The proceedings began with three fast, muted raps on the door. Layleen Cubilette-Polanco’s family and friends, joined by many, many people who’d never even met her, filled every row in the small, mostly beige hearing room on the third floor of the federal courthouse, somewhere between downtown Brooklyn and the waterfront. Five months before, on June 7, 2019, Layleen, a young transgender woman, died while she was held on $500 bail in New York City’s despised jail complex on Rikers Island.
It was the first hearing in a suit Layleen’s mother, Arecelis Polanco, brought against the city of New York, charging that the jailers at Rikers had been negligent and bore responsibility for her death. The city’s lawyers were trying to bring the suit to a halt, pending their own investigation. For now, the family’s quest to establish some accountability in Layleen’s death had become the sort of dry, procedural, slow-moving, and official matter that does not inspire headlines.
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