Tag: Rikers
City officials said Tuesday that judges will no longer set bail for misdemeanor and non-violent felony suspects in an effort to keep them out of Rikers, where they could end up stuck for too long or have something terrible and avoidable happen to them. Instead, suspects will be allowed to live at home and even […]
The City has reached a settlement over the class-action lawsuit championed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara over the deplorable conditions at Rikers Island. The agreement will lead to several reforms, including the instatement of a federal monitor over the Department of Corrections. From the Observer: “I have repeatedly made clear our unwavering commitment to enduring […]
On June 18, a disgraced Rikers commanding officer was sentenced to five years in prison for violating the Fourteenth Amendment right of a prisoner to receive attention for serious medical needs. Captain Terrence Pendergrass consciously allowed an inmate named Jason Echevarria to die after the patient poisoned himself. “A man died here, a 25-year-old man, […]
One of the most tragic things about the case of Kalief Browder, the young man who committed suicide after being released from Rikers, was how preventable it was. Browder was arrested at 16, allegedly for having stolen a backpack, and waited there for a trial that took 3 years to throw out. One way to […]
Carlos Montero was 17 when he was arrested for his alleged involvement in a Washington Heights murder on October 23, 2008. He has been awaiting trial at Rikers Island ever since, a New York Post investigation finds. Experts say that his detainment is unquestionably unconstitutional. Prosecutors say Montero was with Jairo Peralta and Diangelo Enriquez […]
Civil rights organizations are holding a vigil for Kalief Browder, the 22-year-old Bronx man who committed suicide this past weekend, 2 years after being released from Rikers. The vigil will take place at the Metropolitan Detention Complex on White Street at 6 PM, according to the organization’s Facebook page. Activists and those who want to […]
Some prisoners at Rikers do a thing called “splashing” where they fling bodily fluids at corrections officers. You know, like Miggs in Silence Of the Lambs. The Department of Corrections unveiled a proposed budget yesterday that calls for $733,248 for forensic testing to “test department uniforms as a result of splashing incident,” the Observer reports. […]
The New York Daily News reports that the meatloaf that made inmates at Rikers sick last month was confirmed to have been tainted with Brodifacoum, a rat poison, according to results from a laboratory study commissioned by the plaintiffs. “There’s no justification for rat poison to be in an inmate’s food whatsoever,” the inmates’ lawyer, […]
The New Yorker has released 6 minutes of security camera footage from inside Rikers, giving the public a rare and disturbing glimpse into the prison’s “deep-seated culture of violence,” as a report by the United States attorney in Manhattan called it. The video shows two incidents that happened to Kalief Browder, who was arrested in […]
The city has paid a $300,000 settlement to the family of a now-deceased Rikers Island inmate who was paralyzed from the waist down after doctors failed to adequately treat his severe fungal infection, DNAInfo reports. Jose Ferrer, who died in 2010, was incarcerated at Rikers Island in August 2008 for failing to complete a drug […]
