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Protesters in New York gathered at separate demonstrations in Manhattan and Albany on Monday, holding up signs reading “Black Lives Matter” and “Justice for Robert Brooks” days after a disturbing video of the Black inmate’s fatal beating at the hands of correctional officers was released.
Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old man serving a 12-year sentence for assault, died in the early hours of December 10 after being beaten by at least three officers at Marcy Correctional Facility, an all-male state prison in north Albany.
His death has enraged activists, one of whom called the incident a symptom of a decades-long system “designed to dehumanize the people it takes and puts behind the wall.”
“This isn’t just about Robert Brooks,” Jamaica Miles, the co-founder of All Of Us, an anti-racist organization based in Schenectady, said to CNN affiliate WRGB. “There are family members standing with us right now whose loved ones are in that same prison.”
In a statement released Saturday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was “outraged and horrified” by Brooks’ “senseless killing” and announced Monday she would appoint a new superintendent at Marcy Correctional Facility and expedite $400 million to install fixed cameras and distribute body-worn cameras at all Department of Corrections and Community Service facilities.
The New York Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigations has launched an investigation into Brooks’ death. The FBI and Department of Justice are also reviewing the case. Here’s what we know:
Brooks was transferred from Mohawk Correctional Facility to Marcy Correctional Facility on the morning of December 9, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who released footage of the beating Friday.
The eight videos, dated from the evening of December 9 and reviewed by CNN, were taken from body-worn cameras on four different officers. They begin with Brooks – face down with his hands cuffed behind his back – being carried into a medical examination room by three officers. It is unclear what led up to this moment.
One officer appears to shove a white material in Brooks’ mouth as another officer holds Brooks by the throat. The officer then repeatedly punches Brooks in the face, while another officer punches him in the groin. One officer is seen striking Brooks with a shoe.
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Two officers then pull Brooks to a seated upright position at the edge of an exam table –– one officer holding Brooks by his neck –– before laying him flat on his back. Another officer then puts his foot on Brooks’ lower torso, while another officer hits him again in the chest.
The officer who struck Brooks with his leg is then seen restraining Brooks’ legs before punching him in the buttocks approximately three times.
He and another officer appear to yank Brooks up to the edge of the exam table once again, his face visibly bloody. Brooks appears to speak before an officer punches him in the chest again.
Two officers then grab Brooks by the collar of his shirt and shoulder area, picking him off the table before forcing him to the back right corner of the room and holding him up against a wall as other officers look on.
Minutes later, one of the officers gives Brooks a sternum rub –– a technique used to assess if a person is conscious. The footage ends with Brooks no longer handcuffed, lying on the table, motionless in his underwear.
The Department of Corrections named 14 staff who were connected to Brooks’ death. As of December 31, none of the officers have been charged with wrongdoing.
CNN has not been able to confirm the specific identities of the officers shown in the video, or what role each named person is alleged to have had.
A review of court documents obtained by CNN shows, however, that at least three of the officers involved in Brooks’ beating were previously accused of assault.
Two of the New York officers, Sgt. Glenn Trombly and Officer Anthony Farina, were named in a complaint filed in federal court in 2022, based on a 2020 incident which occurred at Marcy prison.
The complaint alleges as another correctional officer beat a handcuffed inmate at the correctional facility, Trombly and Farina “looked on and failed to intervene in any manner to prevent or stop the beating,” leaving the plaintiff with “a permanent facial deformity.” The case remains pending.
The plaintiff’s attorney told CNN it was office policy not to comment on pending cases.
Farina resigned from his role at the Marcy Correctional Facility after Brooks’ death, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision told CNN Monday.
A different officer, Nicholas Anzalone, who was named by the department, is also named in a separate federal complaint in 2022, stating he joined an assault on an inmate by another correctional officer at the same facility.
The complaint alleges the officer was involved in a cover-up fabricating disciplinary charges against the inmate, who was left with “substantial physical and mental injuries.” The case is still ongoing.
The inmate’s attorney, Katie Rosenfeld, told CNN her client was “brutally assaulted in 2020 at Marcy CF, the same prison where Robert Brooks was just murdered (involving) one of the same corrections officers.”
Her client “thought he would die that day, as officers punched and kicked him to a bloody heap. The officers then lied to cover up the beating,” Rosenfeld’s statement says.
Rosenfeld added, “If DOCCS (the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision) had done anything about the officers at Marcy who it knew were routinely terrorizing incarcerated people, Mr. Brooks would still be alive today.”
The correctional officers’ union, which typically speaks on behalf of prison employees, issued a statement that described the footage as “incomprehensible to say the least” and “certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day.”
CNN has reached out to the named officers for comment. None of the officers or their representatives have commented since the video came to light.
Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, told CNN it seemed possible Brooks sustained a fatal spinal cord injury when officers lifted him from the table by his shirt.
Authorities have not released a cause of death for Brooks.
“My jaw hit the floor when I saw it,” Faust said, “because it looked like just enough force in the right direction to do real damage.” He noted that although Brooks was previously alert, he does not seem to move or react to stimuli after officers pick him up.
The way that officers lifted Brooks hyperextended his neck, Faust explained. This could have “caused a devastating spinal cord injury, the result of which would be immediate or almost immediate paralysis of the body, including the respiratory muscles,” he said.
Brooks appeared to be compliant and was not posing a threat when officers were using force against him, which is considered excessive by standard police protocol, one law enforcement expert told CNN.
“Just because someone is handcuffed does not mean they cannot be subjected to force. However – and this is a big however – if someone is no longer a direct threat to the officers and is complying with instructions, it would certainly be excessive to strike them, choke them, et cetera,” said Bryce Peterson, adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a senior research scientist at the Center for Justice Research and Innovation.
Peterson said potential excessive use of force is evident in the video “when officers are cleaning blood off Mr. Brooks’ face and then begin to strike him – and continue to strike and grab him for the next 30 seconds.”
A US Supreme Court ruling in 1992 sets the standard for police use of force, said Peterson, who was part of a team that later did the first evaluation of a correctional body-camera program at a jail in Loudoun County, Virginia. The ruling established force is “only justified when it is used to maintain or establish discipline,” he said.
Peterson said it’s notable, from the footage, that Brooks was already injured when he first appears in the video and the investigation will need to determine whether his injuries were “from a prior use of force by correctional officers, or an inmate-on-inmate altercation.”
CNN’s Chris Boyette, Caroll Alvarado and Tanika Gray contributed to this report.
