Layleen Polanco: New York prison guards to be disciplined over death of transgender woman at Rikers complex

Board of Correction issues scathing report detailing police failures that probably contributed to Layleen Polanco’s death

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Seventeen New York City correction officers, including a captain, will be disciplined for their roles in the death just over a year ago of a 27-year-old transgender woman at the Rikers Island jail complex, officials said Friday.

In announcing the action, mayor Bill de Blasio said the captain and three other officers had been suspended without pay immediately for their conduct in the death of the woman, Layleen Polanco, who was found unresponsive in her cell after having an epileptic seizure.

“What happened to Layleen was absolutely unacceptable and it is critical that there is accountability,” Mr de Blasio said in a statement.

The mayor’s announcement came three weeks after Darcel Clark, the Bronx district attorney, said she would not pursue criminal charges in Polanco’s death after a six-month inquiry. The city’s Department of Investigation also declined to bring charges.

But on Tuesday, the city’s Board of Correction, an oversight panel, issued a scathing report detailing a series of failures that it said had probably contributed to Polanco’s death, which came while she was in solitary confinement.

Among other things, the board said that rather than checking on Polanco every 15 minutes as required, Rikers staff members had ignored her for periods of 35, 41 and 57 minutes during her last hours.

Polanco’s family and their lawyer said the disciplinary charges were an important first step to ensuring accountability in her death, but they criticised the delay in punishing the officers.

“Most employers would not wait a year before trying to remedy a problem of this magnitude,” said David Shanies, a lawyer for the family.

Beyond the four suspensions, the mayor and Cynthia Brann, the city’s correction commissioner, did not specify what other punishments might be handed down or what administrative charges the other officers being disciplined would face.

But an official familiar with the matter said the charges would include failure to tour, inefficient performance and making fraudulent logbook entries.

Those who are charged will be entitled to departmental hearings and Elias Husamudeen, the president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, vowed on Friday to fight the suspensions, which he called “an egregious abuse of power”.

Noting that Ms Clark had declined to press charges, Mr Husamudeen said in a statement that his union’s members had been “thrown under the bus” and he blamed Ms Brann and “her inept managers” for Polanco’s death.

Polanco, a member of one of the most storied groups in New York City’s drag ball scene, the House of Xtravaganza, was jailed in April 2019 because she could not pay $501 (£406) in bail after being arrested on several misdemeanour charges and an outstanding bench warrant.

Before being taken to Rikers Island, she spent three days at the Bellevue Hospital, where she was prescribed anti-seizure medication, something that the correction board said the court and the correction department had been told.

After leaving the hospital, Polanco was housed in a transgender unit at the jail complex’s Rose M Singer Centre, where she told members of the medical staff about her history of seizures, officials said.

The correction board gave the following account of Polanco’s time on Rikers Island:

• She had two seizures within weeks of arriving at the jail. She was subsequently sentenced to 20 days in solitary confinement after having altercations with two inmates, although she was not immediately placed in isolation.
• By mid-May, jail staff members began to notice “radical changes” in her behaviour. She did not leave her cell for breakfast one day and refused to take her medication on another occasion.
• She was transferred to Elmhurst Hospital Centre on 15 May after she struck an officer and was deemed “highly assaultive” and in need of “a higher level of care”.
• When she returned to the jail, staff members traded emails over whether to house her in a male facility, protective custody or solitary confinement, known as punitive segregation. The correction board prohibits people “with serious mental or serious physical disabilities or conditions” from being placed in punitive segregation.
• A jail psychiatrist, noting her seizure disorder, initially refused to clear Polanco for punitive segregation. But a different mental health clinician later approved putting her there, saying her condition had “been stable”. She was placed in a 21-cell unit where officers are supposed to check on inmates every 15 minutes.
• On 7 June, the day she died and her ninth day in the unit, she had breakfast, took a shower, spent an hour in recreation, met with medical staff members and had two servings of lunch in her cell.
• Just after noon, an inmate working as an observation aide refilled Polanco’s water cup and placed it onto the cell’s meal slot. It was the last time video footage showed Polanco moving.
• At 12:51pm, an officer and a captain walked past her cell, glancing in quickly. The next check came 35 minutes later, at 1:26am, when a mental health clinician knocked on the cell door and left when there was no response.
• Over the next 20 minutes, various staff members tapped on Polanco’s cell window and looked inside about a half-dozen times without getting a response. The next check after that did not come until 2:27am, 41 minutes later.
• At 2:45am, an officer knocked on Polanco’s cell door repeatedly and looked in through the window. Officers opened the door, but they did not enter. Instead, they stood outside the cell, talking and laughing and calling out to Polanco for two minutes before leaving.
• A captain soon arrived and ordered officers to open the door to physically check on Polanco. When they did, her face was purple and blue. Jail staff members tried unsuccessfully to revive her. The chief medical examiner found that she died as a result of her epilepsy.

Ms Clark, the district attorney, said in announcing her decision not to bring charges that it was “an absolute tragedy that Ms Polanco died so young”.

Nonetheless, Ms Clark said, her office had “concluded that we would be unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any specific individual committed any specific crime”.

A spokeswoman for Ms Clark declined on Friday to comment on the disciplinary actions announced by the mayor.

In its report, the correction board found that the process used to identify and exclude inmates with mental and medical issues from isolation was “insufficient, inconsistent and potentially susceptible to undue pressure” from correction department staff members.

Polanco’s sister, Melania Brown, was among those that addressed a crowd this month at a “Brooklyn Liberation” rally that attracted thousands of people demanding justice for victims of anti-Black, anti-trans violence. Polanco’s name was among those that were invoked.

On Friday, Ms Brown said the officers involved in the case should be fired.

“All I want is justice for my sister,” she said, adding that while a nationwide movement to reform police departments had gained momentum, similar attention should be paid to correction officers.

“The system needs to be changed from the bottom up,” Ms Brown said. “What about the cops behind those walls? No one talks about them enough.”

The New York Times