Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is fighting to keep control of the troubled complex and other New York City lockups that have been plagued by violence and deaths in custody.
Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is fighting to keep control of the troubled complex and other New York City lockups that have been plagued by violence and deaths in custody.
Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is fighting to keep control of the troubled complex and other New York City lockups that have been plagued by violence and deaths in custody.
In the first three months of the year, five people have died at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York or shortly after being released from city custody, equaling the number of detainees who died in all of 2024.
The fifth death, on Monday night, comes as Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is fighting to keep control of the troubled complex and other city lockups that have been plagued by violence and deaths in custody.
According to the Department of Correction, a person was found ill on Monday at 9:18 p.m. by staff members monitoring the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island. The person, identified by the authorities as Dashawn Jenkins, 27, was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later, according to a news release from the department.
“The department is mourning the loss of someone in our care who passed away,” Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, the agency’s commissioner, said in a statement Tuesday morning.
Mr. Jenkins died one day after his birthday, according to a joint statement from the Legal Aid Society and the Queens Defenders.
“This tragic incident is a stark reminder of the ongoing human rights crisis unfolding at Rikers Island, which houses more people with mental illness than any psychiatric hospital in the entire city,” the statement said.