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Local politicians and organizations respond to the fifth death of an inmate on Rikers Island this year

Activist organizations and local elected officials are responding to the recent death of a Rikers Island inmate at a local hospital.

According to the Department of Corrections, a person in custody was confirmed dead at a Queens hospital on Tuesday morning.

The inmate, 63-year-old Anthony Jordan, was transported from the North Infirmary Command on Rikers Island to Mount Sinai Hospital shortly before 5:30 a.m. He was pronounced dead shortly before 6:30 a.m.

The Department of Correction states, among other things:

“The department has notified the federal supervisor, the Attorney General's Office, the State Commission on Corrections, the Investigative Division, the Board of Corrections, the District Attorney and the appropriate prosecutor… As with any death of a person in custody, the department will conduct a full investigation and cooperate with all outside investigative agencies.”

#HALTsolitary campaign co-director Jerome Wright issued the following statement in part:

“This status quo must go. City and state legislators and officials must free as many people as possible from this death trap, prosecutors must stop sending people there, and finally, judges must save lives by refusing to sentence people to Rikers, where they will be tortured in solitary confinement or, worse, die.”

Crown Prosecutor Jumaane Williams issued the following statement in response to the reported death.

“Another New Yorker lost his life in municipal custody today, the fifth this year and the 33rd under this administration. This is the status quo on Rikers that the Mayor was so desperate to preserve that he refused to enforce the law banning solitary confinement and the use of prolonged isolation, and declaring a state of emergency to prevent it. There has long been a crisis at Rikers, as today's tragic loss demonstrates, but the government relies on maintaining that state of emergency rather than doing anything about it.”

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