Jail suicide fury
State finds poor Rikers care before 3 tragedies
CITY JAIL staff failed to follow simple procedures and ignored obvious signs of depression before three Rikers Island inmates committed suicide, a state oversight panel concluded.
The state Correction Commission found the poor care included missed doctor visits, muffed medical assessments, bungled housing assignments and slipshod CPR attempts.
The de Blasio administration has made reforming the scandalscarred city Correction Department a major priority and funneled millions to boost medical care for inmates.
As part of that effort, city Health and Hospitals took over the medical treatment of inmates from the long maligned for-profit Corizon operator.
But the system overhaul fell fatally short due to a series of deadly missteps in three cases highlighted by the state review panel.
The deaths reviewed by the state’s Commission of Correction occurred from 2015 to 2017, records show. Since then, the city Correction Department says it has taken steps to prevent suicides and to better treat obviously depressed inmates.
There were no inmate suicides in the system in 2014, last year and this year so far, records show.
By contrast, there were two each in 2016, 2015 and 2012. There were three in 2013.
Over the past five years, the city jail suicide rate is less than half the national average for jails.
“The safety and well-being of those in our custody is our No. 1 priority, and we take pride in the fact that we are one of the nation’s leaders in correctional suicide-prevention,” said Correction Department spokesman Peter Thorne.
“However, even one suicide in custody is one too many.”
Inmate advocates say missed medical appointments still plague the department. There were 6,600 scheduled appointments throughout the entire system where inmates were “not produced” by correction officers to medical staff, records show. That represents 14% of all of the appointments scheduled that month, according Board of Correction to city records.
“We are concerned about it,” said board member Robert Cohen. “We’ve been in discussion with the Department of Correction and Correctional Health Services to get them to resolve this serious problem.”
Inmate Angel Perez-Rios, 44, missed multiple medical appointments before he was found hanging from a shoelace attached to a metal protrusion from his cell window inside the Anna M. Kross Center on Jan. 24, 2016, at 8:43 a.m.
Before his suicide, Perez-Rios (photo) went nearly a month before seeing a clinician due in part to multiple facility lockdowns and lack of officer escort staff.
“The Medical Review Board finds that a pattern of missed appointments, lapses in medication therapy and long periods of time without services amounts to inadequate mental health care,” the commission report concluded.
Perez-Rios was charged with fatally stabbing his girlfriend in the bathroom of their Queens home while the woman’s horrified children were inside the apartment.
Inside his cell, he left a suicide note, written in Spanish, asking God for forgiveness and strength to avoid evil, according to the state death review.