Latest news with #Rikers
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Cause of first NYC jail death in 2025 revealed as drug overdose
The first person to die in a city jail in 2025 was killed by an overdose of synthetic marijuana, or 'K2,' once again highlighting the ease with which contraband enters the jails, the Daily News has learned. Ramel Powell, 38, died Feb. 19 at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center of 'acute MDMB-4en-PINACA intoxication,' the city's Medical Examiner office reported Tuesday, using the technical language for synthetic weed. The office classified his death as accidental. Powell's was the first of six in-custody deaths so far in 2025 either in a jail, a court holding pen or a hospital unit after the person fell into medical distress in the jails. 'The Department of Investigation has issued multiple reports outlining what our members know — the primary source of drugs on Rikers is not mail or visitors, but the one source DOC refuses to address — their own staff,' said Sarita Daftary, co-director of the Freedom Agenda, an advocacy group. The ME's office also disclosed that Soso Ramashvili, 32, who died March 21 in Kings County Criminal Court, suffered a severe inflammation in the abdomen from a perforated ulcer — officially, 'acute peritonitis due to perforated duodenal ulcer due to peptic ulcer disease.' Ramashvili had been arrested on a shoplifting charge. He was also accused of possession of a small amount of cocaine. He was held for three days prior to arraignment, apparently shuttling between police facilities and the hospital. Advocates called for an investigation back in March. 'Soso Ramashvili was detained and processed on a charge that should have resulted in an appearance ticket. Instead, he was effectively condemned to a death sentence — repeatedly denied the medical care he urgently needed,' said Meghna Philip, director of the Special Litigation Unit in the criminal defense practice at the Legal Aid Society. 'The NYPD clearly violated the law by processing and holding him in custody far beyond what was legally permitted. The callous disregard law enforcement continues to show for the lives and rights of New Yorkers is deeply disturbing.' The NYPD did not immediately reply to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon. Powell was arrested for a May 8, 2023 slashing on the Lower East Side and sent to Rikers that July. After his death, The News reported a reason for his extended detention was that he had changed lawyers four times. He has also spent time in an upstate psychiatric facility after a judge ruled he was not mentally fit to stand trial. The Correction Department declined to comment on Powell's cause of death, citing an ongoing investigation. But the agency has recently renewed a push to tighten security around mail citing a smuggling tactic where pages of letters or books are soaked with narcotics. In 2023, a previous effort which would have led to the electronic scanning of all detainee mail was blocked by the Board of Correction, when a majority of members declined to put the measure up for a vote. The new proposal would allow the Correction Department to open and search non-legal mail outside of the view of detainees. Latima Johnson, a DOC spokeswoman, said the agency is continuing to urge the Board of Correction for approval of the new mail measure. 'Synthetic narcotics present a challenge to correctional institutions across the country,' she said. 'These substances do not have stable chemical compositions nor any scent so K9 [drug sniffing dogs] cannot detect them. These substances are also extremely dangerous to the people who live and work in our jails.' The causes of death in the other four cases remain pending. Those include Terence Moore, who suffered a fatal seizure Feb. 24 in Manhattan Criminal Court, Sonia Reyes, who died March 20 at the West Facility on Rikers Island, and Ibrahim Diallo who died March 26 at Manhattan Criminal Court. The ME's office also has yet to issue a cause of death in the case of Ariel Quidone, 20, who died March 15 at Elmhurst Hospital after just eight days in jail on Rikers, where he fell into medical distress. His family has said he suffered a burst appendix and has alleged it was not properly treated.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Yahoo
Harvey Weinstein transferred from Rikers Island to Bellevue Hospital for retrial on sex charges
April 21 (UPI) -- Disgraced former Hollywood legend Harvey Weinstein will remain in Bellevue Hospital this week as his retrial gets underway and jury selection continued. Last week, jury selection started for Weinstein's retrial over years-long sex crime allegations. Weinstein, 73, was found guilty five years ago of third-degree rape that triggered the #MeToo movement and he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. However, Weinstein's conviction was overturned last year by a New York appeals court, which paved the way for a new trial. On Wednesday, the disgraced ex-Hollywood film producer had filed an emergency request to be transferred to Bellevue Hospital from Rikers Island due to a "tongue infection." The former Miramax chief was among one of the most influential movie moguls. His career ended when several women accused him of using is status in Hollywood to coerce them into sexual encounters. He was in Bellevue for a period in November and last spring during which it was later reported he received VIP treatment. His request was granted this week where Weinstein will stay until Thursday when a hearing will determine if he will remain in Bellevue for the trial's duration. Weinstein, who turned 73 on March 19, has argued that he may see "possibly death" if not permitted to leave Rikers, known for it's notorious and inefficient reputation with a proposed framework in place for Rikers to be placed in the hands of a receivership outside the control of Mayor Eric Adams' administration. "He needs to do what he needs to do for himself," Elizabeth Glazer, founder of Vital City and ex-criminal justice adviser to former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, told The New York Times. "(Weinstein) may be calling for the reform of the entire system, but his immediate purpose is relief for himself," added Glazer.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mayoral hopeful Brad Lander won't back rival Andrew Cuomo as Democratic nominee if ex-gov wins primary
City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander said he'll refuse to back rival Andrew Cuomo if the ex-governor wins the Democratic nomination for City Hall — and did not rule out running as the Working Families Party candidate in the general election. Lander's allies in the left-leaning WFP said they would run their own candidate — possibly Lander or Zohran Mamandi or someone else — in November if the embattled ex-gov. clinches the Democratic ballot line in the June 24 primary election. 'I am very focused, making sure that Andrew Cuomo does not win the Democratic nomination. That is my focus right now. I just don't have bandwidth for beyond June 24th right now,' Lander said during a meeting with The Post editorial board Wednesday. 'Andrew Cuomo is a corrupt, contemptible human being, who should not be allowed anywhere near City Hall and is an unacceptable choice for mayor.' Cuomo is the clear front-runner in polls for the Democratic nomination, despite a blizzard of attacks and his ultimate resignation following numerous sexual harassment accusations leveled against him by former Albany staffers and other women and scandals involving his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuomo has denied the accusations. While ripping into his opponent, Lander did not go out of his way to criticize surging Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Astoria, Queens state assemblyman and mayoral candidate who supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. Lander, a Jew and liberal Zionist, said he disagreed with Mamdani on several issues pertaining to Israel. Separately, the comptroller said he backs the law to close the Rikers Island complex and supports replacing it with four-borough-based jails with a smaller population. He had voted for the law to phase out Rikers when he was a Brooklyn councilman. But he admitted Rikers can't close if the city can't shrink the jail population by thousands of inmates..'If those ways fail, then we can't close Rikers completely. In order to close Rikers, we have to have successful strategies for dealing with those issues,' Lander said. For example, hundreds of more treatment beds are needed for criminal defendants who are mentally ill and delays in trials need to be dramatically reduced, he said. The Brooklyn pol also said he supported Gov. Kathy Hochul's push to expand the authority to force individuals with serious mental health issues into treatment following the crazed Soho and southern Brooklyn slashings. 'I am seeking flexibility for involuntary hospitalization,' he said. Lander said Muslim Brunston, the homeless man who slashed a woman in the neck in SoHo and had been in and out of about 36 mental-health hearings for the violent 2019 robbery of a 13-year-old boy — and later slugged an NYPD worker so badly that he broke her eye socket — should not have been on the street. On education, Lander raved about the Dream Charter school network where his son, Marek, works. But he opposes lifting the state cap on charter schools in New York City to replicate Dream Charter's success. The cap has been reached and new charter schools can't open without a state law to raise or eliminate the cap. He called Dream Charter 'a fantastic institution,' which has a longer school day and school year and offers students assistance up to six years after graduation. Asked about lifting the cap to replicate Dream Charter's success, Lander said he would focus on the 2,800 traditional public schools if elected mayor rather than expanding the popular publicly-funded, but privately managed charter schools. 'I would have a lot of other priorities …It's not part of my [education agenda],' he said of charter school expansion.
CNN
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
How fake heiress Anna Delvey is carefully crafting her second act
What is it about Anna Delvey that fascinates so many people? Including your humble crew at United States of Scandal? Why has she captured so many column inches in newspapers and pages in magazines, filled so many hours of footage in podcasts, Netflix dramatizations, and news broadcasts? From her false identity as a German heiress to financial deception, grand larceny, serving time at Rikers, competing on Dancing with the Stars, and now pursuing a career in fashion, Anna's journey has been nothing short of fascinating. Having met and interviewed her in 2022, I still can't quite figure her out or provide a simple answer as to why so many found her story so captivating. That 2022 interview made it clear how she embodies both an aspirational glamour and deception, acting as a mirror that reflects some ugly truths about American society. Flash forward to this new interview: Anna and I are drinking coffee, sitting across from one another. She sits poised, composed, and carefully calculated. But as the interview wears on, I realize that beneath that facade was a woman entirely focused on crafting her second act. Her carefully chosen words reveal an intense focus on her future, without, it seems to me, confronting the full weight of her actions. Instead of publicly acknowledging the damage she caused, Delvey frames her criminal past as a mere setback, as if it were part of her personal narrative to overcome. She still doesn't see herself as someone who intentionally did wrong, but rather as a young and naïve social climber who had all intention of paying everyone back whom she stole from. Is it an act? Regardless of what you may think of her, the key point is that so many of you do think of her. Whether on instagram or Netflix, podcasts or CNN, she is in the limelight. Is she a reflection of the quintessentially American system that allows us all to write our own narratives? Perhaps the real question is not who Anna Delvey is, but what her story reveals about us.
CNN
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
How fake heiress Anna Delvey is carefully crafting her second act
What is it about Anna Delvey that fascinates so many people? Including your humble crew at United States of Scandal? Why has she captured so many column inches in newspapers and pages in magazines, filled so many hours of footage in podcasts, Netflix dramatizations, and news broadcasts? From her false identity as a German heiress to financial deception, grand larceny, serving time at Rikers, competing on Dancing with the Stars, and now pursuing a career in fashion, Anna's journey has been nothing short of fascinating. Having met and interviewed her in 2022, I still can't quite figure her out or provide a simple answer as to why so many found her story so captivating. That 2022 interview made it clear how she embodies both an aspirational glamour and deception, acting as a mirror that reflects some ugly truths about American society. Flash forward to this new interview: Anna and I are drinking coffee, sitting across from one another. She sits poised, composed, and carefully calculated. But as the interview wears on, I realize that beneath that facade was a woman entirely focused on crafting her second act. Her carefully chosen words reveal an intense focus on her future, without, it seems to me, confronting the full weight of her actions. Instead of publicly acknowledging the damage she caused, Delvey frames her criminal past as a mere setback, as if it were part of her personal narrative to overcome. She still doesn't see herself as someone who intentionally did wrong, but rather as a young and naïve social climber who had all intention of paying everyone back whom she stole from. Is it an act? Regardless of what you may think of her, the key point is that so many of you do think of her. Whether on instagram or Netflix, podcasts or CNN, she is in the limelight. Is she a reflection of the quintessentially American system that allows us all to write our own narratives? Perhaps the real question is not who Anna Delvey is, but what her story reveals about us.
