A man being held at the Rikers Island jail complex died on Saturday afternoon, at least the third detainee to die in city custody in recent days, according to New York City correction officials.
The Correction Department, in a brief statement on Sunday, offered no details about the circumstances of the man’s death, except to say that staff members were summoned to his aid at the West Facility on Rikers and were unable to revive him.
The detainee, Jimmy Avila, had been at Rikers for less than 24 hours, according to a statement from the Legal Aid Society, which had been representing him. Legal Aid said that Mr. Avila had struggled with serious mental health issues, and that “given his condition, this should have been immediately flagged at intake” and he should have been kept under “close watch.”
A City Hall spokeswoman, Liz Garcia, declined to address the specifics of Mr. Avila’s case but said in a statement that there is a standard intake process for all detainees to determine “any mental health or medical needs.”
“The safety and well-being of every person in our custody is our top priority, and we were devastated to hear about the death of Jimmy Avila,” she said.
The Correction Department said in a statement that it would “thoroughly investigate the circumstances of this tragic event.”
Mr. Avila’s death occurred one week after another detainee, Ardit Billa, 29, was found unresponsive in his cell at the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers, and was pronounced dead.
The Correction Department said last week that it would fully investigate Mr. Billa’s death and that it had suspended three staff members while the inquiry continued. The department did not say why the staff members had been put on leave.
The two recent deaths on Rikers come as the jail complex, which has been plagued by violence and dysfunction, continues to be the focus of sharp legal and political debate. The total population of the city’s jails has grown to about 7,500. In May, about a decade after the jails fell under federal oversight in the settlement of a long-running class-action lawsuit, a judge ordered the appointment of an outside official to oversee their operations.
The official would be “empowered to take all actions necessary” to end the “ongoing violations of the constitutional rights of people in custody,” the judge, Laura Taylor Swain, wrote.
The judge set this past Friday as the deadline for the parties, among them the city and Legal Aid, to recommend to the court potential candidates for the post.
This year, according to Legal Aid, at least 13 people have died in city custody or shortly after being released. The third detainee who died in the past week was a 46-year-old man, who was found unresponsive and pronounced dead on Friday night while in police custody at Brooklyn Criminal Court.
The Police Department said its force investigation division was investigating the death of the man, who has not been identified publicly.
Mr. Avila was arraigned Friday night in the Bronx and then taken to Rikers, a Legal Aid spokesman, Redmond Haskins, said. The police said the charges against him included murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Legal Aid, in its statement on Sunday on the deaths of Mr. Avila and the two other detainees, said, “With each of these deaths, the city responds with the same boilerplate language, but conditions don’t improve, the people we represent continue to suffer and these tragic deaths continue to mount.
“The administration’s failure to act in the face of these deaths is appalling and exposes the city’s utter disregard for the safety of the people in their care,” the statement said.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
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