A Family’s Nightmare at Rikers
New York City is failing its most vulnerable people, and the story of John Price proves it. His family is now suing the city for $25 million, claiming he was treated like he was worth nothing while dying in custody. This isn’t just a lawsuit; it’s a scream from a family watching their brother get ignored until it was too late.
According to reporting from Gothamist, the details coming out of this tragedy are sickening. Price told his brother Arnez that he couldn’t lie down because he felt like he was drowning. He begged for help, only to be sent back to his cell. The system didn’t just fail him; it abandoned him.
The Facts Behind the $25 Million Claim
The lawsuit centers on what the family calls a “denial of adequate medical care.” Arnez Price shared the heartbreaking moment his brother called for help. “He said, ‘I don’t feel good, they’re not helping me, they’re just sending me back to my cell,'” Arnez recalled. Despite his pleas, Price waited three-and-a-half hours for a medical provider because correction staff never informed doctors that he was in distress.
On March 29, doctors at Elmhurst Hospital called the family to say Price’s heart had stopped. “They asked my mother if she wanted them to resuscitate him,” Arnez said. The family said yes, but Price, 49, did not survive. When the family went to identify the body, a Department of Correction chaplain showed up, confused that they already knew. “They said they were surprised that we already knew,” Arnez said, “and that the hospital had broken protocol by calling us.”
A city oversight board report confirmed Price died of pneumonia and a bacterial infection. This isn’t an isolated case. So far this year, six more people have died while in Department of Correction custody. The report highlights a pattern of carelessness where officers ignore medical distress until it’s fatal.
A System That Treats People Like Trash
This is exactly why I’ve been saying Rikers needs a complete overhaul. You cannot run a jail where a man complains he can’t breathe and gets sent back to a cell to die. The city’s argument that this is just “bad apples” doesn’t hold water when the oversight board finds systemic delays of hours. A human being should not wait three and a half hours for a doctor when they are dying.
The Price family’s description of the event cuts deep. “The whole thing is heartbreaking. He’d been complaining and they would turn him away,” Arnez said. This is the definition of negligence. Earlier this year, a federal judge who appointed a remediation manager to fix Rikers observed that the DOC struggled to perform basic duties. The action plan filed in July was supposed to start fixing these pervasive problems, but people are still dying.
We need to ask hard questions about who is in charge of these facilities. If the staff is so disconnected from reality that they don’t even know a detainee is dead until the hospital calls the family, something is fundamentally broken. The city needs to stop hiding behind bureaucracy and start saving lives.
The family is now moving forward with their $25 million lawsuit to hold the city accountable. They want answers and they want change. Until the city fixes the rot at Rikers, more families will suffer the same loss. We need to watch this case closely and demand results before another life is lost to neglect.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
