Five deaths in city custody — three people on Rikers and two in NYPD lock-up — have occurred over roughly the past two weeks, leaving investigators puzzled and the city continuing to seek answers to improving jail conditions.
Ardit Billa, 29; Jimmy Avila, 34; and Carlos Cruz, 43, were all detained on Rikers Island before they died from late August to early September, according to the NYC Department of Corrections (DOC). For each death, Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie extended condolences through a statement and promised an investigation.
Meanwhile, the Legal Aid Society reported that client Christopher Nieves, 46, died in NYPD custody at the Brooklyn Criminal Court on August 29. He was facing a low-level charge for shoplifting food from a grocery store. At around the same time, 29-year-old pedicab driver Musa Cetin also reportedly died in NYPD custody after an arrest for operating his three-wheeler without a license. (Available fundraisers are linked in the online version of this story.)
So far in 2025, 12 people have lost their lives in or immediately after their release from custody at Rikers Island alone, according to local investigative reporting website TheCity.nyc.
Advocates for reform gathered on September 9 for a rally outside before a hearing by the Board of Corrections, the independent oversight agency for city jail conditions. They held banners memorializing those who died on Rikers, including Billa, Avila, and Cruz.
“All of these names, and all of these people we’re adding, are human beings,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. “They are family members, they are sons and daughters, cousins and friends and uncles. They are neighbors. They were not sentenced to death. Most of them likely were not sentenced at all and were simply waiting for trial to have their case(s) heard.”
To be clear, most people on Rikers Island are held on pre-trial detention, even with bail reform laws for most misdemeanor and low-level felony cases spurred by the three-year detainment of teenager Kalief Browder over ultimately dropped charges for a stolen backpack that led to his suicide. However, those bail laws do not preclude deaths in police custody for the likes of Cetin and Nieves.
Advocates speak up at rally
Attorney David B. Rankin, who represents Avila’s family, provided a detailed account of conditions leading to Avila’s death (the DOC simply reported staff aiding him). He was arrested just three days before and had spent less than a day on Rikers before staff found him.
“When Mr. Avila was arraigned before a criminal court judge, they knew he was suicidal,” said Rankin. “They knew he was having mental health problems. There was a judicial order which said this man needs to be placed in mental health treatment — right now, not later. He was taken to Rikers Island, left in a cell with bedsheets by himself, and found dead less than six hours later.”
Rankin pointed to how close he’s gotten to jail reform advocates due to the number of cases relating to Rikers. Just last year, Rankin secured the largest pretrial civil rights settlement in state history from a case alleging his client sustained brain damage while attempting to hang himself as multiple corrections officers stood by.
Whistleblower Justyna Rzewinski, a licensed clinical social worker who reported unlawful solitary confinement practices in Rikers Island’s mental health facilities, shed light on the Program to Accelerate Clinical Effectiveness (PACE) unit where Billa reportedly died.
“This was a specialized unit,” she said. “This is the program to accelerate clinical effectiveness, where there’s only 38 people on the unit, three mental health treatment aides beside the nurse practitioner, a registered nurse, and a mental health clinician — all stationed on this unit. And yet he died, and nobody knows why. Only 29 years old, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and this just shows that if this can happen on this high level of care [in what] DOC and CHS (Correctional Health Services) says is the best unit on Rikers Island, it can happen to anyone, anywhere.”
Campaigning to close Rikers
Long known for decrepit conditions, Rikers Island is legally mandated to close by 2027 and decarcerate to transport the remaining population to four newly constructed borough-based jails with significantly smaller capacities. However, those facilities, which boast better conditions and faster transport to court cases, are behind schedule and will almost certainly miss the 2027 deadline.
Meanwhile, the city jail population currently sits north of 7,000, exacerbated by state prison strikes earlier this year. The borough-based jails can hold 4,160 beds in total in the four facilities.
Freedom Agenda co-director Darren Mack, who was formerly incarcerated and is a key proponent of closing Rikers, told the AmNews that the city can chip away at the problem by shuttering defunct Rikers jails to consolidate operations and lean more on the 6-A early Rikers release program. He pointed to the island’s largest jail, the Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC), which was emptied in 2023.
“[T]he money that’s saved from closing the AMKC could be redistributed back into communities for justice-impacted supportive housing and mental health — all the things we know that actually develop community safety,” said Mack.
Councilmember Sandy Nurse pointed to her bill, Int. 1242, which would place a full-time coordinator in City Hall charged with ensuring that Rikers Island closes. She said the bill will be voted on this Thursday, Sept. 11, and stems from recommendations by the Lippman Commission, an independent task force tapped to chart the borough-based jail plan.