Newly released surveillance camera footage shows prison staff laughing before seeking medical help for Layleen Polanco, who died in her cell at Rikers last June
Polanco, a 27-year-old transgender Afro-Latina, was arrested in April of last year and held for nearly twoRose M. Singer Center because she couldn’t afford to pay a $500 bail. Polanco—a member of the city’s ballroom community, where she was known as Layleen Xtravaganza—was in punitive solitary confinement at the time of her death, despite the known risk solitary posed given her epilepsy and schizophrenia. On June 7, 2019, Rikers staff found her unresponsive in her jail cell.
A medical examiner declared that Polanco had died of an epileptic seizure, a reductive narrative that the Department of Investigations and the Office of the Bronx’s District Attorney echoed in last week’s report finding no criminality in the young woman’s death.
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