The UN Human Rights Committee says the U.S. should stop criminalizing homeless people for being homeless, and the administration says they’re sorry, and they’ll get right on it. Haha, April Fool!
Jerome Murdough, a 56-year-old, mentally-ill homeless veteran, was just trying to stay alive during a New York City cold snap when he thought he found his spot: a stairwell leading to a roof in a Harlem public housing project.
But that desperate act set in motion a nightmare ride through New York’s criminal justice system that would end with Murdough dying of heat stroke in a Riker’s Island jail cell. New York officials now say the system failed Murdough every which way.
When he was discovered, he should have been offered shelter. When he was arraigned, he should not have been slapped with $2500 bail. When, unable to make bail, he ended up in jail, Murdough, because he was on medication for a mental condition, should have been monitored every 15 minutes, not left unwatched for at least four hours. It was during that untended time that Murdough, as an official told the Associated Press, “basically baked to death.”
Now, as New York officials discuss “the tragedy” of last month and scapegoat one Riker’s Island guard for Murdough’s death — suspending him for 20 days — the United Nations has taken notice. Murdough, the latest statistic in a series of needless deaths of homeless people while under arrest for “crimes” related to being unhoused, such as loitering or trespassing, was also the last straw.
