As calls mounted for a federal court takeover of the Rikers Island jail system in New York City, what happened to Michael Nieves stood out as a case study in that system’s dysfunction.
Mr. Nieves, 40, was being held in the troubled jails on arson and other charges — his trial date repeatedly delayed by the pandemic and a series of mental health assessments — when he used a shaving razor to cut himself near the jugular vein and bled out on the floor as jail staff members waited for medical assistance.
The fatal episode was foreshadowed by other incidents in his recent past. While being held in the Bellevue Hospital Prison ward, Mr. Nieves, who had schizophrenia, had used another shaving razor to cut a gash in his neck — surviving only after emergency surgery. And he had been placed on suicide watch just months before he died, after he was heard saying he no longer wanted to live.
New York Times reporters filed a freedom of information request for video of Mr. Nieves’s death and other cases of preventable harm in the jails, seeking to learn more about how jail staff members responded during the incidents. The Times then sued the city to force compliance with the state’s open records law. The city provided the videos three years later, with the faces of detainees blurred and some information redacted.
Made public here for the first time, they offer a window into a jail system in the grips of crisis.
Mr. Nieves was one of 19 Rikers Island detainees who died by suicide, overdose or medical emergency in 2022, with most of the deaths deemed preventable by oversight officials.
A city medical examiner found that the officers’ inaction contributed to Mr. Nieves’s death, but that he could have died even if he had immediately received emergency aid. The State attorney general’s office declined to charge the officers, noting in a report that the correction department’s policy on tending to severely bleeding inmates was unclear. Three years later, the department is building out a new “medical emergencies” curriculum, a spokesman said.
The deaths were part of a larger pattern of dysfunction on Rikers Island in recent years. A Times investigation in 2021 found that decades of city mismanagement had given rise to rampant violence and disorder there.
Thousands of guards had failed to show up to work, with some abusing a generous sick leave policy to do so, leaving gang members in control of some housing areas and detainees to languish without food or medical care.
Still, city officials under Mayor Eric Adams had fiercely resisted the calls for an outside takeover. But in May, a federal judge ordered that the jails should be taken out of the city’s hands and placed in receivership, an extraordinary step that will put an independent official in charge of instituting reforms.
Dr. Robert Cohen, until recently the longest-serving member of the city watchdog agency that monitors the jail system, said that Rikers had reached a breaking point.
“There has reached a level of dysfunction on Rikers Island that is being recognized,” said Dr. Cohen, who resigned from the city Board of Correction earlier this month. “People may need to be separated from society for some period of time, but they shouldn’t be sent to a place where they could die unnecessarily.”
Jan Ransom is an investigative reporter for The Times focusing on the criminal justice system, law enforcement and incarceration in New York.
Sarah Kerr is a Times senior video journalist covering news and investigations.
Caroline Kim is a Times senior video editor covering news, investigations and culture.
Malachy Browne is enterprise director of the Visual Investigations team at The Times. He was a member of teams awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2020 and 2023.
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