Rikers Island defenders charged with misconduct in teen suicide attempt

For nearly eight minutes, more than half a dozen New York City Corrections Department employees stood by as an 18-year-old inmate named Nicholas Feliciano tried to hang himself in the Rikers Island cell, not intervening even as he did. waved his hand and kept going.

When officers finally beat Mr. Feliciano on November 27, 2019, they let his limp body fall to the floor.

For the next more than three years, when Mr. Feliciano with severe brain damage received round-the-clock care at Bellevue Hospital, the guards remained on modified duty, allowed to receive their wages for non-employment. request contact with detainees. . But on Monday, the Bronx district attorney filed felony charges against four of the jailers.

This arrest marks a rare case in which Darcel D. Clark, the Bronx district attorney who has jurisdiction over Rikers Island, has brought criminal charges against the corrections officers who acted. This has resulted in serious harm to the detainee.

Even though the behavior and decisions of prison staff have been brought up for questioning in a number of deaths and injuries of detainees over the past two years, including in eight other suicides As of 2021, the charges stemming from Mr. Feliciano’s case are the first to be brought by Ms. Clark against correctional officials since 2019.

Other prosecutors have been quicker to bring charges as conditions in the Rikers Island prison complex have worsened in recent years, with hundreds of officers failing to show up for work and rates increased rates of violence and neglect.

In April, the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York charged two adjusters with drug trafficking and taking bribes from gangs, and in November 2020, the Manhattan district attorney accused a captain corrects mistakes with negligent homicide criminals after the captain allowed a man to hang himself in a Manhattan cell for 15 minutes and prevented other bodyguards from rescuing him. Those cases are pending.

A spokesman for the Bronx district attorney’s office said that cases against the guards took nearly three years to prosecute because the city’s Bureau of Investigation brought them before federal prosecutors before bringing them in. to Miss Clark’s office.

Formally charged with misconduct and reckless endangerment Monday were the repair squad captain, Terry Henry, 37, and officers Kenneth Hood, 35, Daniel Fullerton, 27, and Mark Wilson , 46 years old. All four men pleaded not guilty and were released on bail without bail. Their lawyers declined to comment.

Mr. Feliciano’s family welcomed the charges against the officers on Monday but said they were too slow to bring them.

“These officers should have been prosecuted long ago instead of still working on Rikers Island while Nicholas was still in the hospital trying to live,” Feliciano’s grandmother, Madeline Feliciano, said in an interview. on Sunday. “That’s hurt. It’s very hurt. It was horrible to see him like that because of someone’s negligence. “

The officers will return to court on September 15. Two of them, Mr. Fullerton and Mr. Wilson, resigned from the Department of Corrections in February. Mr Hood is expected to be suspended. Mr Henry was being prepared to return to work on modified duty after being sorted out on Monday, a Department of Corrections official said.

At least four other guards were present when Mr. Feliciano attempted to hang himself, city records show, but no one had been charged as of Monday. All but one are still working on Riker.

Noting that the incident happened years ago, Benny Boscio, president of the Benevolent Association of Correction Officers, called Monday’s allegations “more evidence that this incident was motivated by politics rather than facts”.

Mr. Feliciano’s case received widespread attention in 2019 after a Investigation of the New York Times revealed the flaws of the corrections officers who responded to his suicide attempt.

Mr. Feliciano has struggled with mental illness and his suicidal tendencies have been well documented in previous stays at the city’s juvenile centers, health care units mental health and on Rikers Island, where he spent weeks monitoring suicide and telling staff about his history of depression and psychosis. hospitalize.

However, paramedics did not mark Mr. Feliciano as a suicide risk when he was ordered to be detained at the Rikers complex on parole in November 2019. Instead, they detained him. kept him from the general public at the George R. Vierno Center, in a housing complex known to be particularly rife with gang violence.

After a scuffle on November 27, a bloody Feliciano was placed into a reception pen. Hours later, still in his cell awaiting medical attention, Feliciano tried to hang himself with a sweater from a U-shaped piece of metal in the ceiling above the toilet. Two people with knowledge of the incident said the ceiling fixing plate was believed to have been removed after another detainee used it to attempt suicide six days earlier.

In seven minutes and 51 seconds, seven correctional officers, a captain and two paramedics passed by either peeking into Mr. Feliciano’s cell or watching him from a guard post. But none of them interfered, surveillance video showed.

Alfonso Martinez, Feliciano’s friend, said he was nearby, on a mountain with two paramedics, when he saw his friend hanging and begging for help. By the time Mr. Feliciano was slashed, he was severely injured. He remained in a coma and was on life support for several weeks.

Soon after, three officers and a corrections captain were suspended for 30 days without pay for not helping Mr. Feliciano.

Mr. Henry, the captain who ignored Mr. Feliciano when he was hanged, was disciplined in a similar case in 2015, when, as a corrections officer, he failed to provide assistance. medical for a man complaining of chest pain like him. According to the family complaint, he was gasping for air and convulsed on the floor. The man died and the city settled the lawsuit for $1.59 million.

However, Mr Henry was still promoted to captain, and in 2019, in the months before Mr Feliciano’s attempt to hang him, he received two more complaints of negligence, personnel records show .

Correction Council, a prison oversight board, said in a report published last year that many of the red flags raised by Mr. Feliciano’s case not only persisted in Rikers but became more apparent as conditions there worsened.

Feliciano’s attorney, David B. Rankin, who represents more than two dozen other people who were incarcerated and whose families died or were seriously injured at Rikers, said city officials should quickly shut it down. troublesome complex.

Mr Rankin said: “It is frustrating to witness the same murder that literally neglects and injures this person.

The death toll in the prison system has risen over the past two years as city officials struggle to restore order. So far in 2022, 11 people have died after being held in the city’s prison, including two by suicide. Last year, 16 people died, including six by suicide.

In response to the increasingly severe prison disorder, the United States attorney in Manhattan expressed concern about conditions at Rikers, where some detainees have been deprived of food and medical care, and in April raised the prospect of a federal court takeover.

Since 2020, cases of self-harm among incarcerated people have also increased, averaging 1,500 a year with about 9% of cases resulting in serious injury.

A federal judge has given the Department of Corrections until October to indicate improvement or risk losing control of the prison complex to an independent warden. City officials have pledged to turn the facility around.

Mr. Feliciano will remain in Bellevue’s brain injury unit, where he uses a walker to get around. He cannot feed, brush his teeth, or dress himself without help. Doctors have told Mr. Feliciano’s family that his brain was damaged by lack of oxygen during the suicide attempt and that he probably never will.

Although Mr. Feliciano can no longer converse normally, he has recently learned to say “I love you”, his grandmother said.

Mr. Feliciano’s family struggled to find a permanent place to live while he was in care. Mr. Rankin said his medical costs would run into the tens of millions of dollars. The family has filed two lawsuits in state and federal courts. Both are pending.

“Our lives are not the same,” Feliciano said. “I pray to God some justice is done on behalf of Nicholas.”