LOCKED IN

Two murders, a strike, and an explosive year inside New York's prisons.

- BY JENNIFER GONNERMAN

For men with memories of abuse by correction officers, footage of a fatal beating was "like a boomerang," one said.

J. B. Nicholas runs a news website called The Free Lance from his home in upstate New York, and, near the end of last year, he started obsessively tracking one story: a man confined at a state prison outside of Utica had died in early December after an encounter with correction officers. Reporting on a prison death can be tricky, but, in this case, there was evidence that rarely exists—video footage.

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, promised to release the footage, and, shortly before noon on December 27th, Nicholas was seated at his computer, waiting for James's virtual press conference to begin. Nicholas, who is fifty-five, brought unusual expertise to this story: he had spent twelve years in the state's prison system, from 1991 to 2003, serving time for manslaughter.

James appeared on his computer monitor, framed by the U.S. and the New York State flags. She explained that the videos were from body-worn cameras that the officers had on “at the time of the incident.” The cameras had been powered on, but not activated, so the officers did not realize they were recording. “These videos are shocking and disturbing,” James said. “I encourage taking caution before viewing.”

In the footage, a forty-three-year-old Black man named Robert Brooks appears in prison greens. It is 9:21 P.M. on December 9th, and Brooks is outdoors, on a walkway at Marcy Correctional Facility. He is surrounded by officers. At 9:22 P.M., three of them carry him by his limbs—wrists cuffed behind him, head hanging down—into a building, and then into a room in the infirmary. Two stethoscopes hang on the wall by the door, next to a poster about how to aid a choking victim. The guards place Brooks on a gurney covered by exam paper. And then a group of officers, all of whom appear to be white, start beating him.