A man who was being held in a Manhattan police precinct station house on Friday was found unconscious and was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, according to a city official. He is at least the fourth detainee in city custody to die in a little over a week.
The Police Department has not released the man’s name, but the official and a family friend identified him as Musa Cetin, 29. The family friend said he was a Turkish-born pedicab driver.
The deaths comes as legal and advocacy groups have been critical of what they call the city’s failure to provide adequate care for detainees with potential physical or psychological problems, particularly at Rikers Island, where two detainees died in recent days.
The city Correction Department has provided few details about those deaths, and it said it was investigating the circumstances. The two other men had been in police custody — Mr. Cetin in a holding cell at the Midtown South Precinct station house and the other man, Christopher Nieves, 46, in a holding cell at a Brooklyn courthouse. The Police Department said its force investigation division was looking into both incidents.
The police said Mr. Cetin was found unconscious and unresponsive at about 8:30 p.m. Friday inside the station house at 357 West 35th Street, and that lifesaving measures were begun immediately. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital in critical condition, the department said.
The police told family members that Mr. Cetin had hanged himself in the cell, a law enforcement official said. Some family members and friends were skeptical of that account.
The police did not respond to a question about why Mr. Cetin had been arrested and held Friday night.
One of the detainees who died at the Rikers jail, Jimmy Avila, had been there for less than 24 hours, according to the Legal Aid Society. The group had represented him and Ardit Billa, 29, the other Rikers detainee who died in custody recently. Legal Aid has been critical of how the Correction Department treated the men.
Redmond Haskins, a spokesman for Legal Aid, said in an interview on Sunday that Mr. Avila was at least the 13th person to die in city custody or shortly after being released. That would make Mr. Cetin at least the 14th detainee to die in city custody.
Mr. Avila struggled with serious mental health issues, Legal Aid said in a news release on Sunday, adding that, given his condition, he should have been flagged immediately at intake and kept under close watch.
“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 news release said.
Liz Garcia, a City Hall spokeswoman, would not comment on specifics of Mr. Avila’s case but said in a statement that there was 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.”
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
William K. Rashbaum is a Times reporter covering municipal and political corruption, the courts and broader law enforcement topics in New York.
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