RIKERS PSYCH FOULUP
Jail ignored med history before suicide: report
A detainee who hanged himself on Rikers Island earlier this month was placed in general population despite extensive documented struggles with mental health, including suicide watch just last year, a city jails watchdog wrote in a report.
Dashawn Carter, 25, arrived at Rikers on May 5 after nine months in a psychiatric facility, according to a preliminary report by the city Board of Correction obtained by the Daily News through a Freedom of Information request. Rikers officials’ failures cited in the report even include Carter’s cell, which had bars on a window. Carter wrapped a sheet to the bars and hanged himself on May 7.
“Mr. Carter hung himself from a window bar. Why wasn’t this identified as a suicide risk?” the report inquired.
During previous stints at the jail, Carter had a “mental health designation,” meaning he was an inmate with mental illness. For reasons that are unclear, he did not have that designation during his final stay at the jail, according to the report. The board demanded to know whether the agency that handles inmates’ medical treatment, Correctional Health Services, was aware a judge had recommended Carter be placed on suicide watch just last year.
The apparent oversight alarmed attorney Kevin Sylvan, who represented Carter.
“That’s hard to understand, and it suggests that people, in a lot of ways and in a lot of places, just aren’t doing the job,” said Sylvan.
The Board of Correction report said it was unclear whether Carter received any medication or mental health services at Rikers after being arrested for assault.
He died at the Anna M. Kross Center — the 20th person to have died in the city jails since 2021.
Sylvan alleged that other factors also contributed to Carter’s death.
“I later learned he had not been given the opportunity to call his family, and if he feels blockaded and he sees barricades, it may influence him,” Sylvan said. “It’s not unreasonable to conclude he’s thinking he’s all alone and there’s nobody on his side.”
The report says two inmates were the first ones to try to revive Carter. The Board of Correction highlighted a similar pattern in a report last week examining the deaths of three other Rikers detainees this year.
One of the inmates said Carter was “stiff” by the time detainees found him. Information about where staff was at that time was redacted from the report, but Carter’s cell was the furthest from a floor correction officer’s post.
The report also noted that Carter was frequently moved from one jail unit to another — a phenomenon known by some detainees as “the world tour.”
In a previous stint from Oct. 2, 2019, to Nov. 30, 2020, Carter was shuttled around 43 times in six different jails, according to the report. After he returned to Rikers on May 5, he was moved six times in just 48 hours.
“Certainly, it makes someone think that their life is a tossaround, that they are not given a chance for any kind of stability,” Sylvan said. “Detention is one thing, but unreasonable movement is unacceptable.”
The board has cited a series of breakdowns that contributed to the deaths of the three other inmates this year. Tarz Youngblood, 38, overdosed from fentanyl and heroin on Feb. 27, the city medical examiner concluded.
George Pagan, 49, died of sepsis linked to substance abuse on March 17, the medical examiner concluded. Herman Diaz, 52, died from choking on an orange one day later.
In each of the three cases, correction staff either was not doing required rounds or simply was absent from the units when the detainees went into medical distress, according to the board.
Carter would have had a court date on Wednesday.