A 52-year-old Brooklyn man convicted on two felony counts of possessing a loaded firearm sat among the inmates who greeted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a FIFA World Cup watch party inside Rikers Island, just one week before his sentencing date, Fox News Digital reported after reviewing Queens County court records.
Thomas McCoy, remanded without bail since his guilty verdict in May, was among more than 100 inmates watching the England-Argentina semifinal on Wednesday, July 15. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 22. The Associated Press interviewed McCoy on-site, where he told reporters he had been locked up for 21 months and that it was the first time in a long while he had enjoyed "real food."
McCoy was not the only attendee facing serious charges. Ralph Veal, another inmate interviewed by the AP at the party, has pleaded not guilty to multiple felony counts of third-degree grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. He is awaiting trial in Manhattan. The criminal history of a third named attendee, Victor Caldas, photographed reacting to the match, was not disclosed.
The mayor visited Rikers that evening, greeting and speaking with inmates as the semifinal played. His office issued a news release recapping the city's World Cup programming, listing the Rikers watch parties alongside free fan festivals, discounted tickets, and neighborhood viewing events for the general public.
Mamdani framed the jail screenings as a matter of basic dignity. Fox News Digital quoted the mayor:
"These are New Yorkers, and they will be New Yorkers when they get out of Rikers."
That line captures the administration's posture neatly. The question it skips is whether every New Yorker convicted of carrying a loaded gun should earn a reward party a week before a judge decides how long he stays behind bars.
Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards backed the programming. "Programs like this equal safety in our jail," Richards said. The city reported that roughly 90 watch parties were held at Rikers during the tournament, with approximately 4,500 of the jail's roughly 6,600 inmates participating. Officials described the screenings as a reward for good behavior.
Richards himself is no ordinary commissioner. Mamdani appointed him earlier this year, making him the first formerly incarcerated person to hold the post. Richards was convicted of robbery in the late 1980s and served roughly seven years, two and a half at Rikers Island and four and a half in state prison, before his release in 1991, Breitbart reported when the appointment was announced. He earns $243,000 a year to oversee the same facility where he once did time.
Mamdani cast the hire as historic. "Stanley will make history in this role as the first ever formerly incarcerated person to serve as commissioner," the mayor said at the time. The administration has leaned hard into a rehabilitation-first philosophy, a pattern visible in Mamdani's handling of rising crime statistics and in his broader reluctance to use enforcement tools at his disposal.
But the system Richards inherited is in crisis. At least 76 people died in city custody between 2019 and 2025, including 15 last year alone. A federal judge appointed an independent remediation manager to oversee reforms at Rikers amid years of violence, staffing shortages, and findings that city officials had failed to correct unconstitutional conditions inside the jail.
Fox News Digital submitted public records requests seeking the identities of inmates selected for the watch parties, the criteria used to determine eligibility, and whether inmates charged with or convicted of violent felonies participated. The outlet also asked the Mayor's Office directly whether Mamdani was briefed on the criminal histories of the inmates who attended before his visit.
As of publication, no response had been reported. That silence matters. If the city's screening process allowed a man convicted on two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a loaded firearm to earn a "good behavior" reward, voters deserve to know what the threshold actually is.
McCoy's conviction was not minor or ambiguous. Queens County court records show he was found guilty on two felony gun counts plus misdemeanor charges for criminal use of drug paraphernalia and criminal possession of a controlled substance. The court remanded him without bail, a signal that the judge considered him either a flight risk or a danger. Seven days later, he was watching soccer with the mayor.
The Rikers watch party is not an isolated episode. It fits a broader pattern in which Mamdani's administration treats public safety as secondary to ideological signaling. The mayor has faced sustained criticism for his refusal to act on growing homeless encampments even as the NYPD waited for orders.
His first veto blocked a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting schools from antisemitic protests. His administration attempted a diplomatic freelance with Iran that the State Department had to shut down.
Each controversy shares the same DNA: a mayor more interested in making a political statement than in doing the unglamorous work of governing a city where people need to feel safe.
Hosting a World Cup screening at a jail is not, by itself, outrageous. Recreational programming exists in correctional facilities across the country, and there are legitimate arguments for incentivizing good behavior behind bars. Nobody disputes that inmates are human beings.
But there is a wide gap between acknowledging someone's humanity and staging a photo-ready event where the mayor mingles with convicted felons while the city cannot explain who was invited or why. Roughly 4,500 inmates, more than two-thirds of the Rikers population, reportedly took part in the tournament's watch parties. If the "good behavior" standard captures that large a share, it is not much of a standard at all.
The mayor's news release lumped the Rikers events in with neighborhood watch parties and discounted tickets, as if jailed felons and law-abiding soccer fans were part of the same community celebration. That framing tells you who the administration is performing for, and it is not the Brooklyn family whose neighborhood McCoy was carrying a loaded gun in before he got locked up.
McCoy faces sentencing on July 22. Whatever term the judge imposes, the record will show that one week earlier, the mayor of New York shook his hand at a party and called him a fellow New Yorker.
The victims of gun crime in Brooklyn might define the term differently.
