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EMS Worker is Now Target in Rikers Probe

New York Newsday, September 13, 1990

By Wendy Lin and Gale Scott

An EMS emergency medical technician who says he was slashed by a corrections officer during the Rikers Island riot last month will himself be the target of a criminal investigation when a Queens grand jury convenes today, according to a source close to the investigation.

“It looks like he’ll be the one charged,” the source said of Richard Cotto, an EMS emergency medical technician. The source added the evidence against Cotto appears “overwhelming” that he embellished injuries received with a self-inflicted wound to his abdomen.

Cotto had charged that he was stabbed by a corrections officer during the Rikers Island melee. According to EMS union officials and his lawyer, Jay Itkowitz, Cotto also had three front teeth knocked out and sustained other injuries. At least seven other EMS workers were also injured in the melee. Cotto was prepared to identify his alleged attacker to police.

Daniel Burstein, secretary-treasurer of Local 2507, the EMS union, said Cotto is telling the truth and that the city is attempting to “strong-arm the guy into dropping lawsuits against the city for damages.”

But investigators said they noticed that the stab wound that Cotto received and the story he told were inconsistent, sources say. A doctor at Elmhurst General Hospital who examined Cotto told investigators that it couldn’t have happened the way Cotto claimed it had.

Itkowitz accused the district attorney’s office of deliberately shifting the focus of the grand jury probe from the guards. He said he could not comment on the specifics of the allegations.

Cotto could face charges of falsifying business records, and filing a false instrument, DA’s sources said. The source also told New York Newsday that Cotto’s job may be in jeopardy because he failed to disclose that he had been arrested nine times when he first applied for an EMS job. Cotto was convicted only once – of disorderly conduct, a source said. The details of the conviction were unavailable.

“EMS does hire people with criminal records. We believe such people can be rehabilitated,” said EMS spokeswoman Lynn Schulman. She also said lying on an employment application “generally . . . is grounds for termination, but the civil service rules and regulations might offer such an employee protection.”

Itkowitz said he knew about Cotto’s disorderly conduct conviction. “An arrest means nothing. A disorderly conviction doesn’t disqualify you from working for EMS. Someone is playing fast and loose with a lot of people’s reputations here,” Itkowitz said.

EMS executive director Tom Doyle, in a recent interview with New York Newsday, said he supports Cotto’s account of events. “The confrontation was totally unacceptable. I have repeatedly expressed my support for the EMS workers involved and I’ve been working to see that the individuals who assaulted our employees and damaged our equipment are arrested and prosecuted.”