Bodycam video shows officers beating handcuffed man before his death at N.Y. prison
Warning: This story and video contain details of violence.
Newly released video of a fatal New York prison beating shows correctional officers repeatedly pummelling a handcuffed man, striking him in the chest with a shoe, and lifting him by the neck and dropping him.
Body camera footage of the Dec. 9 assault on Robert Brooks was made public Friday by the state’s attorney general, who is investigating the officers’ use of force.
Brooks, 43, was pronounced dead at a hospital the morning after the assault at the Marcy Correctional Facility, a state prison where was incarcerated in Oneida County.
Thirteen correctional officers and a nurse implicated in the attack will face termination, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said she was “outraged and horrified” by videos of the “senseless killing.”
Like all New Yorkers, I was outraged and horrified after seeing footage of the senseless killing of Robert Brooks. <br><br>My full statement here: <a href=”https://t.co/JAqfmDN4hx”>pic.twitter.com/JAqfmDN4hx</a>
—@GovKathyHochul
The footage made public Friday shows correctional officers repeatedly punching Brooks in the face and groin as he sits handcuffed on a medical examination table.
As one of the officers uses a shoe to strike Brooks in the stomach, another yanks him up by his neck and drops him back on the table. The officers then remove the man’s shirt and pants as he lies on his back, motionless and bloodied.
“These videos are shocking and disturbing and I advise all to take appropriate care before choosing to watch them,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said.
The final results of Brooks’s autopsy are still pending.
Preliminary findings from a medical examination indicate “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,” according to court filings.
Newly released bodycam footage shows correctional officers at a prison in Upstate New York hitting and kicking a handcuffed prisoner before his death. New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office, which is investigating the incident, released the footage on Friday.
‘Horrific and extreme’
The videos do not include audio because the body cameras had not been activated by the officers wearing them.
The state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision issued a directive in the wake of Brooks’s death requiring that staff use body cameras in every interaction with incarcerated people.
James said her office was investigating the use of force that led to Brooks’s death, but did not say whether any of the officers would be charged with crimes.
With the release of the videos, “members of the public can now view for themselves the horrific and extreme nature of the deadly attack on Robert L. Brooks,” said a lawyer for his family, Elizabeth Mazur.
“As viewers can see, Mr. Brooks was fatally, violently beaten by a group of officers whose job was to keep him safe,” Mazur said. “He deserved to live, and everyone else living in Marcy Correctional Facility deserves to know they do not have to live in fear of violence at the hands of prison staff.”
‘Systemic issues’
The union for state correctional officers, which viewed footage of the assault before its public release, said in a statement: “What we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day.”
“This incident not only endangers our entire membership but undermines the integrity of our profession. We cannot and will not condone this behaviour,” said the union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association.
Brooks had been serving a 12-year prison sentence for first-degree assault since 2017. He had arrived at the Marcy Correctional Facility only hours before the beating, after being transferred from another nearby state prison, officials said.
Marcy is about 323 kilometres northwest of New York City, between the cities of Rome and Utica.
Correctional Association of New York (CANY) Statement on the Release of Video Depicting the Killing of<br>Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility <a href=”https://t.co/nLN2irOo3u”>pic.twitter.com/nLN2irOo3u</a>
—@CANY_1844
The Correctional Association of New York, a prison oversight group, said it had documented reports of pervasive brutality and racism inside the Marcy Correctional Facility during a monitoring visit two years ago.
The organization’s executive director, Jennifer Scaife, said the footage of Brooks being beaten “is sickening and appalling, but not surprising” given its previous findings. She called on the state prison system to “address the systemic issues that allow such brutality to flourish.”
David Condliffe, the executive director of the alternatives-to-incarceration nonprofit Center for Community Alternatives, said in a statement: “For every instance caught on camera, countless more acts of violence and murder in prisons are ignored, justified, or covered up.
“Accountability must include, but cannot stop with, the firing of a few individuals. Their violence is not an anomaly; it is the product of a system steeped in impunity.”
Published at Sat, 28 Dec 2024 23:35:29 +0000
Medics among hundreds detained by Israel after raid on Gaza hospital
Israeli forces detained more than 240 Palestinians from a north Gaza hospital they raided on Friday, including the hospital’s director and dozens of medical staff, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and Israel’s military.
The Health Ministry said it was concerned for the well-being of Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, as some staff freed by the Israeli military late Friday said he had been beaten by soldiers.
The Israeli military said the hospital was being used as a command centre for Hamas military operations and those arrested were suspected militants. It said Abu Safiya had been taken for questioning as he was suspected of being a Hamas operative.
On Friday, Hamas dismissed Israel’s assertion that its fighters had operated from the hospital throughout the 15-month-old Gaza war, saying no fighters had been in the hospital. The group had not yet commented on the 240 arrests.
In its statement on Saturday, Hamas urged the UN and relevant international agencies to intervene urgently to protect the remaining hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza, and to supply them.
The group also called for UN observers to be sent to medical facilities in Gaza to refute the Israeli allegations that they were being used for military purposes.
The raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X on Friday.
In a statement released Saturday, it said: “WHO is appalled by yesterday’s raid. The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on North Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk.”
Some patients were evacuated from Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital, which is not in service, and medics were prevented from joining them there, the Health Ministry said. Other patients and staff were taken to other medical facilities.
Devastation in north Gaza
The Israeli military said 350 patients and medical personnel had been evacuated prior to the Kamal Adwan operation, while another 95 had been evacuated to the Indonesian Hospital during the operation, in co-ordination with local health authorities.
Separately, the Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli strikes across the enclave killed 18 Palestinians on Saturday, at least nine of them in a house in Maghazi camp in central Gaza.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes and fatalities.
In the past few months, Israeli forces have pushed people out and razed much of the area around the northern Gaza towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Amnesty International has accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a new report, an allegation Israel vehemently denied, saying it has respected international law.
Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing by depopulating those areas to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it is doing this, saying it aims to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in the areas.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had begun operating overnight against targets in the Beit Hanoun area, adding that “troops are enabling civilians still in the area to move away for their own safety.”
It then ordered residents to leave and head toward southern parts of Gaza.
It said two rockets fired from north Gaza, including one toward Jerusalem, had been intercepted.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas, which previously controlled Gaza, has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israeli PM to undergo surgery
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go into hospital to have his prostate removed on Sunday after he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection resulting from a benign prostate enlargement, his office said on Saturday.
Netanyahu, 75, was hospitalized in July 2023 for what doctors said was likely dehydration.
Days later, he underwent a procedure to install a pacemaker.
Published at Sat, 28 Dec 2024 22:31:21 +0000
