A public defender lawyer arrested on Rikers Island and turned into the poster child for drug smuggling is suing the correction officers union and its president - after the supposedly pot-laced papers he brought into the jail turned out to be drug free.

Correction officers and their union head, Benny Boscio, made a public show of arresting Bernardo Caceres, 31, last June - calling him a  drug peddling attorney  and giving the guards who arrested him the hero treatment in a press release still available on the union web site as of Thursday morning.

Caceres, who worked for the Queens Defenders, was carrying legal documents to share with his client, Luis DeJesus, who was getting ready for a robbery trial, when he visited Rikers on June 11, 2025, he said in a federal false arrest and defamation lawsuit filed Wednesday.

He handed those papers over to be screened and got them back to review in an interview room at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island with DeJesus, whose trial was due to start the next morning.

He left the papers with his client as he and his co-counsel left the room. But when they exited, they were greeted by a correction officer who told them they weren't free to leave, along with even more correction officers, some carrying long guns, and a man in a business suit, the lawsuit alleges.

They ushered him into a small closet-like room, he said, and an officer eventually told him,  They're looking over your stuff, but it's not looking good,  Caceres, of Park Slope, told the Daily News.

 I'm just dumbfounded,  Caceres said.  I know I'm 100% certain of my innocence - and this is ridiculous. 

A correction officer dog detected something on the papers and that a field test showed to be traces of THC, the main ingredient in marijuana, Caceres was told.

The correction officers arrested him, walking him through a cheering and jeering crowd of their colleagues, and finally released him hours later with a desk appearance ticket charging him with promoting contraband, the lawsuit says.

 Other COs (correction officers) are coming in. They're literally giving each other

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