COURIER LIFE, JUNE 11-17, 2021 7
staff, at the least, didn’t take
the necessary steps to prevent
Floyd’s death.
“It’s indescribable what
I’ve seen in that footage,”
Mays said. “I’ve never seen
nothing like that in my entire
life. Nobody supervising anything.
A big circus. A high
school having a fi ght, the security
does better than that.”
Floyd’s death isn’t the only
troubling incident to take
place at the Brooklyn prison
in recent years.
During the COVID-19
pandemic, detainees alleged
harrowing conditions at the
hands of jail administration,
such as being locked in their
cells nearly all day, and a lack
of adequate PPE or social distancing.
Pre-pandemic, in 2019, inmates
endured a week without
heat in the building during
one of the coldest stretches in
recent memory after a power
outage. A Justice Department
probe found that the BOP had
The family of Jamel Floyd demonstrated outside of MDC in Sunset Park
on June 3, the one-year-anniversary of the death of their son, who suffered
a heart attack after being pepper sprayed by a guard.
Photos by Paul Frangipane
failed to address “preexisting
heating and cooling issues”
prior to the stretch, that the
facility did not adequately address
the heating outage and
medical episodes during it,
and that the BOP hadn’t been
transparent with inmates or
with the public.
A judge last month granted
a group of 1,700 inmates at
MDC at the time of the power
outage the right to fi le a classaction
suit against the jail
over the conditions.
“We all must fi ght against
this system,” James said.
“Try to make this system
recognize the damage that
they’re doing to human beings
in there is not tolerated.”
Additional reporting by
Paul Frangipane