Man arrested in Queens dies on Rikers
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Segundo Guallpa died by apparent suicide while incarcerated at Rikers Island on Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. Photo via BOC via FOIL request
By Jacob Kaye
A man being held on Rikers Island died by apparent suicide early Monday morning, the New York City Department of Correction announced this week.
Segundo Guallpa, who was incarcerated at the North Infirmary Command on Rikers Island, was found dead by a correctional officer who walked by Guallpa’s cell around 1:30 a.m., on Aug. 30, according to the DOC.
The officer found Guallpa, 57, to be unresponsive and called for medical staff, who pronounced the man dead a short time later, according to the agency.
“This is a terrible tragedy,” DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi said in a statement. “We have been in contact with Mr. Guallpa’s next of kin and extended our deep condolences. We are providing assistance to our fellow law enforcement and oversight agencies as we conduct a full investigation.”
Guallpa was sent to Rikers on Aug. 19 after being arrested and charged with 2nd degree strangulation in Queens County, according to the DOC. He was being held on a $7,500 bond.
While his death is a suspected suicide, the medical examiner’s invesitgation is pending.
Guallpa is the fifth person to die while in custody in the city’s jails in the past nine months.
On Aug. 10, Brandon Rodriguez, 25, was found dead in his cell by correctional officers, according to Gothamist/WNYC. Rodriguez, who had also been arrested and charged with strangulation, was being held in jail on a $3,000 cash bail.
Two men, Thomas Braunson III, 35, and Richard Blake, 45, both died on Rikers Island in April, according to reporting by THE CITY.
Braunson was being held on bail for a shoplifting charge and Blake was being held on bail for a minor drug charge.
Melania Brown, whose sister Layleen Polanco died while being held in solitary on Rikers Island in 2019, said that she and her family were “devastated and outraged that New York City’s jails have killed another New Yorker.”
“We are so heartbroken for the crushing loss of Segundo Guallpa and extend our deepest condolences for all who knew and loved him,” Brown said in a statement. “There are no words to match the scale of this horror. Segundo’s death is part of an explosion of deaths in city jails in recent months, following years and decades of deadly governmental abuse and neglect.”
“Since the City can’t even keep people alive or provide the most basic human necessities, the Mayor, judges, and District Attorneys have a moral obligation to immediately release everyone in the City jails and not send one more person to face this threat of death,” Brown added.
The DOC notified the media of Guallpa’s death Monday, a change in departmental policy.
The DOC, on its own initiative, will notify local media outlets about every death of an incarcerated person in their custody, according to a department spokesperson.
Last week, the federal monitor appointed to oversee Rikers Island in 2015, filed a letter in federal court detailing deteriorating conditions in the city’s notorious jail.
Among the issues of concern listed by the monitor Steve J. Martin was the increase in in-custody suicides.
“The Department’s response to detainee self-harm incidents continues to be of great concern to the Monitoring Team,” Martin’s letter read. “The Monitoring Team is aware of at least four presumed in-custody suicides and other troubling self-harm incidents involving detainees since December 2020, with most, if not all cases, raising questions about the adequacy of staff’s response to detainees who are at risk of self-harm.”
Martin laid the blame for the uptick in suicides with the DOC’s handling of its correctional officers.
A significant number of correctional officers have not been showing up for work throughout the pandemic, according to the DOC.
Though it employs 8,800 uniformed staff members, around 1,600 were on sick leave at the end of last July, another 1,400 were being medically monitored and unable to work with incarcerated people and 2,200 didn’t show up for shifts, according to the agency.
In his letter, Martin also said that the DOC’s staffing issues have been exacerbated by poor assignments.
In the wake of the staff shortage, the federal monitor said that the DOC’s processes for assigning officers to posts throughout the city’s jails is “disorganized” and “convoluted.”
“The Department’s deployment and management of staff assignments to a specific post
within a Facility is convoluted and is the result of decades of mismanagement,” the letter said. “The Department, quite simply, cannot address the serious security and safety issues raised herein without effectively and appropriately deploying its staff within the Facilities and the staffing analysis currently being conducted will provide the necessary framework to address the current staffing management failures.”
To mitigate the issue, Martin said a private and independent analyst had been hired to evaluate the system used to assign officers to posts. The evaluation began earlier this summer.
