Another brawl broke out at a juvenile detention facility in the Bronx, this time injuring 16 correction officers and two captains, sources tell NBC 4 New York.
The melee erupted at Horizon Juvenile Facility, where 21 correction officers were hurt in a separate fight last week. That brings the total number of officers injured since last weekend to 40.
In Sunday's fight, 13 residents housed in a specialized unit got into a fight in the mess hall, several sources said.
One of the officers suffered a deep gash and a possible broken nose.
It wasn't clear how many residents were injured Sunday.
A rookie correction officer told the News 4 I-Team Monday that she was pressured to agree to a transfer from Rikers Island to Horizon Juvenile Center last week, as part of the new state mandate to move teens out of the jail setting.
"They were taken off of [Rikers] because of the alleged violence in that community, yet we were all forced to go there," said the anonymous rookie officer. "They made good on their promise that they would be violent and they would not care and they would not go to school and they would wreak havoc and violence whenever they felt like it."
"I'm afraid something's going to happen. Because something does happen every single day," she said.
After the fight last week, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children's Services, which runs Horizon, said in a statement, "We are in a transitionary period for historic reform that's never been done before, and there have been some incidents involving youth and officers which were quickly addressed. None of the injuries were serious, but we take these and all incidents seriously."
Correction officers claimed that those at Horizon are sitting ducks, unable to protect themselves with pepper spray, which is their one self-defense weapon in the jail system.
Another officer told the I-Team, "We were told we really wouldn't have much interaction with these residents, and that was a straight-up lie. But I don't really know the repercussions would be if I violate something under ACS."
"Tension is thick. You could cut it with a knife," said the anonymous rookie officer.
