See it: Video from inside troubled Brooklyn federal jail shows brutal gang stabbing

Shocking video from inside Brooklyn’s troubled federal jail shows MS-13 gang members stab a man 44 times, attacking him for an agonizing 37 seconds before a lone correction officer arrives to stop them.

Even after the correction officer at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center chases the culprits, no one immediately comes to the victim’s aid as he gets up and slowly staggers out of the camera’s view.

The video, obtained by the Daily News, offers a stark display of the hellish conditions at the Sunset Park jail that judges, inmates and defense lawyers have complained about for years. Conditions at MDC have become so dire that judges routinely cite them  as a reason to reduce prison sentences, and defense attorneys in the federal system regularly decry the constant lockdowns, rotten and infested food, and short staffing.

“I’ve been around for decades. The conditions at the MDC are the worst that I’ve ever seen,” defense attorney Anthony Ricco said. “What we’re seeing is really a complete breakdown of professionalism at this facility.”

The April 27 attack occurred amid a string of violent episodes in the jail, including the stabbing deaths of two inmates in June and July.

The lead suspect in the caught-on-video stabbing, Luis “Inquieto” Rivas, has a long history of brutal violence, both on the street and behind bars.

He’s serving 40 years in federal prison, 35 of them for nearly decapitating a 16-year-old boy in Alley Pond Park in Queens because the teen refused to murder a pal at his MS-13 boss’ order. The other five are for stabbing a Latin Kings member in the Manhattan Detention Complex, better known as the Tombs, in 2018.

Video of the April 27 attack shows the victim, who isn’t named, sitting at a table in a common area of the federal jail, alone, with his feet up, as at least a dozen other inmates mill about or sit at tables nearby.

One of those inmates — Rivas, according to a letter federal prosecutors sent to the judge handling Rivas’ case — walks up behind the victim, takes an object from his waist, and lunges at the victim from behind, jabbing him in the side. Rivas is quickly joined by two accomplices, identified by federal prosecutors as fellow MS-13 members. They pull the victim to the ground and hold him there, repeatedly punching and stabbing him. Three more inmates sitting at a nearby table scuttle away, while several more watch the attack from a distance.

A source familiar with the incident said the victim, who survived the attack, may also have been an MS-13 member, and that unit of the jail is used to house members of the Salvadoran gang to keep them away from rivals. Rivas is facing internal prison charges over the incident but no additional criminal charges have yet been filed.

A lone correction officer arrives at the scene, walking at first, then running as he realizes what’s happening. He pulls out what appears to be pepper spray to break up the attack, then chases Rivas and his accomplices throughout the common area.

The victim gets to his feet and staggers out of the room and off frame, no one helping him as he walks.

A second correction officer shows up in the footage about a minute and 20 seconds after the attack, followed by back-up, and the guards can later be seen taking one of the attackers away.

Jail staff found two shivs on Rivas and another of the attackers — two lengths of metal, one 5 ½ inches long, the other 10 ½ inches long, both sharpened to a point, according to court filings.

Emery Nelson, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, said the agency has assigned an “an executive-level after action team” to review the stabbing, and the murders in June and July.

“The assigned team includes high-level supervisory employees external to Brooklyn to review all aspects of the incidents and provide a detailed report for corrective actions to be considered,” Nelson said.

Nelson wouldn’t comment further on the specifics of the assaults, citing BOP privacy, safety and security policy.

According to BOP officials, it’s typical for a lone correctional officer to work a housing unit with up to 150 inmates, and that officer can call for help if an emergency breaks out.

Judges have been decrying the miserable conditions at the MDC for years, including back in 2015, when the National Association of Women Judges conducted two visits and found a lack of fresh air and sunlight, no air conditioning during a heatwave, rotten food and insufficient medical care.

Defense lawyer Josh Dratel, who represents a convicted MS-13 leader linked to Rivas’ case, described the video as shocking.

“If you were to imagine the situation that occurred, you would have not imagined that it would look like that on video,” he said. That was alarming in its own right. “Staffing, medical care, it’s sort of emblematic of a lot of the problems that that are there.”

The MDC is the city’s only federal jail after the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan was shuttered in 2021, two years after sex fiend financier Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself.

The MDC has received a fresh wave of scrutiny in recent months after judges and defense lawyers blasted the jail staff for several instances where inmates received inadequate or delayed medical care.

In one egregious example, the jail’s medical staff sat on an inmate’s CT scan results for several weeks, allowing a cancerous mass in his lungs to double in size while he waited to be hospitalized.

A report from last November showed the jail had only filled 200 of its 301 correction officer positions.

“In my personal estimation, assaults have been on the rise at MDC, not simply because jail is a dangerous place, but because of a staffing shortage,” Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall said at a sentencing Wednesday.

DeArcy Hall has ordered several jail staffers to an evidentiary hearing later this year to determine whether they lied about giving an inmate all of his antibiotics after his appendix burst.

Defense attorney Ricco said one of his clients was the victim of a non-fatal stabbing in June, but didn’t pursue charges because he didn’t want to be labeled as a snitch.

Victims often “sit down with the shot callers and they just resolve it,” Ricco said. “This is what happens when the staff is incapable… Inmates are left to just try to resolve that. And all that does, by the way, is just strengthen the power of the gangs.”