Rikers detainee becomes seventh person to die in DOC custody this year
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For the seventh time this year, a person in Department of Correction custody died. Curtis Davis, a Rikers Island detainee, died in the notorious jail complex on Sunday, July 23, 2023. AP file photo by Bebeto Matthews
By Jacob Kaye
For the fourth time in as many weeks and for the seventh time this year, a man in the custody of the city’s Department of Correction has died.
The embattled agency said over the weekend that a DOC staff member found 44-year-old Rikers Island detainee Curtis Davis unresponsive around 5 a.m. on Sunday, July 23.
Davis, who was being detained in a cell inside the George R. Vierno Center, was given medical care after being found and before being pronounced dead around 5:40 a.m., according to the DOC.
Davis’ cause of death is unknown and is currently under investigation, according to the agency.
Davis, the 26th detainee to die since Mayor Eric Adams took office, had been sent to Rikers on June 1 after being charged with assault with intent to seriously injure with a weapon. He was being held on a $30,000 bond.
According to a DOC spokesperson, an assistant deputy warden and two correctional officers were suspended for procedural violations committed in connection with Davis’ death. The spokesperson did not specify what types of violations were committed.
Davis’ death is only the latest tragedy in a string of tragedies seen on Rikers Island over the past several weeks, months and years.
Last week, 47-year-old William Johnstone was found unresponsive in the cell he was being held in on Rikers Island. After reportedly being given several doses of Narcan and EpiPen, Johnstone was pronounced dead.
On July 6, 60-year-old Rickey Howell died of a terminal illness while in DOC custody and while being held at Bellevue Hospital. Howell, who was sent to Rikers in September 2022, entered DOC after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Throughout his legal saga and after his death, his attorneys with the Legal Aid Society condemned the prosecutors and the judge who insisted on Howell’s incarceration.
“This stunning lack of compassion and empathy brandished by Staten Island judges and prosecutors throughout this case is an all too common punitive quality of the criminal legal system that refuses to recognize our clients as human beings,” they said in a statement at the time.
Just two days before Howell’s death on July 4, 40-year-old Felix Taveras died after experiencing a “medical condition,” while he was detained at the Anna M. Kross Correctional Facility on Rikers Island.
Though Taveras’ death remains under investigation, the Daily News reported at the time that Taveras was believed to have died of an overdose. After complaining of chest pain, Taveras was taken to a medical facility on the island where he experienced a seizure and was given Narcan, according to the outlet.
Like Davis’ death over the weekend, several DOC officers were suspended in relation to Taveras’ death.
Marvin Pines, a 65-year-old, became the first person to die in the jail complex this year after suffering a seizure while incarcerated in February.
His death led to the suspension of seven officers who the Board of Correction said failed to check on Pines during the emergency.
In May, Rubu Zhao, a 52-year-old, died after allegedly jumping from the second story of a mental health unit on Rikers. In the weeks after Zhao’s death, Steve Martin, the federal monitor appointed by a court to oversee conditions on Rikers, said that the man’s death was not properly reported.
Martin made the same accusations, and more, about the death of Joshua Valles, a 31-year-old detainee who also died in May.
Originally, the DOC said that Valles had suffered a heart attack while being held on Rikers Island on May 20, and that he later died at Elmhurst Hospital on May 29. The embattled agency denied any wrongdoing in Valles’ death. But according to a letter penned by Martin several days after the 31-year-old’s death, an autopsy found that Valles died of an apparent skull fracture.
The alleged failures and discrepancies in reporting the deaths of Zhao and Valles – as well as several other incidents that left three detainees seriously injured – appeared to be the first in a line of recent offenses committed by the DOC, Commissioner Louis Molina and the Adams administration as a whole, according to Martin, a federal judge, federal prosecutors, lawmakers and advocates.
Earlier this month, Martin told federal Judge Laura T. Swain, who oversees the ongoing civil rights case Nunez v. the City of New York, that he believes the city should be held in contempt of court for failing to create safer conditions for detainees and staffers since the start of the consent judgment in the case in 2015.
Martin’s request was seen by some observers as the first step toward the consideration of a federal receivership on Rikers Island. A receivership, which Swain said she’d consider earlier this year, is a judicial order that could see the city stripped of its power to manage Rikers Island and have it handed over to a court-appointed authority.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams joined a growing chorus of elected officials, activists and public defense firms who say they would support a federal receivership earlier this month. In a letter to Swain, Williams said that his office would soon be formally asking her to consider putting Rikers Island into a receivership.
Behind Williams’ call is what he said is a lack of change in the violent conditions in Rikers Island, where over three dozen people have died in the past two and a half years.
“Rikers Island has been in crisis for years,” Williams said last week in a statement. “This is a collective failure with deep roots, spanning multiple mayoral administrations and DOC commissioners.”
“But after eight years of trying every tool in the toolkit, we cannot wait any longer for substantial progress to materialize,” Williams added. “That is why my office will seek a court-appointed receiver to address the conditions on Rikers Island.”
Both the mayor and DOC commissioner have expressed their vehement opposition to receivership, which was first floated in a court a year ago.
Speaking at an unrelated press conference on Monday, Adams boasted about both his and Molina’s management of the jail complex. As he did last week when Williams called for a receiver, Adams pointed to an April report from the federal monitor that claimed that the DOC had made progress through the implementation of its “action plan” to improve conditions on Rikers. The report, which was filed before six of the seven detainee deaths this year, also noted several dangerous conditions in the jail complex that the DOC was struggling to correct.
“That entire population has been dysfunctional for decades,” Adams said on Monday. “I came in, this administration and Commissioner Molina, the special monitor and their team wrote a report in April that stated that we were moving in the right direction – that's all I know. And I want to continue to move in the right direction.”
“I'm the right person to fix [Rikers],” he added. “We had a hiccup in June when he saw five issues that should have been reported and [the monitor] wanted us to be held in contempt for those five issues. [The monitor] didn't call for receivership in that report, the federal government made a decision that they're going to do so and I respect the decision. No matter what happens, I'm going to continue to fix [Rikers], I know I can fix Rikers.”
Of Davis’ death, Adams said: “Every death should be taken seriously and every death is a tragedy.”
