Outrage over death in Sunset Park prison
Inmate suffered ‘permanent’ injuries from metal in food prior to death: lawsuit
BY ROSE ADAMS
Years before inmate Jamel
Floyd died after being pepper
sprayed inside a Sunset Park
federal prison, the 35-year-old
said he had suffered “permanent”
intestinal damage from
swallowing a paperclip in his
food at a Long Island jail — and
had been barred from fi ling a
grievance report about the incident,
court records allege.
“I had concerns about internally
bleeding because it
felt like it was ripping my insides
open,” Floyd wrote in his
2009 lawsuit, which he fi led six
months after the incident.
Floyd had been jailed at the
Nassau County Correctional
Center prior to his trial in 2010.
Following his conviction, he
began serving out his sentence
at various prisons — including
Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention
Center, where he was
incarcerated from October 2019
until his death on June 3.
While he was at the Long
Island detention facility, Floyd
reportedly ingested the metal
shard while eating a meal in
January of 2009, causing bleeding
COURIER L 6 IFE, JUNE 12-18, 2020
in his mouth and intense
abdominal pain, according to
the lawsuit.
Staffers took Floyd to the
hospital on the day of the injury,
and an x-ray showed the
paper clip fragment in his digestive
tract, according to the
complaint.
Two separate x-rays conducted
in the following weeks
determined the metal was no
longer in his body, according
to the court documents — but
Floyd said he continued to feel
pain in his abdomen for months
after the incident.
“As a result of the defendants
callous indifference,
plaintiff has been permanently
damaged. His stomach
cramps up alot and every now
and then there is spotted blood
when ever he use the bathroom
sic,” wrote Floyd in the complaint.
Floyd also alleged that the
jail denied him adequate medical
care and that its food services
system — which employs
inmates to prepare food —
doesn’t include enough professional
oversight, putting other
inmates in danger. He sought
$5 million in damages.
After the incident, Floyd
said he had attempted to fi le
a grievance report within the
fi ve-day window required before
inmates can take legal action
— but claimed his attempts
were “denied,” and that he was
held in a “dry cell” that banned
outside materials in the week
following the incident, preventing
him from fi ling any report,
according to the court order.
Still, a judge claimed that
Floyd “failed to exhaust his
claims pursuant to the available
administrative remedy”
and dismissed the case, agreeing
with the defendants’ argument
that the incident was a
“mistake,” rather than evidence
of unconstitutional practices at
the jail. An appeal of the case in
2011 was also dismissed.
The case came more than
10 years before corrections offi
cers used mace in an attempt
to restrain Floyd, who became
“disruptive” and “potentially
harmful to himself and others”
inside his cell at Sunset Park’s
Metropolitan Detention Center
on June 3, according to the Federal
Bureau of Prisons.
“Responding staff observed
inmate Jamel Floyd barricaded
inside his cell and breaking
the cell door window with
a metal object,” the Bureau of
Prisons said in a statement on
June 3. “Pepper spray was deployed
and staff removed him
from his cell.”
Floyd became unconscious,
and medics transported him
to a nearby hospital, where he
was pronounced dead, according
to the statement.
Floyd’s mother, Donna
Mays, told the Daily News that
her son was asthmatic, making
pepper spray potentially lifethreatening.
His death sparked outrage
from local politicians and activists,
who demonstrated outside
the facility on June 4 as part
of nationwide protests against
law enforcement that have
swept the city since May 28.
During that demonstration,
Mays blasted the corrections
offi cers for using the chemical
agent against her son.
“They murdered him,” said
the distraught mother.
Jamel Floyd, an inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center, died on
June 3 after being maced by staffers. Photo by Paul Frangipane