A Thousand Days Waiting: Kalief Browder's Ordeal ~ Emerald Quill

Jun 12, 2015

A Thousand Days Waiting: Kalief Browder's Ordeal

6/12/2015 Celestine Green No comments

When I heard the story of Kalief Browder, I was first shocked, then, angry, and finally saddened. My thoughts went instantly to my seventeen year old grandson, Mekhi, and then to my nephews Cameron and Christian, twenty-five and twenty-two respectively. I realized once again that this story could be their story and then I got on my knees and prayed.

Kalief Browder spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times.

Jennifer Gonnerman, a reporter for The New Yorker magazine tells of Kalief’s efforts to end his life in her article "Before The Law". Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.

In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home, in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.

Then, late last year, about two months after the story about him appeared, he stopped going to classes at Bronx Community College. During the week of Christmas, he was confined in the psych ward at Harlem Hospital. One day after his release, he was hospitalized again, this time back at St. Barnabas. When Gonnerman visited him there on January 9th, he did not seem like himself. He was gaunt, restless, and deeply paranoid. He had recently thrown out his brand-new television, he explained, “because it was watching me.”

After two weeks at St. Barnabas, Browder was released and sent back home. The next day, his lawyer, Paul V. Prestia, got a call from an official at Bronx Community College. An anonymous donor (who had likely read the New Yorker story) had offered to pay his tuition for the semester. This happy news prompted Browder to reenroll. For the next few months he seemed to thrive. He rode his bicycle back and forth to school every day, he no longer got panic attacks sitting in a classroom, and he earned better grades than he had the prior semester.

Kelief Browder told stories about having been abused by officers and inmates on Rikers. The stories were disturbing, but Gonnerman says she did not fully appreciate what he had experienced until this past April when she obtained surveillance footage of an officer assaulting him and of a large group of inmates pummeling and kicking him. Sitting next to Kalief she watched these videos for the first time with him. Afterward, they discussed whether they should be published on The New Yorker’s Web site. She told him that it was his decision. He said to put them online.

He was driven by the same motive that led him to talk to Gonnerman for the first time, a year earlier. He wanted the public to know what he had gone through, so that nobody else would have to endure the same ordeals. His willingness to tell his story publicly—and his ability to recount it with great insight—ultimately helped persuade Mayor Bill de Blasio to try to reform the city’s court system and end the sort of excessive delays that kept him in jail for so long.

Browder’s story also caught the attention of Rand Paul, who began talking about him on the campaign trail. Jay Z met with Browder after watching the videos. Rosie O’Donnell invited him on “The View” last year and recently had him over for dinner. Browder could be a very private person, and he told almost nobody about meeting O’Donnell or Jay Z. However, in a picture taken of him with Jay Z, who draped an arm around his shoulders, Browder looked euphoric.

Last Monday, Prestia, who had filed a lawsuit on Browder’s behalf against the city, noticed that Browder had put up a couple of odd posts on Facebook. When Prestia sent him a text message, asking what was going on, Browder insisted he was O.K. “Are you sure everything is cool?” Prestia wrote. Browder replied: “Yea I’m alright thanks man.” The two spoke on Wednesday, and Browder did seem fine. On Saturday afternoon, Prestia got a call from Browder’s mother: he had committed suicide.

I'm convinced that our dysfunctional U. S. Justice system killed Kalief Browder. There's more to his story. Read the Exclusive in the Daily News and learn about another recent suicide, an 18 year old Riker's Island inmate who hanged himself in his cell.