NY Post
The advocacy group Freedom Agenda said Nieves bled to death while corrections officers and a captain watched. 'While Mayor [Eric] Adams was publicly questioning whether we should or could send less people to jail, a man with serious mental illness was clinging to life after guards ignored his suicide attempt,' the group’s co-director, Darren Mack, said.AM NY
Monday’s death prompted stern reaction from the Freedom Agenda, a criminal justice advocacy group calling for Rikers Island’s closure. Tamara Carter, whose son Brandon Rodriguez died on Rikers Island last year, excoriated the Corrections Department for the latest fatality.Daily Eagle
Darren Mack, the co-director of [UJC's] Freedom Agenda, said closing and transferring facilities would be a win for everyone involved, pointing to the potential for correction officers to not be stretched as thinly and, in turn, enable detainees to have better access to medical services and programming....“We hope this mayor will follow the law that's been established by the Renewable Rikers Act,” he added. “At this moment this administration is operating outside of the law… and I think this administration needs to take the next step, which is transfers.”Gothamist
“Detainee Brandon Rodriguez [son of Freedom Agenda member Tamara Carter] died by suicide in such a shower last year, and people can be held inside these stalls for as long as a day, according to NBC New York.”AM NY
“What do judges and prosecutors have to say to the thousands of New Yorkers who are terrified that their loved one will be the next to die on Rikers?” said Darren Mack, Co-Director of Freedom Agenda.“NY1
"Last year, 16 people passed away in the city’s jail system, including 25-year-old Brandon Rodriguez, who died by suicide. In a recent interview, Rodriguez’ mother, [UJC Freedom Agenda member] Tamara Carter, told NY1 she believed her son was “broken by being in there.”NBC NY
"[UJC Freedom Agenda member] Tamara Carter’s son, Brandon Rodriguez, 25, committed suicide last year while locked inside a decontamination shower. She has also filed notice she intends to sue. 'I can’t imagine what my son went through,” Carter said."AM NY
“It’s supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not innocent until found dead in a cell on Rikers,” Brian Carmichael of UJC's Freedom Agenda said.NY1
"Last August, [Tamara] Carter [a UJC Freedom Agenda member] lost her son on Rikers Island....Brandon Rodriguez was 25 years old when he took his own life in an isolated shower pen."AM NY
“What DOC and the courts are failing to admit is that we are in a human rights emergency. The chronic staff absenteeism continues while DA’s and judges are unnecessarily sending people to a potential death sentence. New York City’s communities need accountability, decarceration, and ultimately closure of the jails,” [UJC's] Freedom Agenda Co-Director Darren Mack said in a statement.© 2024 Urban Justice Center | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
