Feds: ‘Highly Dangerous’ Conditions at Kings County Hospital

CROWN HEIGHTS — Federal probers found “highly dangerous” conditions in Kings County Hospital’s psych ward and accused staffers of covering up the death of a patient who was ignored in the emergency room for 24 hours.

For nearly a year, the Justice Department has been looking into accusations patients were drugged and brutalized at the psych unit known as “G Building.”

The probe found widespread and ongoing abuse, said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Loretta King and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell.

“Conditions at Kings County Hospital Center are highly dangerous and require immediate attention,” King and Campbell wrote in a 58-page letter to Mayor Bloomberg and other top city officials.

The feds launched the investigation after a 2007 suit filed by the state Mental Hygiene Legal Service and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Government probers found that rampant violence and sex between 14-year-old patients was tolerated, officials said.

Documents were falsified in the case of Esmin Green, a 49-year-old woman who died last summer in the emergency room after languishing for nearly 24 hours, officials said.

HHC President Alan Aviles, who first called the allegations in the suit “grossly inaccurate,” had a new spin yesterday as federal intervention loomed.

“During the past year, we have been focused on the design and implementation of sweeping and radical change in the delivery of behavior health services at Kings County,” Aviles said, as he announced a $153 million facility to replace the G Building.

Despite changes instituted after Green’s death, the feds found the hospital failed to protect patients from each other and themselves.

A 14-year-boy caught having sex tried to hang himself with a video game wire, according to the report. Another patient who was supposed to be under close observation cut herself with a paper clip and swallowed the clip. That same day, she swallowed staples in the presence of staff who deemed the incident “a minor, self-inflicted injury.”

The city Department of Investigation is still considering charges against staffers who falsified documents in the Green case.

“It’s unfortunate it took the death of Esmin Green to get changes in the manner patients are treated,” said lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who is suing the city on behalf of Green’s daughter.

“We cannot undo the past. But we can and will continue to learn from our mistakes,” Aviles said.