Local leaders, organizations respond to fifth death of Rikers Island inmate this year

"

Activist organizations and local elected officials are responding to the recent death of a Rikers Island inmate in a local hospital. The Department of Corrections says that a person in custody was pronounced dead at a Queens hospital on Tuesday morning. The inmate, 63-year-old Anthony Jordan, was transported just before 5:30 a.m. from the North Infirmary Command at Rikers Island to Mount Sinai Hospital. He was pronounced dead just before 6:30 a.m. The Department of Correction says, in part: "The department notified the federal monitor, the State Attorney General’s office, the State Commission of Correction, the Department of Investigation, the Board of Correction, the district attorney, and the attorney of record... As with any death of a person in custody, the department will conduct a full investigation and will cooperate with all outside investigative entities.” The #HALTsolitary campaign's co-director, Jerome Wright, provided the following statement, in part: "This status quo has got to go. City and state lawmakers and officials need to free as many people as possible from this death trap, prosecutors need to stop sending people there and finally judges must save lives by refusing to condemn people to Rikers to get tortured in solitary or worse, die." Public Advocate Jumaane Williams provided the following statement in response to the reported death. "Another New Yorker lost their life in city custody today, the fifth of the year and 33rd under this administration. This is the status quo on Rikers the mayor was so desperate to preserve that he refused to enforce the law banning solitary and the use of prolonged isolation, declaring a state of emergency to block it. There has long been a crisis on Rikers, as today’s tragic loss shows, but the administration is relying on keeping that emergency in place, rather than acting to address it.” "