very hard to get her fired.
- I was asked to resign and I did,
and I was replaced with a childhood friend
of Norman Seabrook's.
- Norm Seabrook had such a hold on that place
that one person alone,
I don't think, could have changed it.
- What this has to do with is gang behavior.
Gangs don't snitch on each other.
Gang members cover for each other.
And anybody that says
that the highest officials at Rikers Island
aren't aware of it is daydreaming.
- 95% of us are on this job because we wanted a better life,
we want to support our families,
we want to do what we need to do.
But there are some bad seeds,
and they need to be weeded out, absolutely.
- I've seen officers that used to steal money from the inmates,
take commissary from the inmates,
paperwork's falsified to sell cigarettes.
- That's the first thing that I started doing
was the cigarettes.
I paid $50 for a carton of cigarettes,
inmate gave me $1,500.
So it was easy money,
and over the course of time,
it turned to cocaine that I would bring in.
- Arrests that both included inmates and correction officers.
- Just last week a correction officer was busted
trying to smuggle 61 grams of K2 into Rikers
hidden in his sock.
- I walked right through the metal detector
with whatever it is I wanted to walk in with,
and I didn't get caught because as an officer
there's no ramifications.
Who's gonna watch me? Who's gonna check me?
- Rikers guards took thousands of dollars in bribes
to bring in scalpels and drugs wrapped around their ankles.
- The idea that an officer
would bring in scalpel blades into a prison
where it's as likely to be used on other officers
as it is to be used on--on other inmates,
to us, has been astounding.
[dramatic music]
- Right and wrong is weird in there.
Like, what's right to them isn't right,
and what's wrong isn't wrong.
- Kalief had this spirit of someone
who stood up for themselves
in the face of whatever the odds were.
- I was the type of person, I stood up for what was right.
Even when I was in jail.
- He had that no-filter type of personality,
and he would tell you, "Listen, let me tell you something.
I'm gonna tell you how it is."
- Kalief will talk.
He was a talker.
If he felt things weren't right,
he would speak up on it,
and they didn't like that too much.
♪ ♪
- If he's just a mouthy inmate,
of course he's gonna get mistreated,
and inside that jail, who's gonna govern me?
- Once I had an argument with one,
it escalated into every correction officer
in that house having a problem with me.
When they don't do what they're supposed to do
and you try to tell them the rules, they don't like that.
They get mad
and they make examples out of people.
♪ ♪
There was a situation when I was in Five Lower.
We were supposed to come out of our cells at 4:30,
but every day we're still in our cells
at about 6:30, 7:00 just trapped in our cells.
We didn't eat or anything.
And then when they let us out of our cells,
you know, the first thing on my mind was eat,
but the food wasn't ready yet.
Later on, about five, ten minutes
after we come out of our cells,
the deputy came, the captain came,
and then three, four correction officers came with them
and they told us we had to go back in our cells.
You know, I should've just went in my cell,
but we just came out.
I didn't even eat, so, you know,
I didn't listen to the rules.
The dep and the captain
and the correction officers,
they took me in my cell where there wasn't any cameras
and they jumped me.
[dramatic music]
They cuffed me to the back and they was just beating on me.
Sometimes things just happen like that.
- In prison,
you don't wanna be on the gang's bad side,
and the correction officers' bad side.
That's hell.
[indistinct shouting]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Kalief was my friend.
I've never been to jail.
I don't know what it's like in there.
He's been writing me...
♪ ♪
And I was writing him.
♪ ♪
I was writing letters in school,
supposed to be doing my work.
♪ ♪
And my favorite color's red, so I wrote him in the red ink.
I didn't think anything of it.
He said, "Cool it with the red ink.
You got the COs thinking I'm Blood."
- Okay, now when you first entered Rikers,
were you affiliated with any gang?
- No.
- Now, Mr. Browder, I understand
that you have tattoos on your forearm, is that correct?
- Yes.
- What does your tattoo say?
- It says "Spade."
- Spade, like that card spade?
- Yes.
- Is there any significance to that?
♪ ♪
- With my father leaving, Kalief was confused about a lot.
He went out to look for the next person to come in
and say, "Okay, Kalief, I got you."
- Our block was Blood,
a few blocks down used to be Crip.
Down the block Latin Kings.
- And he joined Bloods gang.
Everybody on our block was,
so it was bound to happen to one of us.
- His big homie gave him Spade,
that was his Blood name.
- At first I didn't like him being Blood,
but hey, he did it for a reason, you know?
Everybody that's in that circle is like family to you.
So I couldn't knock him. I couldn't get mad at him. No.
- I always found it amazing
how people could kind of criticize that
and talk about how bad we are,
but, you know, some of us just make due with what we got.
And sometimes we are just trying to survive.
- Kids go through all kind of phases.
Sure, he may have been getting in trouble before,
but suddenly he gets hit upside the head
with a big injustice stick.
[siren wails]
In that moment, he was innocent,
and that matters to people.
- I didn't rob nobody.
- You didn't? - No.
- After he got locked up, that's when he changed.
He didn't want people calling him Spade no more.
He was like, "I'm not that person.
Don't call me Spade; call me Kalief."
- When he was on the streets, he was gang affiliated.
When he got in--in jail,
he refused to be gang affiliated.
So some people say, well see, but he was in a gang,
but then he wasn't in a gang.
Well is he good? Is he bad? He's a kid!
So it doesn't exonerate him and make him perfect
that he wasn't in a gang when he was in jail,
and it doesn't make him a horrible person
that when he was in pain he turned to the streets.
What it does, it makes him human the whole time.
And everybody loses track of that.
- When I was in there, I wasn't in a gang,
so they would call that neutral.
And when you're neutral, it's not easy.
- Because if I-- if I joined a gang,
then I'm gonna have to participate in stuff
that I don't agree with.
- Tell me what happened in Five Lower.
- I was sleeping in my cell,
and I heard a bunch of tussling and a bunch of feet moving.
- You said there was lots of gangs in this area.
What gangs were in that area?
- There was a gang called YG.
- What does that stand for?
- Young Gunners.
- Young Gunners was a gang started on Rikers
in the adolescent jail.
They started the organization to control the housing areas,
to get what they want.
- I came out of my cell to see what was going on,
and I looked down the tier
and there were people fighting everywhere.
- If you're not going to be a gang member,
you better have a good reputation
as far as being able to fight and hold your own.
- Now, did you have any previous difficulty
with this inmate?
- Yes. He was a bully.
- So you struck the first blow?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I asked him, "Are you keeping out of trouble?"
And he said, "Don't worry about me being in trouble
'cause I'm the trouble."
♪ ♪
- One thing about Kalief, he knew how to fight.
This little midget knew how to throw his hands.
♪ ♪
- If you're known to fight
and get a reputation for fighting,
you may get left alone a little while,
but if you do something to a particular gang member,
they'll follow you wherever you go.
- Were you moved to another housing unit?
- Yes.
- And you were on One Main?
- Yes.
When I came in, everybody was on their cell doors
just looking at me.
Once I walked into the house they told me, you're dead.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I was really inside with Kalief Browder,
so I know the story from what happened inside out.
♪ ♪
Yeah, I remember that day.
I remember the day that Kalief Browder got jumped.
♪ ♪
- Kalief Browder, we was in the same housing unit.
He was new to the house at the time.
- Right there, black do-rag.
- What happened earlier that day, do you remember?
- I was standing by the phones
and one of the guys came up to me and he spit in my face.
- Kalief reacted to what happened earlier that morning.
He probably let it sit in his head and it molded,
it sat in his head all day,
this person disrespected me and I can't let it rock.
♪ ♪
- Kalief, right here, is putting on his Patakis tight.
Usually that means you about to fight or do something.
- He had situations with people,
people had situations with him.
get bullied, get bullied.
'Cause bullies aren't bulletproof.
- Do you know why you were jumped?
- Because I punched a guy that spit in my face.
[dramatic music]
- He came into our housing unit
and punched somebody in the face,
so before you hurt my brother, we gonna hurt you.
♪ ♪
See, the police is there trying to break it up?
There's only one guard on the bubble, one guard on the floor.
What is 2 guards gonna do for 33 people?
♪ ♪
- Why are so many inmates in the hallway?
You're not supposed to have that many inmates on the tier.
During this fight,
those inmates were supposed to be pushed in their cells
and the cells closed.
- I would've sprayed them all.
♪ ♪
I know those two officers. I know them both.
♪ ♪
They're nice people,
but they're sheep.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[door slams shut]
[dramatic music]
- Now, Kalief, how many other inmates were in One Main
when this fighting began?
- I don't remember,
but I know the housing areas hold up to 30 people.
- And how long did this whole attack last?
- I don't know.
- Five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour?
- I can't tell you.
I mean, it feels different
when you're getting beat up.
- You know, the officers were there.
To some people, it might look like
they were trying to break up the fight,
but you could also suppose,
did they really do everything they could to protect Kalief?
I don't know.
You know, in that video, to me,
it almost looks like they were in cahoots with the inmates
or allowed it to happen
or turned their, you know, turned their cheek to it.
- Sometimes it's like, okay, we got this one here again.
Oh, my God, I gotta deal with him?
If he's mouthy, okay, and I let them whip his behind,
maybe he'll shut his mouth
if he get his behind whipped enough.
- If something breaks out like that,
it should be stopped right away.
It wasn't stopped right away.
It wasn't stopped until they felt that he got enough.
- That facility is so old
that even though officers pressed the button
and the cell door closed,
the inmates were able to kick that door open
because it's not a very secure door.
I couldn't believe how that could happen in a jail.
You can't keep a house safe
if you can't keep inmates locked in their cells.
[indistinct shouting]
- Then the turtles came in...
locked everybody in their cells,
took them out of the housing area.
[dramatic music]
The police had to make a report.
♪ ♪
- What happened to you as a result of this fight?
- Well, I caught more box days.
- What is box days?
- Solitary confinement.
♪ ♪
- I think I did 40 days for that.
♪ ♪
40, 45 or something like that.
♪ ♪
- See, the police is there trying to break it up?
That's basically like an easy pass to the box.
♪ ♪
- Did they send you immediately to solitary confinement?
- Immediately.
♪ ♪
- How long were you in solitary confinement?
- I don't remember exactly how long I was there...
♪ ♪
But I know I was there for months.
- Five months? Six months? More? Less?
- More.
♪ ♪
- The solitary confinement unit
was known on Rikers as "the bing."
[shouting and pounding]
Five-story tower,
100 cells on each floor.
It was coined to describe the human brain
under the strain of solitary.
The brain simply goes "bing".
[banging]
If they had no mental health issues
before they entered solitary;
they do now.
A lot of blood, a lot of cutting,
babbling incoherently, people smeared in feces.
- You hallucinate. You talk to yourself.
You count the springs on the bed.
You count the cracks on the walls.
You do everything in your power to occupy the time.
[dramatic music]
And then at some point you run out of things to do.
And when you run out of things to do,
it's like dying with your eyes open.
♪ ♪
- I tried telling the correction officers
that I wanted to see a psychiatrist
'cause I wasn't feeling right,
but they didn't wanna hear me out, nobody wanted to listen.
It just--it just gives me a crazy feeling in my head.
[horn sounds]
[thunder rumbling]
- [babbling]
[horn sounds]
[crash
[dramatic music]
[horn sounds]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[horn sounding]
[sizzling]
It's just...
- Describe that scene to me.
What if that's true with like...
If you are a 16-year-old.
[overlapping indistinct chatter]
[clock ticks]