Fed lockup in Manhattan gets harsh virus review
NEW YORK – Prisoners with COVID-19 symptoms were neglected and ignored as the outbreak rippled through the federal detention center in Manhattan where financier Jeffrey Epstein died last summer, according to a doctor who performed a court-authorized inspection of the facility this month.
Social distancing was almost nonexistent in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where some inmates sleep on bunks within arm’s reach of each other, according to a report by Dr. Homer S.
Venters, a former chief medical officer for New York City’s jails who toured the facility May 13.
The jail only let several prisoners get tested for the virus, Venters wrote. Five infected inmates were sent to a high-security housing unit that he said was “grossly inappropriate for the treatment of any ill inmates, and particularly those suffering from COVID-19.”
The doctor also said the place was infested with mice, rats and roaches, reflecting a “basic disregard for sanitation and infection control,” and that some jail practices “actually promote a more rapid spread of COVID-19 inside the facility,” boosting the likelihood of serious illness or death.
One panicked female inmate forced to share a cell with a woman with COVID-19 symptoms hung a sheet and feigned a suicide attempt to get transferred, Venters wrote.
Lawyers seeking to represent nearly 800 inmates hired the doctor to tour the detention center, with the approval of a federal judge, for a lawsuit seeking court oversight to free some prisoners and improve conditions.
In court filings, the lawyers described a dirty jail where toilets shared by multiple inmates leak water, urine and feces while inmates struggle to find a bar of soap, clean clothing and a mask that fits.
Attorneys for the warden said in court filings that the judge should toss out the lawsuit.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman declined comment, citing the litigation.
On its website, the Bureau of Prisons reports that all five MCC prisoners who tested positive for the coronavirus have recovered. Lawyers for inmates, however, said they believed 75 to 150 had been infected and the true number “will never be known because of the MCC’s failure to administer tests.”