New York
Video: Inside Rikers Island: A Suicide Attempt as Guards Stand By
This is the inside of a psychiatric unit on Rikers Island. It’s the morning of Aug. 25, 2022. And soon, this inmate, Michael Nieves, will attempt to commit suicide by cutting his own throat. He’ll bleed out for 10 minutes as officers stand by and wait for medical help. But Michael Nieves is just one of many cases of preventable harm on Rikers Island that ultimately led a federal judge to strip control of the jail from the City of New York in May. Soon, an independent manager will be appointed. After almost three years of filing Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits, The New York Times has now obtained videos of incidents that contributed to this decision, including that of Nieves. They take us inside Rikers, a place rarely seen by the public, and show serious lapses in the care of inmates. A long-serving member of an independent oversight body, who we’ll hear from later, told us that the case of Michael Nieves is characteristic of the problems inside the jail. Here’s what happened. It’s around 11:30 a.m., and a search of Michael Nieves’s cell fails to turn up a shaving razor he was given to use in the shower that morning. Capt. Mary Tinsley, the supervisor in charge, instructs Officer Beethoven Joseph, whose body camera footage we see here, to take Nieves for a body scan to see if he is hiding the razor. But Tinsley grows impatient with Nieves. Officers close the door and walk away. This is one of a series of mistakes that play out. These officers are trained to work with severely mentally ill detainees like Nieves, a once-gifted student who was later diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia disorders. Like most inmates on Rikers, Nieves was awaiting trial and had not yet been convicted of a crime. He was arrested on burglary and arson charges in 2019, but was deemed unfit to stand trial and held in forensic psychiatric facilities before being sent back to Rikers. Nieves had a long history of suicide attempts. And even though officers suspect he has the razor, he is left alone for 12 minutes while they search the cell of another inmate. Then Joseph returns, followed by Tinsley. She radios for help. The scene is disturbing, but we’re showing it briefly to illustrate what the officers could see. Nieves has cut his neck and is bleeding heavily onto the floor. Pressure needs to be applied to the wound immediately, and he needs to get to a hospital. At first, Nieves doesn’t respond. And the officers and Captain Tinsley don’t intervene. Officer Joseph faces a complex situation. Jail guidelines do not clearly say he should treat a severely bleeding wound. And officers are advised to use caution when they might be lured into danger. But state law does require him to render care in life-threatening situations. It’s unclear if he recognizes it as such. No one enters the cell. Instead, they offer Nieves a piece of clothing. Five minutes have passed. Officer Joseph asks about the bleeding. Eight minutes have passed. Nieves slides down to the floor. Officer Joseph shows concern, but remains by the door. After 10 minutes, the medics arrive on the ward and enter the cell. But there’s been a communication breakdown. The medics aren’t aware that Nieves is bleeding profusely, and they don’t have the right supplies. As they spring into action, the medics berate the correction officers. As medics render aid, Officer Joseph goes to review his notes and talks with another staff member. About an hour after Nieves was found bleeding, over a dozen medics, staff, and E.M.T.s are treating him on site. Shortly after, he was taken to a nearby hospital, declared brain dead and removed from life support five days later. “This was preventable.” Dr. Robert Cohen is a member of the Board of Correction, which monitors Rikers, and agreed to speak about the jail and the Nieves case in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the board. He retired shortly after this interview. “He should not have been left alone once they believed that he was in possession of a razor. By policy, he should have been taken immediately to the body scanner.” “He was bleeding to death. The correction officer should have gone into the room, assessed what was going on and should have applied pressure to the area where the blood was coming from.” A city medical examiner found that the officer’s inaction contributed to Nieves’s death, but that he could have died even with emergency aid. The state attorney general’s office therefore declined to charge the officers. Their report also found that the officers lacked clear protocols and might not have had training on severely bleeding wounds. It recommended that officers be required and trained to act in these situations in the future. Dr. Cohen says that what happened to Nieves is characteristic of chronic problems inside Rikers. “Since I’ve been on the board, these deaths have happened multiple times. Jason Echevarria swallowed a number of soap balls. He was screaming all night long. Jerome Murdough was put in a cell where there was a heating malfunction, baked to death. Mercado had diabetes. He was trying to get help. He never received insulin. Nicholas Feliciano hung himself. Seven officers were completely aware of this, and they did nothing — 7 minutes and 51 seconds passed. He did not die, but he has severe brain damage.” Nieves’s death occurred two years into the Covid pandemic, a time when Rikers was facing acute challenges and a staffing crisis that watchdogs say led to a spike in preventable deaths. “Many deaths over the past five years and the reports of deteriorating conditions were instrumental in moving us to the point right now where the judge is going to take over the island with an independent manager.” But even after that happens, New York’s next mayor will be tasked with trying to close Rikers. The original plan was to replace it with smaller jails and in four New York City boroughs by 2026. But after years of delays, here’s what those sites look like today. They’re nowhere near done. Oversight bodies, and even the former Manhattan U.S. attorney, have said that Rikers remains unsafe for detainees. The Department of Correction told The Times that a new medical emergencies curriculum is still being developed. A spokesperson for the Correction Officers Union said they followed regulations and have been vindicated. And the Captain’s Union, which represented Captain Tinsley, said she also followed protocol. Nieves was one of three brothers. His family is now suing the city.
This summer’s World Cup will bring millions of soccer lovers to stadiums across North America. But whether it lives up to organizers’ lofty expectations could come down to fans like Brett Shields and John Milce of New South Wales, Australia.
Both men are longtime supporters of the Socceroos, their country’s men’s national soccer team, and both have traveled to the World Cup before. But only one is planning to go to this year’s tournament, which runs from June 11 to July 19 in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Mr. Shields, 59, is coming. He already has the proper travel authorization from past visits to see his daughter, who lives in San Francisco. He plans to stay with her and attend Socceroos matches there and in Seattle.
Mr. Milce, 76, who has been to six World Cups since 1966, is staying home. He said he had made comments online about President Trump’s policies and feared that he could be denied entry at the border because of the administration’s proposed social media checks and broader immigration crackdown.
“I’m not a poor man, but with the costs involved, it was too much to risk,” Mr. Milce said.
With the first kickoff less than 60 days away, tourism and hospitality leaders in the 11 U.S. host cities are watching international fans closely. The United States was the only major nation to register a decline in international tourism in 2025, and hints of lackluster demand have anxiety running high.
The research firm Tourism Economics projects that more than 1.2 million international visitors will travel to the United States for the World Cup. That includes nearly 750,000 who would not have otherwise come, amounting to a roughly 1.1 percentage point increase in international arrivals.
Still, the firm this month revised down its forecast for the rate of recovery from last year’s drop in tourists. Visa restrictions, fears of immigration agents (including at World Cup matches), an increase in phone searches at borders and, for fans, the exorbitant costs of match tickets and transportation are just some of the barriers keeping people away.
Mr. Shields said that if he didn’t already have his travel authorization and a free place to stay, “I doubt whether I’d probably travel over to the World Cup in the current climate.”
Safety Concerns and Travel Bans
The World Cup, which drew 3.4 million spectators in Qatar in 2022, is a blockbuster pretty much by definition, and organizers expect a large share of bookings, both domestic and international, to come in the final two months.
The U.S. Travel Association said this month that the World Cup has “extraordinary potential to deliver major economic gains” across the United States, but added that “safety concerns, policy perceptions and entry barriers could limit America’s ability to fully capitalize on the opportunity.”
In Seattle, the number of expected domestic World Cup visitors has grown by 30 percent since 2024, said Michael Woody, the chief engagement officer for Visit Seattle. At the same time, the expected number of international visitors has fallen by 17 percent, driven by a particularly sharp drop-off in Canadians.
Fans coming from countries like Haiti and Iran, on a list of 19 countries whose citizens Mr. Trump has barred from entering the United States, won’t be able to attend their national teams’ group stage matches at all. Supporters of soccer powerhouses like Ivory Coast and Senegal, among the 14 African nations whose citizens face tight visa restrictions, could be forced to post bonds of up to $15,000 to enter the country.
Adem Asha, 32, a Turkish citizen who lives in Slovakia, obtained a U.S. visa last year in order to watch Lionel Messi, of Argentina, and Cristiano Ronaldo, of Portugal, in what could be their last World Cup. But Mr. Asha, who was born in Syria, worried he could still be targeted by immigration agents. He decided this spring to call off his trip, a conclusion that left him “disappointed but also relieved.”
“I really don’t feel like going there, or spending that much money to go there, and then being denied at the port of entry,” said Mr. Asha, who said he did not consider going to Canada or Mexico because the matches he wanted to see, and the other sites he hoped to visit, were all in the United States.
Banking on Late Bookings
U.S. host cities are pinning their hopes on last-minute travelers. Zane Harrington, a spokesman for Visit Dallas, said he expected “a majority” of fans heading to the city to book their stays in the two months remaining before kickoff — or even during the tournament as teams advance out of the group stage.
Martha Sheridan, the chief executive of Meet Boston, the city’s marketing and tourism organization, said ticket sales for Gillette Stadium’s seven matches were “robust,” and that they were split roughly in thirds among New Englanders, domestic visitors from the rest of the country and international travelers.
Demand for hotels in Boston in June is up about 11 percent compared with the same period last year, she said. That increase was smaller than what her team had expected to see by this point when it began planning in 2024, she added, but she felt “very optimistic” that bookings would continue to rise in the coming weeks.
FIFA in recent weeks released blocks of thousands of hotel rooms across the three host countries, while local host committees downsized fan festivals in locations including New Jersey, San Francisco and Seattle, fueling discussion over whether demand was falling short of expectations.
But Jamie Lane, the chief economist and senior vice president for analytics at AirDNA, a company that collects and analyzes short-term-rental data, said it was common practice for major event hosts to scale back their room blocks as they make final preparations for staffing and sponsorships, and that the changes were not a sign of sluggish demand.
A spokesman for FIFA said the changes to fan festivals were not made in response to demand, noting that some of the events will now take place in several neighborhoods rather than in a large central location.
A Bigger, Less Predictable Event
Data published this month by AirDNA shows a rise in short-term-rental bookings, to varying degrees, in every host city. Bookings on group stage game days were up the most in Monterrey, Mexico, rising 564 percent, on average, compared with the same dates last year.
Bookings were up 209 percent in Mexico City, 171 percent in Kansas City, 152 percent in Miami and 52 percent in Toronto, according to AirDNA.
A range of factors, including which teams are competing and to what extent cities regulate short-term rentals, influence those figures. In San Francisco, where short-term-rental bookings were up 28 percent on group stage game days, Anna Marie Presutti, the chief executive of the San Francisco Travel Association, said she thought demand didn’t rise to its full potential because the war in Iran is complicating travel for fans from Jordan and Qatar, two teams that are playing there.
In New York, where short-term rentals are tightly restricted, hotel bookings during the World Cup period are “more or less the same” compared with the same period last year, said Vijay Dandapani, the chief executive of the Hotel Association of New York City.
International travelers generally stay longer and spend more money than Americans, giving them an outsize economic impact. An analysis published by Airbnb in February found that non-Americans coming to the United States for the World Cup planned to visit more destinations and travel three nights longer, on average, than Americans.
Sylvia Weiler, the president of global destinations at the travel marketing and data company Sojern, said the revamped structure of this World Cup — spread across three countries and featuring a record 48 teams — made it hard to project how travel patterns would play out as the tournament approached.
“We talk about what was expected,” Ms. Weiler said. “I would always put a slight caveat, because we did not know what to expect.”
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A 76-year-old man died on Friday after being shoved down the stairs at the 18th Street subway station in Manhattan, and the police arrested a suspect who had been arrested multiple times in recent months and had been discharged from Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward just hours before.
The victim, Ross Falzone, landed on his head at the bottom of the stairs and suffered a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine and a fractured rib after a stranger rushed forward and pushed him, the police said.
Mr. Falzone had been walking north on Seventh Avenue toward the subway station in the Chelsea neighborhood on Thursday evening, said Brad Weekes, assistant commissioner of public information for the Police Department. Walking about 30 yards behind him was the stranger, according to surveillance footage from the scene, Mr. Weekes said. As Mr. Falzone reached the station, the man rushed forward and pushed him down the stairs. He was taken to Bellevue where he died shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday.
The death sparked outrage at City Hall. Mayor Zohran Mamdani quickly called for an investigation into how Bellevue handled the discharge of the suspect and suggested that institutional problems at the hospital might have led to the random attack.
“I am horrified by the killing of Ross Falzone and the circumstances that led to it,” Mr. Mamdani said in a news release on Friday, in which he ordered “an immediate investigation on what steps should have been taken to prevent this tragedy.”
Police identified the suspect as Rhamell Burke, 32.
In the three months preceding the attack, Mr. Burke was arrested four times, Mr. Weekes said, including an arrest on Feb. 2 in connection with an assault on a Port Authority police officer.
Mr. Burke’s most recent interaction with the police began at around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, when he approached a group of N.Y.P.D. officers outside the 17th Precinct station house on East 51st Street, Mr. Weekes said. He grabbed a stick from a pile of garbage on the street and approached the officers, who told him to drop the stick. When he did, officers placed Mr. Burke in a police vehicle and drove him to Bellevue, where he was admitted to the emergency room at around 3:40 p.m., Mr. Weekes said. Mr. Burke was taken to the hospital’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program for evaluation and treatment, Mr. Weekes said, and was released from the hospital one hour later.
He was just a mile and a half from the hospital when he encountered Mr. Falzone at around 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, police officers found Mr. Burke in Penn Station, where they arrested him. He was in custody on Friday evening. It was unclear Friday if Mr. Burke had a lawyer.
The mayor said he had requested help from the New York State Department of Health, which will investigate the decision to release Mr. Burke from Bellevue and conduct a review of similar cases at the hospital. The state agency also will investigate psychiatric evaluation and discharge procedures across NYC Health and Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system, according to the news release.
Mr. Falzone was a retired high school teacher who lived alone for many years in an apartment building on the Upper West Side. His friends were in shock on Friday about his death. They shared memories of an affable but private man who rarely spoke about his family or personal life.
Mr. Falzone had been recovering from a recent surgery and seemed more mobile and happy, said Marc Stager, 78, Mr. Falzone’s next-door neighbor on a tree-lined block of West 85th Street. He was known as a cheerful “yapper,” said Briel Waxman, a neighbor. He was the kind of New Yorker who enjoyed chatting with neighbors about historical details of his building and seeing performances at Lincoln Center with friends.
“He was always out and about,” said Ms. Waxman, 35, who often returned to her apartment at midnight or 1 a.m. to find Mr. Falzone arriving home at the same time. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m proud of you or embarrassed of myself,’” she remembered telling him.
Mr. Falzone had wide taste in music — opera, classical, jazz, pop — and neighbors could tell he was home when they heard notes escaping from under his apartment door, Mr. Stager said.
He was “a helpless old guy,” said Mr. Stager, who added that he was “disappointed and shocked, frankly, that somebody could do such a thing” as shove such a defenseless person down the stairs.
When Ms. Waxman moved into the building five years ago, Mr. Falzone was among the first people to welcome her, she said. He once brought a package to her door that had been delivered to the wrong unit and shared that what is now a blank wall in her apartment had once been a fireplace.
Ms. Waxman sat in her living room on Friday and cried as she talked, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She remembered Mr. Falzone as “just overall, nice, talkative, genuine human.”
A suicide note purported to be written by the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein while he was in jail in 2019 uses language that in some cases echoes his past writings to friends and family.
One phrase found in the apparent suicide note — “No Fun” — also appears on a handwritten page found in Mr. Epstein’s jail cell at the time of his death, as well as in emails he sent over the years.
And another saying in the suicide note — “watcha want me to do — bust out cryin!!” — appears in emails that Mr. Epstein had written to people close to him.
A cellmate claimed that Mr. Epstein left the suicide note before he was found unresponsive in their cell weeks before his death. The New York Times reported on the note last week and successfully asked a federal judge to unseal it.
If authentic, the note gives a view into Mr. Epstein’s mind-set before he was found dead at age 66 in August 2019. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
‘NO FUN’
A different handwritten note was found in Mr. Epstein’s cell when he died, and investigators believed it was written by him. In that document, Mr. Epstein complained about jail conditions — burned food, giant bugs and being kept in a locked shower. He concluded it with the underlined phrase, “NO FUN!!”
Mr. Epstein also used the phrase in emails when describing things he was unhappy about, or situations that had not gone his way.
‘watcha want me to do — bust out cryin’
Mr. Epstein used the phrase “watcha want me to do — bust out cryin” with friends, and in messages to his brother, Mark Epstein.
Like the note released by the judge, Mr. Epstein’s emails were often short, with staccato phrases and erratic punctuation. The emails were contained in millions of pages of documents the Justice Department released in response to a law passed last year requiring disclosure of records pertaining to Mr. Epstein.
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