Video Shows Fatal Beating of Robert Brooks by N.Y. Prison Officers

Robert Brooks died after a savage attack at a New York prison this month that was captured by several officers’ body-worn cameras.

Corrections officers punched and kicked a handcuffed, shackled inmate in the groin and chest during a fatal attack at a prison in central New York this month, video footage released publicly on Friday shows.

The footage was recorded by body cameras worn by four of the officers. It was made public by Letitia James, the state attorney general, as part of her office’s investigation into the death of the man, Robert Brooks, and the beating that preceded it.

Among other things, the videos show one corrections officer using a booted foot to kick Mr. Brooks, whose face is bloodied, and then force him onto his back on an infirmary examination table while another officer punches Mr. Brooks in the upper body.

Ms. James said that the eight videos her office released depicted “shocking and disturbing” behavior.

“I do not take lightly the release of this video, especially in the middle of the holiday season,” she said during an online presentation. “But as the attorney general I release these videos because I have a responsibility and duty to provide the Brooks family, their loved ones and all New Yorkers with transparency and accountability.”

Ms. James’s investigation could result in criminal charges for some or all of those implicated in the assault, as could inquiries by the State Police and the corrections department’s Office of Special Investigations.

Mr. Brooks was Black and all the officers in the video appear to be white. Ms. James did not mention race in her description of the beating. But in a watchdog report issued last year about the prison, the Marcy Correctional Facility, nearly 70 percent of inmates who were interviewed reported racial bias among staff members.

The videos were released two weeks after the deadly attack and several days after Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was moving to fire the 14 prison workers implicated in the attack. Officials expected the footage to provoke a fierce public outcry.

The footage was previously described as “horrific” by members of Mr. Brooks’s family and “incomprehensible” by the prison officers’ union. The videos do not include sound; the officers’ cameras were running but they do not record audio unless the officer activates the device to film an encounter.

The body-camera videos show officers punching and kicking Mr. Brooks as he lies on an infirmary table with his hands cuffed behind his back. At one point, two officers yank him up and drag him to the back of the room, where they press him against a window. He sinks down, and the officers hoist him back up and push him against the window again.

A short time later, Mr. Brooks sinks down again, and the officers lift his body, which appears limp, into the air.

Mr. Brooks is next seen back on the examination table, motionless and bleeding. Officers strip him to his undergarments and rub his chest as two medical workers stand nearby.

The footage does not show Mr. Brooks doing anything to provoke the attack or to incite the officers to continue it. Several officers appear to be the main aggressors, while others walk in and out of the room, chatting among themselves and watching their colleagues treat Mr. Brooks like a rag doll. No one tries to halt the attack.

Mr. Brooks, 43, was declared dead at a Utica hospital early on Dec. 10, officials have said. The Onondaga County medical examiner’s office is conducting an autopsy and will determine the cause and manner of his death.

The autopsy had not been completed as of Thursday, according to a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. The Onondaga County district attorney’s office will disclose the cause and manner of death once they have been determined, said the spokeswoman, Mariah Senecal-Reilly.

In court filings this week, State Police investigators said that “preliminary findings” from the medical examiner’s office showed “concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another.” The videos showed that at several points, officers appeared to choke Mr. Brooks and forcefully picked him up and pushed him down by his throat.

Ms. Senecal-Reilly declined to comment.

The attack and death came to light on Dec. 15, when the state’s corrections commissioner, Daniel F. Martuscello III, said that an unnamed inmate had died after a “use of force” by staff members at the prison in Marcy, N.Y., about 50 miles east of Syracuse.

Mr. Brooks was identified as the victim the next day. He had been serving a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty in Monroe County in 2017 to first-degree assault in the stabbing of a former girlfriend, according to state prison records and local news reports.

The corrections employees implicated in the attack — 13 officers and a nurse — were placed on administrative leave amid the investigations by Ms. James’s office, the State Police and the corrections department’s Office of Special Investigations.

The attorney general is empowered to investigate the deaths of civilians in encounters with the police or corrections officers. She said last Saturday that her office, as part of its inquiry, had obtained the video of the incident. In line with the office’s policy, Ms. James said, the footage would be released once Mr. Brooks’s family had seen it.

That happened on Monday. Elizabeth Mazur, a lawyer for members of Mr. Brooks’s family, said then that watching “the horrific and violent final moments of Robert’s life” had been “devastating.”

After the footage’s release, Ms. Mazur said the public would see “the extreme nature of the deadly attack on Robert L. Brooks.”

“Mr. Brooks was fatally, violently beaten by a group of officers whose job was to keep him safe,” she said. “He deserved to live, and everyone else living in Marcy Correctional Facility deserves to know they do not have to live in fear of violence at the hands of prison staff.”

Ms. Hochul said last weekend that, after an internal review, she had directed Mr. Martuscello to begin the process of terminating the 14 employees. (One officer accused of participating, Anthony Farina, has resigned, the corrections department said.)

“We have no tolerance for individuals who cross the line, break the law and engage in unnecessary violence or targeted abuse,” Ms. Hochul said.

On Friday, the governor said she was “committed to holding everyone involved fully accountable.”

Mr. Martuscello had previously said that the employees in question had been suspended without pay as a step toward termination. Firing them, he said, was “in the best interest of the agency and the communities we serve.”

On Friday, he said that the “video evidence of Robert Brooks’s life being taken left me feeling deeply repulsed and nauseated.”

The others facing termination, according to the department, are Sgts. Michael Mashaw and Glenn Trombly; Officers Matthew Galliher, Nicholas Anzalone, Nicholas Kieffer; David Kingsley, Robert Kessler, Michael Fisher, Christopher Walrath, Michael Along, Shea Schoff and David Walters; and Kyle Dashnaw, a nurse.

Unless those accused of participating in the attack are criminally charged, arbitration and union rules could make it difficult to fire them. Before the footage was released but after members of its board had seen portions of it, the union that represents corrections employees said in a statement that it would fulfill its obligation “to represent all of its members,” but it strongly condemned what the 14 were accused of doing.

The union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, noted in the statement that members of its executive board had seen footage of a small portion of the attack.

“What we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day,” the union said, adding, “We cannot and will not condone this behavior.”

State prison records show that Mr. Brooks had been serving his sentence at Mohawk Correctional Facility, which is about a 15-minute drive from the Marcy prison. Both are medium-security facilities.

Ms. James said he had been moved on the day of the attack. She did not say what had prompted the move. A corrections department spokesman, citing the continuing investigations, declined to comment.

Nearly a decade ago, an investigation by The New York Times documented the prevalence of brutality by prison guards across New York State and a corrections department that seldom held anyone accountable.

The report by The Times, which examined 60,000 prisoner disciplinary cases from 2015, found that Black and Latino inmates were punished at twice the rate of white inmates, sent to solitary confinement more often and held there longer.

Andrew M. Cuomo, the governor at the time, ordered the state inspector general to investigate racial bias in the prisons. A report released six years later affirmed The Times’s findings.

The department made a number of changes meant to improve the system, including: revising disciplinary policies; reducing hearing officers’ discretion; diversifying the work force; and providing training on recognizing and mitigating implicit bias.

Yet an investigation published by The Times last year in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, found that little had changed.

In its report last year, the Correctional Association of New York, the state’s independent prison watchdog, documented the findings of a monitoring visit to the Marcy prison in October 2022.

At the time of the visit, the association found, 41 percent of Marcy prisoners were Black and 21 percent were Hispanic. The state inspector general reported in 2022 that 91 percent of the prison’s staff members were white.

Four out of five inmates interviewed at the prison, which holds about 800 men, reported having witnessed or experienced abuse by staff members, according to the association’s report, which urged state officials to investigate the allegations.

One interviewee said that physical abuse was “rampant.” When he arrived at Marcy, he added, a corrections officer had told him: “‘This is a hands-on facility. We’re going to put hands on you if we don’t like what you’re doing.’”

After seeing the footage, Jennifer Scaife, the association’s executive director, said she was struck by the images of “people smiling,” “people who appeared amused” and people milling about as if nothing unusual was happening.

“It’s just sickening,” she said.

Jan Ransom, Hurubie Meko, Dave Andreatta, Riley Mellen, Nailah Morgan and Arijeta Lajka contributed reporting. Alain Delaquérière contributed research. Nailah Morgan and Arijeta Lajka contributed video production.