Officer Lameen Barnes prepared the official incident report that night on what happened to Mr. Dixon, writing that he had tried to throw an “unknown liquid substance” at the officers, and in response, they had searched his cell for contraband. When they entered, the report said, Mr. Dixon refused to come out, insulted them and would not follow their orders. He was restrained and handcuffed to a gurney. 
 
 “Once on his feet, inmate Dixon was eventually escorted to the main clinic for medical examination without any further incident of force used,” Mr. Barnes wrote. 
 
 That is nothing like what actually happened, according to accounts from three people who were there. Two requested anonymity because they said they feared retaliation from officers as well as their employer, Corizon, which has a contract with the city to provide health care at the jail. For the third witness, The Times was provided a copy of the clinician’s email to superiors about the incident, on the condition that the sender’s name be withheld. 
 
 According to their accounts, a group of correction officers wheeled Mr. Dixon into an examination area without a security camera. “Don’t leave me,” he kept yelling to the medics and social workers. “They’re going to kill me.” 
 
 About a half-dozen guards were crowded around the gurney, and one kept punching Mr. Dixon in the head. 
 
 Next, the correction officers brought in Mr. Lane, who had also splashed guards with a liquid. Mr. Lane was known as a disruptive inmate. He had been in and out of Rikers, and much of his most recent stint had been spent in solitary confinement. Born to a mother who was a crack addict, he spent most of his time growing up in foster homes and had a lengthy history of mental health problems, with diagnoses for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder. 
 
 “They punched me in the face and they kept punching me and punching me and punching me,” Mr. Lane recalled in an interview at Elmira Correctional Facility, where he recently completed a two-year sentence for a credit card theft conviction. ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — The newly appointed commissioner of New York City's jail system violated city law by sending as many as 47 mentally ill inmates into 23-hour confinement without first getting approval from mental health clinicians, a city oversight board said Tuesday. 
 
 Commissioner Joseph Ponte, who took the helm of the country's second-largest jail system in March, insisted at a meeting of the New York City Board of Correction he was trying to quell rising levels of violence. 
 
 Ponte, who had reduced the use of solitary confinement by two thirds in Maine's state prisons, said the June 13 move on Rikers Island was aimed at volatile inmates who have broken jailhouse rules and owe days in solitary. 
 
 But board members rejected the argument, noting the move jeopardized the health of some inmates, particularly those on psychotropic medications who were taken from air-conditioned mental observation units and put into uncooled solitary cells. A federal judge has ordered that such inmates, deemed heat-sensitive because the exposure to heat while on such drugs can be fatal, shouldn't be placed in uncooled cells. 
 
 Other inmates who were moved were denied medication and had seizure disorders, they said. At least one inmate suffered a seizure, Ponte said. 
 
 "I would just hope that you would review these issues and in the future instruct your staff to be consistent with the board standards and not to violate these rules which are not just rules but designed for the safety of the prisoners," said board member Dr. Robert Cohen. 
 
 Nearly 40 percent of the roughly 11,500 daily inmates in city jails have a mental health diagnosis, according to the Department of Correction and about a third of them suffer from serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The Associated Press has previously disclosed the deaths of two mentally ill inmates — one who essentially baked to death in a 101-degree cell in February — that have prompted calls for reform. 
 
 During a City Council oversight hearing on violence and mental illness at Rikers the day before the inmate moves, Ponte was repeatedly asked about a list of hundreds of inmates who owe time in solitary confinement but are in general population because there's not enough space. Correction officials argue that those inmates, many of whom they say are gang members, drive the violence on Rikers. 
 
 On Tuesday, Ponte told board members that figure is closer to 1,000 inmates. A number of them are high-risk for harming themselves and others and needed to be separated to stem surging violence, he said. 
 
 "What we don't have, and have not had for probably more than five years now, is a plan that's impacted the level of violence on Rikers Island," he told the board. 
 
 There were 21 slashings in one recent six-week period and a total of 87 during fiscal year 2014, according to a letter sent by Ponte to board members Monday night and obtained by the AP. There were a total of 68 total such slashing the previous fiscal year and 55 in fiscal 2012, the letter said. 
 
 "Under such circumstances, I felt that it was imperative to take prompt action to prevent further violence," he wrote.
– Guards at Rikers Island don't just neglect the mentally ill or let them bake to death, they also routinely brutally beat them, often without suffering any repercussions, a New York Times investigation has discovered. The Times uncovered a secret report compiled by a city department this year that found that 129 Rikers inmates suffered "serious injuries" in altercations with staff members over an 11-month span last year; 77% of those inmates had a mental health diagnosis. In most cases, the inmates were beaten while handcuffed. The Times investigated the incidents individually, and offer some disturbing details: When guards found Jose Bautista trying to hang himself, they saved him, but then allegedly threw him to the ground and punched him with such force that they perforated his bowel. It was one of five beatings noted in the report that followed a suicide attempt. Bautista needed emergency surgery, but guards took nine hours to drive him to the hospital—which is only 15 minutes away. When Andre Lane threw water or urine at guards, they allegedly handcuffed him to a gurney, wheeled him to a clinic that wasn't monitored by security cameras, and beat him so violently that the walls and cabinets were covered with his blood. After Brian Mack complained that guards were stealing inmates' food, a guard captain allegedly hit him in the eye with his radio, while another officer punched him in the jaw. He came away with a broken eye socket and jaw. Correction officials said he'd been in a fight with another inmate, but investigators noted no such fight was logged in prison records. None of the guards involved in any of the cases have faced criminal charges—or even administrative ones. Rikers has been under pressure to reform its treatment of mentally ill inmates—in January, for example, it announced it would stop putting the "seriously mentally ill" in solitary, though the Times notes that classification applies to a small segment of the population. Last week an oversight board said the newly-appointed city jail commissioner had in June illegally sent as many as 47 mentally ill Rikers inmates to solitary without consulting clinicians, the AP reports.