By Tiffany Williams –
A disgraced former city Correction Officer is headed to jail after a Bronx jury found he planted a homemade weapon in an inmate’s cell and then tried to cover it up with a stack of bogus paperwork.
Dionisio Rosario, 35, was slammed with a 90-day jail term by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Timothy Lewis after jurors convicted him of Tampering with Physical Evidence and first-degree Falsifying Business Records. He got 90 days on each felony, running at the same time, plus a one-year conditional discharge for Official Misconduct. Prosecutors had pushed for up to four years behind bars, but Rosario will serve just three months.
The stunning takedown of a correction officer began with what should have been a routine contraband sweep on April 4, 2023, inside RNDC 5 Upper North on Rikers Island. According to investigators, Rosario entered the cell of a detainee who asked to be searched after sundown to avoid breaking Ramadan observance. Instead, Rosario yelled at him to put down a Qur’an, blasted him with a chemical spray, and the pair ended up fighting.
What happened next was captured on surveillance video and on Rosario’s own body-worn camera. Footage shows him holding a sharpened object, walking into the cell, and placing a 4.5-inch piece of sharpened plexiglass near the sink. He rummaged around the rest of the cell, then returned to the sink area and pulled out the same weapon he had planted moments earlier. He later claimed he recovered it by the sink but also alleged it had been in the inmate’s hand.
Rosario then doubled down with false information in four DOC reports, prosecutors said, an effort that ultimately helped sink his career and land him on the other side of a jail cell.
The two-week trial ended with jurors rejecting his story and branding the ex-officer a felon for trying to frame a detainee in a facility already infamous for violence and misconduct.