In a video that has made international headlines, a group of guards at Marcy prison upstate, some with smiles, punch and kick a handcuffed prisoner who died seven hours later.
For many formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, the scene of a handcuffed Robert Brooks, 43, being beaten by a team of state prison correction officers while in a medical bed on Dec. 10 was not shocking at all.
“That’s just how the system is. It’s been going on forever,” said Greg Mingo, who served nearly 40 years in state prison before he was granted clemency in 2021 by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo on his last day in office.
State correction officers often view incarcerated people as “less than human that don’t deserve empathy,” Mingo added.
Brooks died at a Utica hospital approximately seven hours after the beating by 13 guards that was caught on tape, officials said. All told, 143 people died last year inside a state prison — the highest total in five years, according to state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision records.
Some 107 died in 2023; 111 in 2022; 137 in 2021 during the pandemic; 115 in 2020; and 113 in 2019, state prison records show.
Many of the cases are labeled as natural causes while some remain undetermined. The state attorney general’s office, which has been tasked with investigating prison violence since 2021, has not brought charges against prison staff in any of those hundreds of deaths.
Bruce Bryan, 55, from Queens, who did 29 years in New York state prison, said what he saw on the 20-minute video of the deadly assault is “standard behavior.”
In 2008, a group of six correction officers yanked Bryan from his bed at 3:30 a.m., beat him, and tossed him into solitary confinement while he was doing time at Great Meadows Correctional Facility, according to the former inmate, who was granted clemency by Gov. Kathy Hochul in December 2022.
They accused him of having an affair with a prison nurse who was married to a correction officer, he said.
He did 10 days in solitary confinement before he got shipped off to another prison, said Bryan, who added that he filed multiple internal prison grievances that never went his way.
“This is common practice,” he added. “I’ve watched them throw handcuffed people down the stairs.”
‘Rodney King Moment’
Attorney Glenn Miller and his law partner Ed Sivin, who have represented hundreds of incarcerated individuals who have sued the state prison system alleging similar violence, noted that the Brooks case is unique in one way.
“What is most unusual about the beatdown of Mr. Brooks is that it was captured on video,” Miller told THE CITY.
Mingo called it the state prison system’s “Rodney King moment,” referring to a video of cops severely beating a Black motorist in Los Angeles in March 1991, opening much of the public’s eye to police brutality.
In the Brooks case, four of the officers had body cameras that weren’t manually turned on but the devices still captured video without sound, according to authorities.
The other officers at the scene either blocked their body cams or didn’t have them on, officials investigating the case said.
At one point, two officers are seen putting their hands on Brooks’ mouth while others punch and kick him. One officer kicked him in the groin as he was held down by other officers.
During the attack, one guard picks him up by the throat, the video shows. Brooks’ face is bloodied and he’s struggling to breath, the body camera footage reveals.
State prison officials are moving to fire the 13 prison staffers involved, including one nurse, Hochul announced on Dec. 22.
But none have been criminally charged.
Attorney General Letitia James, whose office is charged with investigating all law enforcement-related deaths, was initially handling the case.
But the AGsaid she has a conflict of interest: Her office is also representing two officers involved in another lawsuit filed by a prisoner alleging similar abuse, she said in a statement.
So on Thursday she appointed Onondaga District Attorney William Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor for the Brooks case.
Overall, she has probed just two state prison deaths since 2021, according to an annual report published in October. She determined the officers did not violate the law in any of those cases.
Over the years, many incarcerated people have sued, alleging almost unimaginable abuses — like waterboarding — by state correction officers.
Nearly a decade ago, two state prisoners accused a prison lieutenant of pouring buckets of water over their mouths and noses as they were shackled in Auburn Correctional Facility in separate incidents.
In one case, on Sept. 14, 2016, Mathew Raymond said the prison supervisor beat him so badly he now needs a catheter to urinate. In 2018, Raymond sued the officer and state prison officials.
“He felt like he was drowning and could not catch his breath,” according to the lawsuit.
Internally, DOCCS initially reviewed Raymond’s allegation but concluded it was unfounded. The department reopened an investigation into the accusations after another prisoner made an identical complaint.
Prison investigators also tossed that follow up probe, court records show.
The case has recently settled in Albany Supreme Court. But the payout amount has not been formally listed yet on the court docket.
Beaten by Same Guard in Same Prison
For Katie Rosenfeld, the lawyer who represents Raymond, the Brooks case is familiar.
“The reality is that DOCCS leadership has tolerated officers’ violence against incarcerated people for too long, allowing officers to beat people in their custody and cover up these beatings without consequence,” she said. “If DOCCS had done anything about the officers at Marcy — who it should have known were routinely abusing incarcerated people — Mr. Brooks might still be alive today.”
Rosenfeld is also representing Adam Bauer who says he was also brutally beaten by guards, including one allegedly involved in the Brooks attack, Nicolas Anzaline, inside Marcy Correctional Facility in 2020.
Bauer said he, too, was brought to the infirmary where he was pushed down on his face on the floor “while CO [correction officer] Anzaline kicked his feet,” according to the lawsuit filed in upstate federal court. The legal case, which is still pending, also names several other guards.
“Adam thought he would die that day, as officers punched and kicked him to a bloody heap,” Rosenfeld said. “The officers then lied to cover up the beating. No officer was ever disciplined.”
After the assault, the officers told a department nurse that the cuts on Bauer’s face were actually done to himself, according to the lawsuit. The officers later said he was beaten by another incarcerated person, the legal filing charges.
As for the Brooks case, a spokesperson for James’ office said no criminal charges were brought against the officers yet because they are waiting for the medical examiner’s official cause of death.
Ron Kuby, a civil rights attorney, said that shouldn’t matter and noted that they could be hit at least with gang assault charges which could be increased after the cause of death is determined.
He called it a double standard for officers versus regular people.
“That’s not how they treat my clients who commit murder,” he said. “It’s deeply troubling that they have not yet been charged. And it suggests a lack of interest in vigorously pursuing this case, which is exactly the situation that has prevailed in the 40 years I’ve been practicing law.”
