Cambria Heights mother worries for son on Rikers
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Marcia Bryson, a Cambria Heights woman, said her son, who is incarcerated on Rikers Island, has not received medical attention despite experiencing chest pains, a cough and seizures. AP photo by Bebeto Matthews
By Jacob Kaye
Marcia Bryson has been advocating for her son his entire life – but that advocacy has become more and more dire in recent years.
Bryson’s son, whose name is being withheld for fear of reprisal, has been incarcerated on Rikers Island for nearly three years. Held for two 2018 murders in Queens he says he did not commit, his case has yet to make it to trial. Instead, he’s waiting for his day in court inside Rikers.
Currently housed inside the Anna M. Kross Center, a facility that houses incarcerated men on the island, he’s recounted to his mother in their nearly daily phone calls the quickly deteriorating conditions in the jail over the past year.
The Cambria Heights mother says her son suffers from asthma and stress induced seizures. In recent days, he’s developed chest pains and a persistent cough and has been denied medical treatment inside the jail facility, she said. Despite the symptoms, she said he was not tested for COVID-19. On Tuesday night, he had a seizure and has not yet been able to speak to a doctor about it.
Seeing Rikers Island on the news nearly every day and hearing first hand from her son about the increases in violence and lack of safety protocols inside the troubled jail complex, Bryson’s worry has reached an all-time high. Without medical attention, she fears her son may become the 13th person to die while in custody on Rikers Island this year.
“It's getting crucial, it's getting ridiculous,” Bryson said. “I really don't want him to be a victim. I want them to give him his day in court – alive.”
Bryon’s son is hardly the only incarcerated person that has had trouble accessing medical care in recent months inside Rikers.
In September, Isaabdul Karim became the 11th person to die on Rikers Island. Prior to his death, Karim, who used a wheelchair, complained of chest pains, according to his attorneys at the Legal Aid Society. He was held in an intake cell for over a week after his arrest, where he contracted COVID-19.
Karim was unconscious and unresponsive when he was taken to medical staff who performed CPR before pronouncing him dead, according to the Department of Correction. Karim’s official cause of death has yet to be determined.
Medical services inside the jail complex are provided by Correctional Health Services, a division of NYC Health + Hospitals and separate from DOC.
CHS and DOC claim that a shortage of correction officers – who are tasked with transporting incarcerated people to medical professionals – has led to a slow down of operations.
There was a 205 percent increase of correctional officers out sick in August of this year when compared to August 2020, and a 320 percent increase of officers going AWOL in the same time period, according to the DOC.
“CHS works with DOC to provide prioritized health care despite DOC staffing shortages,” a CHS spokesperson told the Eagle.
The DOC recently began offering incentives to officers in an effort to boost its staffing numbers. It also reopened the formerly shuttered Eric M. Taylor Center, which includes two clinics and a housing unit. The agency says the reopened facility allows for “better space and patient flow for Correctional Health Services' clinical operations, including intake and follow-up care.”
“Staffing challenges have disrupted many of our normal operations and we’re working furiously to address them,” a DOC spokesperson told the Eagle. “In September, City Hall and the Department of Correction introduced the Emergency Rikers Relief Plan that includes various strategies to improve operations in our facilities.”
“We are committed to improving conditions to ensure the wellbeing of our personnel and individuals in our care,” the spokesperson added.
Last month, Bryson’s son told the Eagle that the staffing shortage has caused other disruptions. Programming, including recreation time, has been cut short, laundry services and personal grooming appointments have been hard to come by and without enough staff to oversee visitation rooms, video conferences and in-person meetings with loved ones have become harder to book.
“It wears and tears you, it's made to break your spirit completely,” the detainee said. “This is the mental state of most inmates, it's just gone. It’s just like being kidnapped, you just start believing that this is the way things should be.”
“That's that's all you know – you literally forget what humanity is, and you fall to the conditions of the present and what that results in is that you're always hostile, you're always defensive, you're always terrified,” he added.
Bryson said that with her concerns continuing to mount, she’s reached out to various elected officials and leaders in Queens. One of the first people she reached out to was City Councilmember I. Daneek Miller.
Miller said his office “elevated his family's concerns to the Department of Correction and NYC H+H Correctional Health Services” in 2019.
“Frankly, we are baffled at the fact that he's still on Rikers Island and remain committed to assisting where appropriate," Miller told the Eagle.
But Bryson said of the many electeds she’s reached out to, few have been able to offer help and in some cases, don’t listen to her concerns.
“I'm tired of reaching out to so many people,” she said. “As I said to an elected official, ‘Just listen to me about what mine is going through and listen to the people who have been reaching out because if you do, those [12] guys probably would not have lost their lives.’”
