Brother of Rikers Island suicide victim slams NYC Correction Department

Before Dashawn Carter took his own life last year in a city jail, Correction Department officials knew he’d long struggled with mental illness and suicidal thoughts. But they still housed him in the jail’s general population, where he was unlikely to get the care he needed.

Carter, 24, was arrested in February 2021 for a random assault on someone on the Lower East Side. After being sent for a stint in an upstate psychiatric hospital he returned to Rikers Island May 5, 2022 .

Two days later he was left in his cell for 12 hours with no checks by officers, alleges a lawsuit filed by his brother Christopher Carter.

That afternoon, a detainee spotted Dashawn Carter hanging by a makeshift noose from a window and alerted staff, the lawsuit claims. But the officers did not immediately render aid and he was pronounced dead 15 minutes later, according to the suit.

In his hands, Dashawn Carter clutched a set of rosary beads he often carried.

“My brother suffered from mental illness and the city knew of this,” said Christopher Carter, who filed his lawsuit Friday. Yet Correction Department staff “still failed to watch over him and give him the necessary help that he needed while incarcerated.”

“If the correctional officers … took time to take him to his necessary appointments and checked on him as they were supposed to, Dashawn would still be here today.”

Dashawn Carter’s suicide — one of 26 jail deaths since Mayor Adams took office in 2022 — drives home the high stakes underlying the hearing later this week before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain.

Swain is slated to hear arguments over whether the city should be held in contempt for failing to fix myriad problems in city jails — and whether to begin the process of putting the system in the hands of a federal receiver.

In the past two weeks, the dynamic in the case has changed sharply. After determining the city withheld information on two jail deaths and three serious incidents in June, federal monitors Steve Martin and Anna Friedberg turned from tepid support of the city’s plan to fix jail dysfunction to outright criticism.

On July 10, they urged Swain to begin contempt proceedings against the city — a step toward a federal takeover. Their reports noted that violence and uses of force in the jails are substantially worse than they were eight years ago.

On July 17, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said he would move for receivership, declaring that the federal government “cannot wait any longer” for progress.

The moves left the Adams administration isolated in its resistance to a federal takeover.

On Thursday, the 125-year-old Citizens Union — a good-government organization that historically has staunchly supported home rule — sent a letter to Swain backing a takeover.

“The situation in the city jails has gotten worse by nearly every metric,” Citizens Union wrote. “We believe city administrators lack the administrative and legislative tools or the political leverage and will to use them. … A different kind of authority is needed there to save lives.”

Adding to this complexity is the progress of the Close Rikers plan, which seems to be moving forward but is already stacked with delays and unanswered questions, according to observers and elected officials.

Adding to the complexity of any path forward, the city is required by law to shut down Rikers Island by 2027 in favor of a new jail in each borough except Staten Island with a total cap of 3,300 beds.

But after falling below 4,000 detainees during the pandemic, the city jail population has risen to 6,144 as of Wednesday, data shows. That’s nearly twice the number of detainees the city is planning to house in its new jails.

A new Brooklyn jail, slated to be completed first, won’t be ready until at least 2029, two years after the legally mandated deadline. Last week, the city abruptly announced the Brooklyn jail would have 1,040 beds instead of the originally planned 886.

The move took Brooklyn residents by surprise, leading Council Member Lincoln Restler to chide Mayor Adams’ administration for lack of transparency.

“We’ve heard literally nothing from any of the criminal justice policy decision-makers in just about a year, despite constantly asking for updates,” he said.

Brooklyn businessman Sharad Kohli, a member of an advisory committee on the Brooklyn jail, told The News he felt blindsided by the sudden increase in beds.

“We supported the new jail, and it was clearly stated there would be 886 beds,” he said. “And that was reversed with no reason given. The process is a farce.”

Mayoral spokesman Charles Lutvak said the uptick in Brooklyn beds reflected an “honest accounting” of the reality on the ground but no bed increase is currently contemplated for the sites in Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. He said Mayor Adams’ administration is attempting to follow the law with as little disruption to neighborhoods as possible.

“With the city’s current jail population about twice the size of the system’s capacity under the borough-based jails plan, it has become painfully clear that the plan approved under the last administration leaves open serious questions about the city’s ability to keep New Yorkers safe,” he said.

At the Queens site, a parking garage and community center are mostly complete and Borough President Donovan Richards said he was “encouraged by the progress.”

In Manhattan’s Chinatown, near the proposed site of that borough’s jail, questions linger less over concerns about noise, health effects and economic impact, said state Sen. Brian Kavanagh and Assembywoman Grace Lee, both Democrats.

“We all recognize and acknowledge that Rikers is inhumane and we understand the path the city is taking,” Leesaid. “We don’t have a lot of transparency as to what the jail will look like.”

The estimated completion dates for the Queens, Manhattan and Bronx jails remains unclear. Detainees and staff will continue to work in crumbling facilities at Rikers Island and elsewhere for an indefinite period, and the city will have little incentive to make significant investment in the existing structures.

Michael Jacobson, a former correction commissioner, pointed out that at just over 6,000, the current population at Rikers and other jails is far lower than the nearly 20,000 detainees the city held in the 1990s. The staff ratio is also better per detainee — one officer to one detainee versus one officer for every two detainees in the 1990s.

“The population is not different, not more difficult. It’s all about internal management and leadership capacity,” he said at a forum sponsored by the journal Vital City on Wednesday.

The average length of stay in the jails is 120 days versus 30 to 50 days in Jacobson’s era.

“You can’t keep people in jail for months and years and not expect to see huge problems,” the John Jay College professor said. “It’s a complete breakdown of speedy disposition and an institutional miscarriage of justice.”

Receivership would likely face legal challenges from the city and unions and have to clear federal law which requires every avenue to be exhausted before such a remedy is allowed.

For Christopher Carter, the loss of the brother he knew as “Peanut” is as present as ever 15 months later.

“My brother’s death affected me in ways I didn’t know imaginable,” he said. “(It is) heartbreaking to learn of his time there and ultimately learn that his death could have been avoided altogether.”

The family’s lawyer, David Kline, argues Dashawn Carter’s death was “foreseeable and preventable.”

“Dashawn Carter is dead because the City of New York has intentionally turned a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis on Rikers Island,” Kline said. “Tragically, cases like Dashawn Carter’s have become routine.”

A city Law Department spokesman declined to comment on Christopher Carter’s lawsuit.

With Thomas Tracy