6 Rikers Island guards fired over 2012 inmate beating

NEW YORK -- New York City's jails commissioner has fired five guards and a captain for the 2012 beating of a handcuffed Rikers Island inmate.

Joseph Ponte says in a statement Wednesday that most correction officers perform their jobs with integrity. He says there is "no room for this type of behavior on Rikers."

Jail investigators found Robert Hinton suffered a broken nose and other injuries for refusing to be escorted in a now-shuttered solitary confinement dorm for mentally ill inmates.

They said guards fabricated a story that the 27-year-old man put one of them in a chokehold to justify the use-of-force.

Union head Norman Seabrook says he'll vigorously defend his members and appeal to get their jobs back.

New York's 11,000 daily inmate jail system came under increased scrutiny in 2014 after The Associated Press first reported the deaths of two seriously mentally ill inmates at Rikers and other problems.

Subsequent investigations by the news media, city investigators and lawmakers have drawn attention to the jails, whose problems Mayor Bill de Blasio has said were decades in the making and will not be changed overnight.

On New Year's Day, a mentally ill inmate apparently hanged himself in a Rikers Island jail cell. A suicide watch that had been ordered for Fabian Cruz wasn't implemented, a violation of Department of Correction protocol.

A former Rikers Island guard was convicted of a civil rights charge in December after a jury concluded he ignored the pleas of a dying inmate who had swallowed a toxic soap ball.

Last month, federal prosecutors sued New York City to speed the pace of reforms to address what a Justice Department investigation found was a "deep-seated culture of violence" against young inmates at the Rikers Island jail complex.

Guards reported using force against inmates a record 4,074 times in 2014, averaging 11 incidents a day ranging from pepper sprayings to punches.

In addition, a yearlong city probe of jail hiring practices released earlier this month found systemic problems with the Department of Correction hiring system that allowed an alarmingly high number of hires who had arrest records, gang ties or other red flags.