New York corrections officers pummeled a shackled inmate in a state prison hours before he died this month, showed body-camera footage released by the New York attorney general’s office. The incident prompted condemnations from officials, and terminations and policy changes from the head of the state’s prison system. Robert Brooks died Dec. 10, a day after he was transferred to Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, said New York Attorney General Letitia James. The night he arrived, video shows corrections officers took Brooks to a medical examination room and struck him repeatedly. Brooks appears limp and bloodied, the Washington Post reports. The videos show Brooks handcuffed and seated on an examination table, being held upright by his neck by one officer while another appears to attempt to wipe blood off of Brooks’s face. Then he and another officer punch Brooks repeatedly in the head and legs.
It did not appear from the two hours of footage captured by four officers’ cameras that Brooks physically provoked or resisted the officers. Questions surrounded the incident after New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Commissioner Daniel Martuscello reported Brooks’s death on Dec. 15.
Martuscello called the incident a “vulgar, inhumane act that senselessly took a life.” He ordered an expansion of the department’s body camera policies, requiring officers to activate cameras whenever they engage directly with inmates and requiring daily audits to check compliance. Martuscello started the process of terminating 13 staff members involved in the incident, who are currently suspended without pay. Another employee resigned.