March 25 Reportback: COMMUNITY AND MEDICAL WORKERS GREETED WITH POLICE AT PEACEFUL LETTER DELIVERY, BELLEVUE HOSPITAL
On Friday, March 25, approximately a dozen family members, medical and hospital workers, and others directly impacted by the devastating medical abuse and murder of 19 people in NYC Jails, arrived at Bellevue Hospital to demand to meet with the staff working on the 19th Floor Prison Ward and to deliver a proposal to Health and Hospitals and Correctional Health Services staff. The Eyes On You committee, who organized the action, have been trying to get in touch with Correctional Health Services (CHS) and NYC’s Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) staff for at least six months, and have amplified our efforts since a December 2021 meeting with then deputy commissioner of the Department of Corrections (DOC), Stanley Richards. In that meeting, Richards claimed that CHS has the power to greenlight our proposal for medical providers and community to enter NYC jails in an attempt to save the lives of majority Black and Brown New Yorkers who have an alarmingly high rate of death due to medical neglect and abuse by both corrections and medical staff. On Friday, when the Eyes on You committee entered Bellevue Hospital you could feel the tension in the air. Security stopped us in our tracks while we stood on the entrance ramp. While security was in front of us several NYPD officers were behind us. Despite repeated requests to speak with someone from the 19th floor prison ward we were not only lied to about security contacting them (they did not) but gaslit about the situation. Security continued to escalate the situation, and blame us for causing a “disruption.” The security officers, who had billy clubs on their belts, stayed close to protestors, including a 3 year old child. When a member of Eyes on You pointed out that the white male head of security was gaslighting and escalating a group of majority women and people of color, security staff laughed.
While this treatment by Bellevue Security was harassing and aggressive towards our group, what was just as disturbing was the continuous claims by security staff that there is no connection between the NYC jail system and Bellevue Hospital. HHC cannot continue to separate itself from CHS or the prison system. The response from Bellevue security head Egen and “Risk Management” officer Catherine Gursky that “Bellevue is not Rikers” is a deliberate attempt to make us seem ignorant, and create a false separation between the prison system and NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation. In fact, the connections are very concrete for our loved ones. There is a literal open door between DOC and HHC (including Bellevue, Elmhurst, and Lincoln Hospitals), and if there is truly no communication or relationship between Correctional Health Services and Bellevue’s Prison Health, this exposes serious problems for the population of extremely at risk patients. In fact, Malcolm Boatwright, a 28 year old Black man, died at Bellevue Hospital in December of 2021 after telling his family he was headed back to Rikers, and 48 year old Tomas Carlo Camacho died sticking his head through bars of his cell on Rikers calling for help, after being sent back to the island following 5 weeks at Bellevue Psychiatric. When people are seriously injured by corrections officers, or are in acute health crises due to ongoing medical neglect and go to Bellevue, it is HHC staff in the prison ward who document their conditions and presumably determine when they can return to the jail. These documents are used in court proceedings when people attempt to get their freedom, and when these reports send people back to the same places that nearly took their life once, the providers writing them are then responsible for deaths and injuries that occur upon their return. In any other halth care setting this would be considered gross medical negligence!
The treatment of community and family members and medical providers by Bellevue security shows us that “procedure” only matters when it comes to oppressing us. If protocol and procedure mattered, then people would be produced for their medical appointments, and no one would die due from bleeding out of a stab wound or choking on an orange (the cause of the last two NYC jail deaths). We are enraged, but not surprised, that NYC Health and Hospitals cares more about disallowing a small group of community members and medical providers from peacefully entering a public hospital than the fact that more people have died under their care than the entire number of people put to death in both federal and state prisons in the same amount of time. We are emboldened by our action, and we will continue to fight until our loved ones are safe from the death trap that is the triad of NYC DOC, CHS, and HHC.