Rikers guard who planted weapon in detainee cell convicted

A former guard on Rikers Island was convicted of several felony charges for planting a weapon inside the cell of a detainee he had a violent history with. AP file photo by Seth Wenig

By Jacob Kaye

A former Rikers Island guard was convicted of felony charges after prosecutors say he planted a weapon inside the cell of a detainee he had recently beat up.

Dionisio Rosario, a 34-year-old from Wantagh, New York, was found guilty of tampering with physical evidence, falsifying business records and official misconduct charges for attempting to plant a shard of glass in the cell of a man being held in the dangerous jail complex.

Rosario’s conviction was largely based on incriminating body-worn camera footage of the incident he recorded himself.

Prosecutors with the Bronx district attorney’s office, which prosecutes alleged crimes perpetrated on Rikers Island, say that the incident unfolded in 2023 when Rosario was working in the Robert N. Davoren Center.

Rosario went to search the cell of a detainee who he had recently used force against.

The former correctional officer was caught on camera walking into the cell with a sharpened object inside his hand.

Once inside the cell, Rosario was spotted placing the 4.5-inch shard of plexiglass underneath a piece of paper by a sink.

Rosario then moved to a different part of the cell and began the phony search. He eventually made his way back to the sink area, where he discovered the piece of glass he had put there himself.

The officer went on to report the detainee and gave fake information in at least four subsequent Department of Correction reports.

Rosario, who made $92,000 a year with the city agency, was arrested in October 2023 and suspended without pay. The conviction will put an end to his career with the DOC, which began in 2016.

“Falsifying records and evidence tampering are serious offenses and wholly unacceptable conduct for a law enforcement officer responsible for safety and order in the City’s jails,” said Jocelyn Strauber, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, which led the investigation into Rosario’s fake search. “Today’s conviction holds the defendant accountable for his crimes and misuse of his position.”

Rosario is set to return to court for sentencing on Sept. 29.

Use of force incidents, like the one that preceded Rosario’s evidence-planting scheme, have long been a major issue on Rikers Island.

The alleged excessive use of force habitually practiced by officers was the basis for the class action lawsuit known as Nunez v. the City of New York, the case which recently led a federal judge to order a third-party takeover of the jails.

While serious use of force incidents have been in the decline in recent months, the rate officers used force against detainees was higher last year than it was in 2015, the year the city entered into a consent judgement stemming from the Nunez case.

“The department has been unable to implement the use of force policy since the inception of the consent judgment,” Steve J. Martin, the federal monitor in the Nunez case tasked with tracking violence on Rikers, said in a May report.

“[U]ses of force still occur too frequently and it is certain that staff continue to engage in practices that inflict unnecessary and excessive harm,” he added.

According to the monitor, officers too frequently strike detainees in the head or jump to use pepper spray to get control of a situation without first giving a detainee time to comply with their orders.

The report also found that officers often use force against detainees during searches. The circumstance accounts for a majority of use of force incidents.

A large proportion of use of force events occur during searches, particularly in cells or other areas designated for strip searches without camera coverage,” the report read. “Their prevalence raises serious questions about the search methods and demeanor of staff when conducting the searches.”