In latest Rikers security breach, man takes ‘drunken’ scooter jaunt around jail island

A wee spot tipsy antheral connected a scooter someway blew past 2 checkpoints and roamed astir Rikers Island earlier his nighttime joyride was chopped abbreviated by security, tribunal records show.

Gerald Yanez, 23, drove his moped past the Correction Department’s archetypal checkpoint successful Astoria astir 11:35 p.m. Monday, implicit the Francis R. Buono Memorial Bridge, which connects the land to Queens, and past evaded information and rolled done the heavy unafraid Gate 1 checkpoint.

From determination Yanez drove on astatine slightest 1 roadway, ignoring halt signs, earlier correction officers yet closed successful and pulled him over, the ailment states. His motive for the nighttime jail-island jaunt was unclear.

Correction Captain James Thomas spotted Yanez “moving on the roadway astatine a precocious complaint of speed, swerving successful and retired of the lane and crossing implicit the treble yellowish line,” the ailment states.

Yanez “flailed his arms, twisted his hands and assemblage and locked his arms” arsenic helium was being arrested, the ailment states. Thomas reported that Yanez smelled powerfully of alcohol.

The incidental was reported to DOC’s Central Operations table much than an hr aboriginal astatine 1 a.m., records show.

Yanez, of the Bronx, was charged with reckless endangerment, drunken driving, resisting apprehension and 2 counts of trespassing, the ailment states. His lawyer, Carolina Garcia, did not reply to a petition for comment.

The Correction Department did not respond instantly to a petition for comment.

At his arraignment Tuesday, Yanez was released connected his ain recognizance. He is owed backmost successful tribunal connected Jan. 15.

Word of the incidental emerged 2 days aft the metropolis Department of Investigation issued a study connected lax information successful the jails that allows contraband to participate the strategy “with ease.”

The study noted that, arsenic acold backmost arsenic 2014, DOI had concluded that DOC protocol astatine the cardinal information gates was not sufficient: “Ten years later, these aforesaid issues persist. DOI has noted continued lax beforehand gross procedures and observed unit circumventing established protocols,” the study said.

DOI recommended the metropolis prosecute an extracurricular contractor oregon instrumentality enforcement bureau to patrol the information gates connected the edges of the system. A past effort to bash that during the de Blasio medication successful 2021 met with fierce opposition from the correction unions and was abandoned.

Back successful April 2022, The News reported that a erstwhile detainee arriving with a person to prime up his belongings was waved done 2 Rikers checkpoints earlier they were stopped.

A correction serviceman simply gave them directions to 1 of the jails connected the land and fto them through, The News reported.