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New York City reaches $28 million settlement in Rikers Island lawsuit
NEW YORK — The City of New York will pay more than $28 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by a woman whose grandson was hospitalized after he tried to take his own life while in custody on Rikers Island.
Madeline Feliciano alleges three Rikers Island correction officers and a captain waited nearly eight minutes before helping her grandson, Nicholas Feliciano when he attempted suicide in a jail cell in November 2019. A report by the Correction Department Oversight Board found he was left hanging for 7 minutes and 51 seconds.
His grandmother says Nicholas suffered brain damage as a result. He was 18 years old at the time and had been arrested after getting into a fight.
The incident was captured on surveillance video and Nicholas was in plain view of correction officers and others at the time, the report by the Correction Department Oversight Board said.
Three correction officers and a captain were indicted on reckless endangerment and official misconduct charges in 2022.
According to a settlement filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the city will pay Madeline Feliciano $28.75 million.
“This settlement will just help Nicholas with his medical condition and therapies for the rest of his life, the damage is already done. Nicholas will never be the same. His future got taken away,” Madeline Feliciano said in a statement.
CBS News New York has reached out to the Department of Correction for comment on the settlement.
Madeline Feliciano and lawyers representing her family are also calling for the closure of Rikers Island.
In 2019, the New York City Council passed a plan to shut down the troubled jail complex by 2026 and build four smaller jails in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx, but Mayor Eric Adams has pushed back on the plan, citing public safety concerns and questioning if the borough jails will be able to accommodate the jail population from Rikers.
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Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election
Washington — Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday that the federal government needs to do its part to inform Americans of the vast swath of election misinformation that’s being consumed on social media platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
“It’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and in the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on Nov. 5,” Kelly said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Kelly, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s seen these misinformation operations target not only his state of Arizona, but also other battleground states.
“There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” Kelly said.
In a committee hearing last month on foreign threats to the 2024 election, Kelly presented screenshots of Russian-made web pages showing fabricated headlines designed to look like Fox News and The Washington Post, targeted at voters in battleground states.
“So my constituents in Arizona and others — they seek to influence the outcome of these elections, and that is absolutely beyond the pale,” Kelly said at the Sept. 18 hearing. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each have the support of 49% of Arizona voters, according to CBS News’ battleground tracker as of Sept. 30.
In another battleground state, Pennsylvania, Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally in Butler three months after an attempted assassination on him. He was joined by members of his own party and billionaire Elon Musk, who said Trump was the only way to preserve democracy and warned of a last election if he does not win in November.
Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Kelly called the social media mogul a hypocrite.
“He’s standing next to the guy that tried to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, saying that this is somehow going to be the last election and they’re going to take away your vote,” Kelly said. “And you know, it just doesn’t pass the logic test.”
At the White House press briefing on Friday, President Biden – speaking from the podium for the first time since taking office – said he’s confident of a free and fair election but alluded to the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol in his concerns on whether it will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” Mr. Biden said. “If you notice, I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he’d accept the outcome of the election, and they haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election.”
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Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie says Iran is the country that’s in a corner
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