As 7th person dies at Rikers from a drug overdose, corrections officers consider maybe getting Narcan.

How is it possible that guards don't have access to Narcan?

Elijah Muhammad, 31, was detained in Rikers island jail on an assault charge. On Sunday, he died of an apparent drug overdose. The New York Times reports that he lay dead in his cell for hours before corrections officers found him. He was already in rigor mortis.

On Monday, the Correction Department issued a statement disclosing the death and the firing of the correction officer but offering no further details, saying only that Mr. Muhammad “passed away” at about 10:30 p.m. on Sunday. In fact, an officer discovered him at about 9:46 p.m., a jail official said.

OK then! Glad my taxes are funding such impressive municipal competence.

So far, Mayor Swagger’s tenure has been marked by a spike in violent crime and gossip items about whether or not he eats fish. So it’s not surprising that the human rights catastrophe in Rikers has been backburnered in the discourse (also not surprising since the people who command the discourse are not very likely to have loved ones in Rikers).

But Muhammad is the 10th person to die at Rikers just this year. We’re a little over halfway through, right? So what, an average of two deaths per month? Muhammad was the seventh suspected or confirmed fatal overdose since 2021, according to the Times. Suspected overdoses rose from 73 emergencies that required 911 in 2020 to 113 in 2021.