A 32-year-old man died in a holding cell in Brooklyn's central booking on Friday morning while waiting to be arraigned, according to public defenders familiar with the case.
The man's family has not been notified, so Hell Gate is not publishing his name. But according to lawyers familiar with his case he had been arrested on March 18 on charges of petit larceny, possession of stolen property in the fifth degree, and possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree—not charges for which he could have been held on bail—after allegedly shoplifting $213 worth of goods from Home Depot.
The death marks the fifth death of a person in custody this month, though detainees awaiting arraignment are the responsibility of the NYPD, not the Department of Correction.
The lawyers, who spoke to Hell Gate on background because they are not authorized to discuss the matter, said the man had been transported to the hospital and back to a cell multiple times before dying in lockup at 120 Schermerhorn Street around 9:30 this morning.
Case law requires that people arrested in New York City be arraigned within 24 hours of their arrest unless police have a reasonable explanation for the delay. Why this man was still awaiting an arraignment on the third day after his arrest is unclear. Lawyers familiar with the case said that his medical trouble and difficulty getting a translator may have contributed to the delay, but there are bigger systemic issues involved as well.
"This death is at the intersection of so many different problems," said one of the lawyers who spoke to Hell Gate. "The NYPD doesn't care about the people in their custody. Wait times for arraignments are especially bad right now because we've got a lot of inexperienced new judges. [Mayor] Adams is flooding the courts with low-level quality-of-life arrests that are jamming up the courts. And instead of declining to prosecute, DAs are arraigning the cases."