By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 9/27/2026
Category: Rikers Island / NYC Department of Correction / Accountability / Public Health
NEW YORK CITY, NY –
New York City’s jail oversight board found repeated failures in supervision, medical communication and medication control across four deaths in Department of Correction custody this year.
The Board of Correction released the 31-page report Friday, September 25. It examined the deaths of Barry Cozart, John Price, Rajpattie Ramkellawan and Umais Khan between March and May. The board identified eight major findings and issued 10 recommendations to the Department of Correction and Correctional Health Services.
The report does not determine criminal liability. Its mandate is to identify operational failures and policy violations that could be corrected before another person dies.
Across all four cases, board investigators said correction officers failed to conduct required welfare checks and meaningful tours. Video did not always match logbook entries claiming regular 30-minute rounds. Housing units were left without direct supervision, sometimes for extended periods. Equipment used to record tours was offline or unusable.
Those were not paperwork defects. They affected whether staff saw people in distress.
Cozart, 39, died at the George R. Vierno Center on March 25 from acute intoxication involving methadone and gabapentin, neither of which had been prescribed to him by jail medical staff. Surveillance video reviewed by the board showed him moving slowly, collapsing and attempting to enter an unassigned cell the night before his death.
The board said officers repeatedly left the unit unsupervised. One morning officer recorded that everyone was alive and well before making a tour. Cozart was not found unresponsive until 11:02 a.m. DOC investigators recommended one-month unpaid suspensions for an area captain and floor officer.
Price, 49, reached a jail clinic on March 28 while showing fatigue, shortness of breath and difficulty standing. The report said DOC staff did not tell adjacent medical staff that he had arrived as a medical emergency. He waited three hours and 34 minutes before a provider examined him.
An ambulance took Price to Elmhurst Hospital, where he died the next morning. The medical examiner attributed his death to influenza B pneumonia with a drug-resistant staph infection, with serious cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease contributing.
The report also described failures surrounding Ramkellawan’s death at the Rose M. Singer Center. Video showed an observation aide sharing medication, according to the board. The officer assigned to oversee medication distribution did not verify that people swallowed what they received.
In Khan’s housing area, required rounds were inconsistent, and the floor officer left the post twice on the morning he was found unresponsive. Khan had sought care for a spreading skin condition, but records showed DOC did not bring him to three scheduled clinic appointments. The medical examiner’s final cause of death was still pending when the report was completed.
The board recommended retraining staff on supervision, tours and accurate logbooks; periodic review of surveillance video; immediate action when contraband is seen; removal of observation aides who violate program rules; reassignment of officers who fail to monitor medication; and checks to ensure tour-recording equipment works.
It also called for DOC and Correctional Health Services to create a protocol requiring clinic officers to promptly relay medical emergencies to clinicians.
DOC said the four deaths remain under investigation by the state Attorney General or the city Department of Investigation and declined to provide a substantive response. The agency said it will review the recommendations. Correctional Health Services said it will support a new notification protocol and remind staff to report safety and policy failures.
The unanswered question is whether the city will enforce the recommendations. The report notes that several of them repeat warnings from earlier death investigations.
Four people died in different facilities under different circumstances. The oversight record points to the same basic duties failing again: watch the housing unit, record what happened, communicate medical danger and control medication.
Sources
NYC Board of Correction: First Report and Recommendations on 2026 Deaths in NYC DOC Custody
NYC Board of Correction Reports
Queens Daily Eagle: 20-Year-Old Dies in DOC Custody at Queens Criminal Court
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