The Manhattan Detention Complex, also known as the Tombs, is photographed in New York, Friday, June 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Yanina Manolova)
When Jairo Polanco Munoz was booked into the Manhattan Detention Complex for allegedly stealing an iPhone at a Dunkin' Donuts, no one seemed to care about his suicide attempt behind bars last April. The 24-year-old was held on $750 bail and given a basic mental health check-up. He was supposed to get a more comprehensive one within three days, but a stabbing caused a lockdown and delayed his appointment.
Two hours before the deadline on Monday, Munoz was found sitting on a toilet, blue in the face and cold to the touch.
It's a story eerily reminiscent of one that made headlines in January. That's when 44-year-old Angel Perez-Rios died at the city's hellish Rikers Island jail complex after his mental health check-up was repeatedly delayed due to lockdowns.
"All someone had to do was review the chart," a medical staffer told the New York Daily News of Munoz. "He was left to die."
Also known as the Tombs, the Manhattan Detention Complex is where low-level offenders who can't make bail go before their trials in New York. Inmates say that, like its more-famous island cousin, MDC has a history of brutality. Munoz's death serves as a reminder that even if the movement to close Rikers in favor of local jails in each borough is picking up some steam, smaller jails closer to home have their own problems.
A spokeswoman for New York City's Department of Correction (DOC) told VICE in an email that the NYC jail suicide rate is less than half the national average. And it's true that suicides in city jails are rare; in 2014, there were zero. But the fact that there have already been two so far this year is troubling, especially given Mayor Bill de Blasio's emphasis on reforming the criminal justice system in the wake of years of criticism and a 2014 federal investigation decrying a "deep-seated culture of violence" at Rikers. A deal struck between the feds and the city last summer was supposed to usher in a new era of accountability, and in January, the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation took over the responsibility of providing medical care to inmates from a for-profit company.
Munoz's death suggests there's still an awful lot to be done about mental health in the jails of America's largest city.
"Every intake encounter includes a detailed assessment of not only the history in the medical chart, but also a face to face evaluation to determine the patient's current mental status, including mood, thoughts, speech, presence of delusions, hallucinations, and suicidal or homicidal thoughts," a Health and Hospitals Corporation spokesperson said in a statement. "Patients who exhibit none of these symptoms but who have a mental health history are generally admitted to general population housing areas."
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