On a normal Wednesday morning on Dec. 3, a correction officer at Rikers Island was making his routine rounds when he felt what he later described as “sandpaper” scrape across his face. It was not sandpaper, but a shiv – a sharpened piece of metal – wielded by an inmate, Shemar Shaw, a reputed gang member being held at Rikers on charges that he stabbed a man at Rockefeller Center.
The officer was taken to the hospital. Hours later, while the jail remained on lockdown following the attack, another inmate named Malik Cooke, also a reputed gang member, lit a rag on fire and threw it at the officer assigned to replace him.
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