The “worst of the worst” prisoners in the city’s jails are living like kings — while correction officers are reduced to being their personal servants, The Post has learned.
Nearly two dozen prisoners get to kick back all day and watch TV and play chess in a little-known section of the Manhattan Detention Complex dubbed the “Silence of the Lambs” unit by guards — and the “VIP Room” by the inmates, correction sources said.
The guards are forced to wait on the violent prisoners hand and foot because the inmates are not allowed to walk around without officer escorts in the ninth-floor unit, which is officially called “9 South,” the sources said.
And the inmates take full advantage of their situation, demanding that coffee be served to them piping hot — sending it back when it’s lukewarm.
“The inmates scream, ‘Yo, get me some hot water!’ or ‘Make sure my cup is clean!’ ” one correction source said.
“If the water isn’t hot enough or the cup isn’t clean enough for their instant coffee, then you have to do it all over again. It’s f–king ridiculous. These are stone-cold murderers,” fumed the source.
The prisoners have it so good that at least one inmate was taken to Rikers Island to have his nails clipped — but it really amounted to a “pedicure,” a correction source said.
Another prisoner was escorted by a correction officer to Rikers for “massage” therapy, sources said.
“We’re waiters and maids, basically,” a frustrated guard said, adding that he has locked the prisoners in cages outside their cells so they can play “chess championships all day.”
The inmates are so pampered that their Rikers counterparts are jealous, sources say.
During a recent riot over earlier bedtimes at Rikers, one prisoner hinted to a guard there that he just might try to do something to get to the Manhattan facility.
“We all know all you got to do is act up and pop those bottles [fight] to get to the VIP Room,” the inmate said, according to a source.
Among the unit’s most vile inmates are Clarence Dean, Carlos Vega and Nikolay Natividad.
Dean was charged in the 2007 slaying of a young woman, leaving her nude body stuffed in garbage bags under a Times Square hotel bed.
Vega allegedly murdered a teenager during a 2007 bodega robbery.
In 1991, Natividad fatally shot his brother-in-law in the back as the man ran from him, cops said.
The Department of Correction said “inmate workers” — not correction officers — fetch the water for 9 South prisoners.
It refused to comment when asked whether officers also perform the tasks.