commentary by Patrick H. Moore
There’s nothing local law enforcement hates more than when the Feds get involved in a state, city or county criminal matter when the charged individual happens to be a state or county law enforcement officer. Yet, this is precisely what happened on Monday when the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, and George Venizelos, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today in a joint statement that Terrence Pendergrass, a corrections officer and former captain at the Rikers Island jail, has been arrested for deprivation of rights under the color of law for deliberately ignoring the urgent medical needs of a mentally disabled Rikers Island inmate, Jason Echevarria.
Jason Echevarria
Echevarria had ingested a corrosive disinfectant and later died, due in large part to the fact that Pendergrass refused to allow him to receive medical treatment after he ingested the foreign substance, which led to what must have been an agonizing death sometime thereafter. Pendergrass was taken into custody Monday morning, and is believed to have appeared in Manhattan federal court on Monday afternoon in the court of U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn. He faces a maximum sentence of ten years of incarceration.
The arrest comes less than a week after a schizophrenic 56-year-old homeless veteran named Jerome Murdough was “baked to death” at the notorious jail complex when the temperature in his cell rose to at least 100 degree due to what is believed to have been a faulty heating system.
Preet Bharara U.S. Attorney
“Jason Echevarria should not have died,” said Bharara said in a statement released Monday. “As alleged, Terrence Pendergrass abused his power as a Rikers Island captain in charge of a vulnerable population of inmates with mental health issues by denying Echevarria access to medical care despite his obvious and urgent medical need for it.”
The incident occurred in August of 2012 and has apparently been under investigation since that date. At the time of the tragedy, Echevarria had been held in a Mental Health Assessment Unit after multiple suicide attempts.
If alleged statements made by former officer Pendergras are any indication of the culture of neglect that appears to be endemic at Rikers, it’s hardly surprising that Jerome Murdough’s medical needs and the fact he was being “baked alive” in his cell were ignored.
In the case of Echevarria, on August 18, 2012, officers reportedly informed Officer Pendergrass that the inmate, who was only 25, had ingested a toxic “soap ball” of disinfectant and detergent and needed immediate medical attention.
Terrence Pendergrass
According to the official complaint, Pendergrass dismissed the officers concerns and told them to only come back when “there was a dead body.”
The next morning, Echevarria was discovered dead in his jail cell. An autopsy discovered he had suffered internal burns and scarring along his esophagus and his trachea, indicating he suffered aspiration of vomit into his lungs. So, in effect, he apparently choked on his own vomit, not a pleasant way to go.
In his statement, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara opined further:
“Jason Echevarria should not have died. As alleged, Terrence Pendergrass abused his power as a Rikers Island captain in charge of a vulnerable population of inmates with mental health issues by denying Echevarria access to medical care despite his obvious and urgent medical need for it. The Constitution protects the civil rights of everyone, including prison inmates at Rikers. The kind of conduct alleged today cannot be tolerated in our criminal justice system.”
And FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos said:
“The public’s trust in law enforcement officers to enforce the law and ensure justice should never be abused. Sadly, as alleged, Mr. Pendergrass took his authority as a supervisory correction officer to the extreme and violated the rights of an inmate in his charge to the point that it resulted in death. The FBI is the lead federal agency to investigate such abuses of power and it remains one of our top priorities.”
At the time of his death, Jason Echevarria was an inmate incarcerated on Rikers Island in the Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates, a unit housing inmates who have committed infractions while incarcerated and who have been identified as needing mental health treatment.
Echevarria had been given the soap ball by a new correction officer for the purpose of cleaning his cell following a sewage backup. The soap ball contained, among other things, ammonium chloride, a corrosive chemical that is life threatening if ingested.
After Echevarria swallowed the soap ball, other inmates heard him banging on his cell door and asking for medical help. Echevarria also told a correction officer that he had swallowed a soap ball and needed medical attention who in turn informed Captain Pendergras, who in turn told the corrections officer that he should only call on PENDERGRASS if he needed help to extract an inmate from a cell or if there was a dead body. The corrections officer appears to have done his best to stay on top of the situation. A bit later he told Pendergras that he saw vomit in Echevarria’s cell. Pendergras’ offensively cavalier response was that Echevarria should “hold it.”
Jason Echevarria’s Father
It took some time for poor Echevarria to die and later that same day, a pharmacy technician, while apparently distributing inmate medication witnessed the vomit in Echevarria’s cell, and the fact his skin appeared discolored. The pharmacy technician was informed by a second corrections officer that Echevarria had swallowed a soap ball. Then, Echevarria told both the pharmacy technician and the second corrections officer that he needed medical help. The pharmacy technician was very concerned and told the second corrections officer that Echevarria could die if he did not receive medical attention. The second corrections officer then did the right thing and informed (or should we say re-informed) Captain Pendergras that Echevarria had swallowed a soap ball and needed medical help. Pendergras, of course, stone-walled it and did nothing other than to tell the second correction officer that perhaps the officer had simply misunderstood Echevarria’s request for medical help, which the second corrections officer assured him was simply not the case.
As stated previously, the next morning, Echevarria was found dead in his cell.
Although New York’s newly elected mayor, Bill de Blasio, called Jerome Murdough’s recent death “shocking” and vowed to lead reforms with his newly appointed head of the city’s Department of Corrections, it is unclear as to whether he has commented on Echevarria’s tragic death.
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Negligence… Cruelty… Contempt… NCC appears to been Terrence Pendergrass’s modus operandi. My sense is that he may well do some serious prison time based on his egregious dereliction of duties.
Clearly, it’s time for the culture of cruelty and neglect to be excised from our correctional facilities, not just at the Rikers Island jail, but all across our 50 states. Imagine a scenario in which law enforcement personnel are respected for doing a difficult job to the best of their abilities. You can’t imagine it? No one said it would be easy but it’s an idea that may just now, for the first time in a long time, be blowing in the wind.
Click here to view our recent post on the “death by baking” of Jerome Murdough:
Ain’t That America? Ex-Marine ‘Cooked” to Death in Rikers Island Jail Cell