They’ve got some big mouths in the big house.
Jabbering jailbirds are foolishly giving city prosecutors incriminating evidence by blabbering about their misdeeds on prison phones — even though they know their conversations are being recorded.
Last year alone, the city’s five district-attorney offices submitted nearly 16,000 subpoenas for phone records from Rikers Island and smaller borough and hospital holding pens, according to Department of Correction records.
That’s a 47 percent increase since 2010 — the first year that all inmate phone calls were recorded — when nearly 11,000 subpoenas were issued.
The rock-solid evidence has increasingly helped prosecutors cement their cases against suspects, and sometimes even led them to file additional charges.
“It’s a bizarre thing,” a law-enforcement source said of the trend.
“Most of the time, they’re using code words they don’t think the listener will understand,” he added. “But when you listen long enough, you get to know their patterns and understand the code.”
Signs posted in English and Spanish near all inmate telephones read:
“Inmate telephone conversations are subject to electronic recording and/or monitoring in accordance with Departmental policy. An inmates’ use of institutional telephones constitutes consent to this recording and/or monitoring.”
The phone system also plays a warning announcement in English or Spanish at the beginning of a call: “This call may be recorded and monitored.”
Yet the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office used dozens of phone conversations from numerous lock-ups over three years to take down 63 suspected East Harlem gang members who were accused of contributing to three murders, among other crimes.
Quotes from the indictment show gang members using slang like “skat” and “toy” on the phone in a bid to hide the fact they’re talking about guns. But they sometimes spelled crimes out in black and white.
“I shot him,” Tremaine “Maine” Cosby allegedly said on a recorded conversation with a cohort. “I don’t give a f–k.”
Cosby was charged with attempted murder in April.