A Rikers corrections officer said he cried when he was cleared of charges he sexually assaulted a coworker on the job – calling the ordeal “the biggest embarrassment” of his life.
Carlos Ozrio, 39, was found not guilty last month on accusations from a fellow corrections officer that he groped her from behind “while kissing her neck” at a Riker’s Island Headquarters trailer facility in 2020.
“I just started crying, crying, crying. I didn’t cry during the whole trial but when that happened, I just started crying,” Ozrio said.
Ozrio’s told The Post he received a phone call from a union delegate on April 2023, telling the 11-year department veteran he had to turn himself into the Bronx District Attorney’s Office
“I was shocked,” Ozrio said. “I started laughing because I thought it was a joke. When he said call this attorney, I was like it might not be a joke.”
The attorney told Ozrio there was an allegation against him from a female coworker at Rikers claiming Ozrio touched her private parts.
“She said I put my hands on her boobs and her vagina, and that I spanked her ass,” Ozrio said.
Ozrio was charged with sexual abuse, forcible touching and harassment.
Ozrio adamantly denied having touched or harassed the woman who he said he considered a friend.
“We were friends and worked together in the same office,” Ozrio said.
The corrections officer found himself inside a cell instead of watching over one.
“That was the biggest embarrassment of my life. I was in a pen incarcerated asking God why did this happen to me?” Ozrio said.
Prosecutors offered Carlos a plea deal to drop the case to disorderly conduct if he pleaded guilty, but he refused and wanted to take the case to trial to “clear his name,” Ozrio said.
Ozrio said the woman’s allegations stemmed from a conversation they had where she asked him to “put a baby in her” but Ozrio, who had a girlfriend at the time, refused.
“I was the only boy — three sisters and my mom. I know what it’s like to protect a woman. This is not something I would do,” Ozrio said.
During the trial it came out text messages used by the woman to substantiate her claims had been altered on her phone. But investigators never checked the recipient’s phone, Ozrio claimed.
“She blamed it on iCloud,” Ozrio said.
When reached for comment a spokesperson from the Bronx DA’s office simply said, “We presented our case and the jury acquitted him.”
Townsend said he is happy his client was found not guilty. But he said cases like this make it harder for other victims to come forward.
“What this woman did makes it more difficult for the real victims of sexual violence in Rikers Island and the jail system — whether they be inmates or they be female corrections officers who are subject to sexual violence — it makes it more difficult for them to come forward when people just lie about it and the prosecution pushes their story forward, even though it has clear issues with credibility,” Townsend told The Post.