It’s Tuesday and One Way to Keep the Official Death Count Down at Rikers Is By Covering It Up

Officially, 15 people have died this year while incarcerated in the City's jails, but reporting from the New York Times reveals that the Department of Correction has done its best to conceal some deaths from the public record. In at least one recent death, DOC Commissioner Louis Molina intervened to keep a man's passing out of the DOC's official count of people who have died while in the City's custody. 

From the Times:

As Pondexter's daughter Aquandra Morris told the Times, "At first we were happy he died with dignity, and we knew he wouldn't die a prisoner. But, then I thought about it—something is not right. They are trying to relinquish their responsibility."

In an emailed statement, Legal Aid condemned both City Hall and the DOC: "With each death this year, City Hall and DOC leadership have stonewalled the public and refused to provide timely and accurate information. The information provided by the New York City Board of Correction (BOC), the oversight body, suggests a reason City Hall has attempted such authoritarian control of information: the deaths in custody reviewed by BOC show a shocking incompetence and failure of DOC to carry out basic correctional duties."

New York City jails have been under federal oversight since 2015. Earlier this year, the Correction Department convinced a judge to allow the reforms planned by the Adams administration to take hold, rather than place the system into receivership and the day-to-day control of the federal government. The judge gave the City until November 17 for those changes to make a sufficient difference.

Here’s what else we're reading:

• Construction has begun on the Orchard Beach tent city for asylum seekers planned by the Adams administration, and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson has some concerns. 
• A New York Focus investigation finds that despite a new law, prison officials are still putting people with disabilities in solitary confinement: "Data from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), which runs the state prison system, show that since HALT went into effect nearly six months ago, prisons have sent hundreds of people with mental or physical ailments to solitary, including dozens with the highest levels of health care needs."
• NYCHA is very sorry after completely botching water testing at the Jacob Riis Houses and then belatedly telling residents there was arsenic in the water, only to report that maybe there was no arsenic after all. It will be giving each household living in the public housing complex a measly $200. As one councilmember put it to City Limits's David Brand, "That's nothing. It's embarrassing and a slap in the face."
• The city council is moving to ban tattoo discrimination. 
• The Trader Joe's in Williamsburg is unionizing!
• There are too many empty office buildings in Manhattan, you say? 
• The first episode of Hell Gate's podcast will be about Kara Swisher interviewing a podcaster on her podcast. 
• Sea gates are coming (but not for a while). 
• Aaron Judge of the Yankees continues to try to do something.