Cops are investigating a rash of violent assaults on correction officers at city jails, sources said.
Several prison guards have been attacked recently by prisoners looking to prove their toughness in a string of random beat-downs that have some correction officials afraid to go to work.
“Word is spreading that it’s open season on correction officers,” said a law- enforcement source.
In one particularly brutal attack, a 22-year-old female rookie was sucker-punched by a male inmate in a housing facility on Rikers Island that left her with a broken eye socket.
“[He] came right out of the bathroom and punched me in my eye,” the unidentified woman told Fox 5. “Things like this shouldn’t be happening. This is not what I signed up for.”
At least three other assaults on correction officers occurred in the last three days at the Manhattan Detention Complex, known as The Tombs.
In each of those incidents, guards were randomly punched in the face by prisoners apparently looking to send a message to their fellow criminals that they are not to be messed with, sources said.
“I feel that that is what’s going on,” correction officers union vice president Liz Castro told Fox 5.