NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Another Rikers Island detainee died Wednesday morning, marking the 12th person to lose their life at the facility this year as outrage over the jail's conditions grows.
The detainee, Stephen Khadu, 34, was transported from Rikers' floating jail barge to Lincoln Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at around 10:50 a.m., the city’s Department of Corrections confirmed.
Khadu was discovered in the jail suffering from apparent “medical distress” before he was taken to the hospital, according to the agency.
Mitchell Elman, Khadu's lawyer, said there was no sign of a problem.
"I saw him a couple of weeks ago. We had a virtual court appearance and he was fine," Elman said.
Khadu entered DOC custody on December 19, 2019, and was being held on a 2nd-degree murder charge, according to the department.
“I am devasted to see that we have yet another death in custody, and determined to stop this heartbreaking trend,” DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi said in a statement. “We are doing all we can to remedy the unprecedented crisis we are experiencing in our jails. My thoughts and prayers are with the individual’s loved ones.”
The floating jail, known as the Vernon C. Bain Center, is part of the Rikers Island complex and was initially intended to be a temporary, emergency facility to accommodate a surging jail population when it opened in 1992, the New York Times reported.
Rikers has for months in the grips of a safety crisis spurred by poor management and understaffing as the DOC struggles to get officers with unlimited sick time to report to work.
Local officials have visited the facility recently and described horrific and appalling conditions inside.
Four New York congressional representatives — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerry Nadler, Jamaal Bowman and Nydia Velázquez — demanded Rikers to be closed, calling conditions at the jail “deplorable and nothing short of a humanitarian crisis" in a letter Tuesday to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“We strongly believe that those who are detained at Rikers should be immediately released and the facility shut down,” they wrote.
De Blasio has announced a host of emergency actions for the jail but has stuck to the city's plan to close Rikers by 2027.
"The answer is not to just open up the gates," de Blasio said Wednesday morning, in response to calls for Rikers' immediate closure.
"That's not going to happen," he added. "I respect [AOC] and her colleagues who signed that letter. Couldn't disagree with them more."
Instead, de Blasio is hiring more cleaning staff and emergency contractors to fix broken doors; speeding up intake processes to reduce overcrowding and expanding medical evaluation services.
He's also announced the city would staff NYPD in courtrooms to free up correction officers and end cut down on shifts in jails.
"We are going to end the triple shifts in October, and we're going to accent the positive, rewarding the vast majority of officers who have done the right thing," de Blasio said Wednesday.
"I want to commend and thank, again, the vast majority of Correction officers who stepped up, did the right thing, showed up no matter how tough it was, and kept doing the work to keep everyone in Rikers safe," the mayor added.
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