An inmate who casually walked out of a Manhattan courthouse posing as a lawyer was nabbed last night, as new details emerged indicating a correction officer’s stunning breach of protocol could have allowed the escape.
Ronald Tackman, 56, was arrested as he got off a bus near a friend’s house in Washington Heights just before 9 p.m. sources said.
Officers received a tip he’d be in the area, and he was arrested without incident.
Earlier yesterday, sources revealed that on Wednesday, a guard removed Tackman’s handcuffs and those of eight other arrivals from Rikers Island as they stood in the 12th-floor hallway at 100 Centre Street.
The guard has since been banished from his cushy post to Rikers.
City policy calls for inmates to be uncuffed only inside a holding cell or just before entering it.
Tackman “never made it to the pen,” said a jail source.
Instead, he strolled out an unlocked door to a courtroom, where a court officer assumed he was a lawyer because he was wearing a suit and tie.
The escape could have been prevented had Tackman been brought to the court in a prison uniform and the once-traditional orange sneakers, union officials contended.
In June 2008, the Board of Corrections granted the city authority to put pre-sentence inmates in colored uniforms. But the plan was never enacted.
An angry Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro visited the courthouse after the escape and increased officers in courts citywide.
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram