Inside the infirmary at Marcy Correctional Facility, Robert Brooks gasps on the edge of the bed. His face and nose are bloody. His hands are cuffed behind his back.
Prison guards Nicholas Anzalone and David Kingsley pull him by the shoulders to sit up. Anzalone closes his fist and lodges it in Brooks’ chest.
Officer Anthony Farina stands over Brooks, clenching and unclenching his hands inside black gloves. The tall, bald prison guard sets his shoulders like a fighter and angrily chews gum. He has already lifted his foot onto the bed and stomped Brooks in the groin, then rolled him over and punched him in the butt.
If the video does not play, view it on YouTube.
Farina is surrounded by colleagues in uniform, keys and cuffs dangling from their waists. Most of them made at least $100,000 last year. They are all white. Some of them are laughing.
Brooks is a Black man from Monroe County serving a 12-year sentence, found guilty of stabbing his girlfriend multiple times. He spent seven years at Mohawk Correctional Facility. At about 9:20 p.m. Dec. 9, he was transferred 12 miles to Marcy Correctional Facility.
Guards carried him into the prison facedown with his hands and feet tied behind his back.
They beat him unconscious.
Six hours later, he was dead.
On Friday, Attorney General Letitia James released video that shows a crowd of prison guards beating and restraining Brooks in the small infirmary.
The officers had not turned on their body cameras. But the technology has a “standby” mode that captures some video with no audio. James released 30 minutes of silent video from cameras worn by four different officers in the room.
The footage shows about 10 minutes of agony for Brooks. His body is limp. His hands and feet are restrained most of the time. He appears to be no threat to the officers who swung at him.
In all, 13 officers and one nurse have been named in the incident. Gov. Kathy Hochul, their boss, has ordered the Department of Corrections to start the process to fire them.
No one has been charged with a crime.
Brooks appears to have been fatally asphyxiated. The footage may have captured the moment.
Preliminary findings of an autopsy by the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office “show 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,” troopers wrote in a court filing earlier this week.
The most brutal moment in the video comes just two minutes after Brooks arrived in the infirmary.
A prison guard stuffed what appears to be a white cloth in Brooks’ mouth. Two guards pushed him back on the bed and punched him. Another guard put his left hand and his whole right arm around Brooks’ neck, then uses his hands to repeatedly yank Brooks’ off the hospital bed.
Another guard hit Brooks over and over with what appears to be the inmate’s own boot.
In the video, guards walk back and forth past the standard sign on the wall that shows what to do in case someone is choking.
After the beating, the camera footage shows Brooks lying on the hospital bed, stripped to his underwear.
Most of the prison guards have vacated. The nurses have dropped the smirks. They take his pulse. They hold a blue manual resuscitator bag over his face to help him breathe.
An officer picks up the phone on the wall and makes a call.
A nurse opens a cabinet on the wall and removes a small first-aid kit, the kind stored in a red bag with a white cross.
It is unclear what happened after that.
The attorney general’s office has not said how long it took for Brooks to get to Wynn Hospital in Utica. They have also not yet said what happened before Brooks came to Marcy or why he wound up in the infirmary.
The AG’s office has special powers under state law to investigate any deaths that result from an action, or inaction, of law enforcement officers, including corrections officers. The office can present evidence to a grand jury, which would then vote on whether to issue any indictments.
Brooks' family viewed the footage earlier this week. An attorney for the family said Brooks’ final moments “horrific and violent.”
The family is represented by attorney Elizabeth Mazur. She won $12 million for the family of Daniel Prude in a police brutality lawsuit against the city of Rochester.
She released a statement on behalf of the family Friday after the videos were released.
“Members of the public can now view for themselves the horrific and extreme nature of the deadly attack on Robert L. Brooks,” she said. “As viewers can see, Mr. Brooks was fatally, violently beaten by a group of officers whose job was to keep him safe.”
These are the 14 employees at Marcy Correctional Facility the governor has ordered to be fired in connection with the death of inmate Robert Brooks:
Officer Mathew Galliher
Officer Nicholas Anzalone
Officer David Kingsley
Officer Nicholas Kieffer
Officer Robert Kessler
Officer Michael Fisher
Officer Christopher Walrath
Officer Michael Along
Officer Shea Schoff
Officer David Walters
Officer Anthony Farina
Sgt. Michael Mashaw
Sgt. Glenn Trombly
Nurse Kyle Dashnaw
More on death of inmate at Marcy prison
- Why was one NY prison guard guilty of murdering Robert Brooks, but two others were cleared of all charges?
- Prison guard guilty of murder in beating death of inmate Robert Brooks; 2 other guards cleared of all charges
- No verdict yet in Robert Brooks murder trial as jury deliberations continue
- Jury now has the case: Are guards guilty of murdering inmate Robert Brooks?
- Defense rests without calling any witnesses in Robert Brooks murder trial
Contact Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com | 315-470-3186.
