New York State prison guards have been on a wildcat strike for over 15 days, following some of their own being charged for the brutal beating of Black prisoner Robert Brooks by white officers. Chaos in the state’s prison system has ensued, with seven other inmates dying since the strike began.
Shocking body camera footage revealed how multiple prison guards at Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York beat Brooks to death while he was handcuffed and bleeding. The footage was released by state Attorney General Letitia James on December 27, 2024, and the killing occurred on December 9.
The footage revealed a striking disregard for Brooks’ life. The video showed that one of the officers forced an object into Brooks’ mouth, while another held his throat, after which multiple officers began to brutally beat Brooks. At one point, two officers lifted Brooks by his shirt in an attempt to throw him out of a window.
A preliminary examination determined that Brooks’ cause of death was “asphyxia due to compression of the neck” from the beating.
Rebellion against accountability
Many of the prison employees involved have since been held accountable for Brooks’ death. On December 21, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul directed the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to begin the termination of 13 officers and one prison nurse involved in the beating. On February 20, murder, gang assault, manslaughter, and tampering with evidence charges were brought against several of the officers involved. Five of the officers have been charged with murder. 18 corrections employees were suspended following Brooks’ killing in December.
Prison employees began a wildcat strike two weeks after Brooks’ killing was declared a homicide, on February 17. According to some prisoners, the strike is directly related to the loss of impunity to kill and torture inmates. “It happened because correction officers have been held accountable for their actions, and they feel threatened because they can be prosecuted for killing an incarcerated individual,” one New York State prisoner told The Hell Gate.
According to the nonprofit legal aid provider the Legal Aid Society, the strike is an effort to make a “political point” against restrictions of solitary confinement within prisons, and “to deflect from the brutal killing of Mr. Robert Brooks.”
“Their actions this week only serve to reinforce The Legal Aid Society’s view that New York’s prison system is inherently brutal. This resistance to transparency and accountability gives us no confidence that DOCCS facilities can protect and respect the humanity and dignity of those in prison,” LAS said in a statement.
What began as a strike of hundreds ballooned into a work stoppage in which nine out of ten New York State prison guards were refusing to work, in a strike that was never sanctioned by the leadership of their union, the New York State Correction Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA). The strike became the largest strike in the state’s prisons in over four decades.
The right to torture with impunity is at the root of the guard strike
Striking prison guards lambasted low staffing levels, as well as the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (HALT) Act, which reduced the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons. Solitary confinement is an internationally recognized method of torture.
“Now these guys are all in [the general prison] population, they commit a major offense, they remain in population where they can hurt others and hurt us!” a striking prison guard, Israel Sanchez, told CBS News in February.
Despite the strike never being officially sanctioned by members of the union, on Thursday, February 27, the state reached a deal with union leaders in order to end the strike which included a 90-day suspension of the HALT law.
“We are suspending the elements of HALT that cannot safely be operationalized under a prison-wide state of emergency until we can safely operate the prisons,” wrote Daniel Martuscello III, the state corrections commissioner, in a memo titled “Path to Restoring Workforce.” Martuscello III has been referred to as the “scion” of New York State’s “prison dynasty” based on his family’s deep historic involvement in the state’s prison leadership, characterized by nepotism. Martuscello’s popularity among guards has plummeted recently due to his acquiescence to some reform following Brooks’ killing, and his implementation of the HALT law in the first place.
Antony Gemmell, supervising attorney for the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society, denounced the decision to suspend HALT. “It’s not acceptable for the commissioner to just say, ‘Well, we’re just suspending indeterminate provisions of HALT for indeterminate reasons,’” Gemmell told the New York Times.
Prison guards wage brutal riot in 2016
Brooks’ murder is far from an isolated incident, and instead reveals the brutal reality of conditions within New York’s prisons—the state where the Attica prison rebellion of 1971 took place, a historic example of resistance to the US prison system.
“The tragic death of Robert Brooks underscores the urgent need for the state to address deeply rooted issues plaguing New York’s prisons,” said Jennifer Scaife, Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York (CANY), an independent organization that monitors conditions in New York State prisons.
Marcy Correctional Facility, where Brooks was killed, is particularly notorious for its brutality. In 2016, prison guards staged a riot in the prison after they, erroneously, assumed that one of their ranks had been injured by an inmate. Prisoners reported being brutally beaten by guards after they stormed into the prison dormitory in the early morning of July 6, 2016: one inmate described being slammed into a wall headfirst and another claimed that guards slammed his head repeatedly with a metal door. In 2024, a judge ruled that at least 31 guards had inflicted all manner of brutality, including sexual assault, against Marcy inmates.
At least three prisoners reported being sexually assaulted by guards during this riot. According to prisoner Raymond Broccoli, a guard hissed in his ear “You want to know what it feels like to feel weak?” after which the prison employee assaulted him with “something metal,” Broccoli told reporters with The New York Times.
“One inmate testified that an officer tore up 50 family photos in front of him, while another said guards poured food all over his legal paperwork, destroying it,” writes Syracuse.com. “Some guards at the medium-security prison hit the inmates with fire extinguishers.”
Despite the barbaric behavior of the guards, none were ever held to any account following this riot. When the corrections department’s Office of Special Investigations was called in, they were met with the infamous “blue wall of silence,” in which law enforcement officers refuse to report their colleagues’ misconduct due to an unspoken code of extreme loyalty. Marcy guards didn’t “want to be what they would call a snitch,” senior investigator Donald Oliver testified in a trial in 2023.
Conditions worsen in prisons following guard strike
The wildcat strike by prison guards has only worsened the conditions within New York State prisons. Since the strike, seven prisoners have died within the system. “We are hearing from clients across the state that they are not receiving critical medical care,” Antony Gemmell told The New York Times. “If these strikes continue, I think it’s a question not of if we will see more deaths, but when.”
According to reports from nine inmates, yet another prisoner, whose name has not been released, was beaten to death at a separate prison near Marcy Correctional Facility, during the guard strike. Eleven correctional staff members have been placed on leave following the death.
New York State itself is not isolated in these conditions. Data and reports show that the entire US prison system is plagued by institutional violence. In Los Angeles County, 30 juvenile detention officers are facing charges over their alleged role in facilitating “gladiator fights” between youth detainees, with an indictment alleging that these employees “allowed and, in some instances, encouraged” 69 brawls at a juvenile facility in Downey, California.
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