The Death of Inmate Robert Brooks
What happened and what do we do now?
On December 9, 2024, an incident at Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County New York left Inmate Robert Brooks dead from an apparent beating at the hands of correctional officers. The video of this assault shocked the nation and now it appears that charges will be levied against those individuals involved.
So let me say that after viewing the video, the officers were absolutely in the wrong 100 percent. This is completely unlike my experience as a corrections professional of over 30 years. My experience has been one of largely dedicated men and women working together for the safety of the public as well as staff and inmates alike. It is often a dirty and dangerous job yet those brave individuals take it seriously.
In this case, in this video, Robert Woods was carried into the medical room, handcuffed and headfirst and face down. From that moment on the situation devolves into what clearly in my mind is an unwarranted and unnecessary use of force upon his person. This was not excessive force, this force was wholly and truly without any cause or justification whatsoever. He was defenseless and appeared incapable of compliance let alone taking any sort of combative actions toward staff. After entering the room it appears that one officer tries to gag him with a cloth and another chokes him while twisting his neck, one hits him with a shoe while another stomps his groin. He is also repeatedly hit and pulled to his feet and roughed up.
I categorically condemn the actions of these individuals and the lack of leadership, training, oversight and best practices which lead to it by their supervisors, managers, administrators and politicians which fostered such an evil culture.
When I first began in corrections, after my academy and before I walked into San Quentin State Prison, I took an oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States and that of the State of California. The purpose of such allegiances is to provide those in service with a guide a compass which keeps their path straight and true in the midst of uncertainty and the temptation to act on our baser natures.
Those constitutions set in stone the rights of all within the borders of their authority. It lets none of decide who’s rights we will protect or those we will not. You have an affirmative duty to act in the face of laws being broken, an imminent injury to any person or the violation of policy and procedure.
To implement these things there must be a robust culture of responsibility and duty along with a sense of responsibility to one’s oath, one’s profession, one’s honor and one’s duty. We need to cast off the inmate credos about snitches and the like and expect that each of us should never expect another to help cover up what we have set in motion. One should not expect others to risk their liberty, their career or their good name for a dirty deed that wished to engage in at the expense of their oath. A culture that honors the oath will keep officers safer, both personally and professionally. It will instill a higher sense of confidence by the public. It will bring more talent and more dedicated individuals into the field. This opens up the the decision making process of policy and procedure to the scoundrels we call politicians, making bad policy, unsafe procedures, unaccountability for inmates in a manner where expediency for the sake of some corrupt agenda hold more value for them than the health and welfare of their employees.
So whether you are frontline staff or an administrator, you can work to bring leadership forward in a manner that does instill a worthwhile culture from the bottom up. My partners, Anthony Gangi, Joe Pomponio and I have worked to bring some really cutting edge deep dives into this incident in a series of videos which we felt necessary to produce in a way to examine the faults and spark change to the industry. We hope you can use these in training to effect such change.