REMARKS
Council Member Ayala shares personal experience with brother's incarceration
0:44:13
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72 sec
Council Member Diana I. Ayala shares her personal experience with her brother's incarceration at Rikers Island.
She reveals that her brother, who suffered from severe mental illness and substance use disorder, was stabbed twice while incarcerated last year, and she was never notified despite her position as deputy speaker of the New York City Council.
Ayala had to initiate calls to corrections to get information about her brother.
Diana I. Ayala
0:44:13
First of all, I want to just thank you for sharing your stories with us today and I I wanted to add my story in solidarity because my my baby brother spent most of his life in and out of Rickers Island.
0:44:31
He suffered from severe mental illness, and substance use disorder.
0:44:35
And last year, while he was incarcerated, he was stabbed twice, and I never received a phone call alerting me.
0:44:46
And I'm the deputy speaker of the New York City Council, and nobody called me to tell me that my baby brother had been stabbed twice.
0:44:55
I had to initiate those calls to corrections.
0:44:58
And so I say that to say that if it's happening to you, it's happening to me, it's not something that, you know, should be dismissed because it it it only reinforces just how how many cases, right, are facing similar situations, and families are not being notified, and inmates are not being treated with the dignity that any human being deserves.
