HANNAH LORENZO, HOST: Prison reform activist groups rallied outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s office in Midtown this morning, advocating for incarcerated New Yorkers’ rights. Some corrections officers were charged today with the murder of a 43-year-old incarcerated man. Activists say this kind of violence is nothing new and are calling for reform, Hannah Weaver reports.
HANNAH WEAVER, BYLINE: Outside a 47-story skyscraper in Midtown on a below-freezing morning, two dozen ralliers gather with signs shaped like gravestones and others with slogans like “stop killing us.” This building houses high-profile tenants like Bloomberg — and Governor Kathy Hochul.
RALLY MEMBER: We’re out here in this cold, cold weather to call out our legislators and the governor to fire every last rogue officer, they don’t deserve to work in our system, they don’t deserve to take care of our loved ones…
WEAVER: Some of the officers involved in that death were indicted this afternoon on charges of murder. The incident occurred last month at Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica. Body cam footage shows correctional officers assaulting an incarcerated man named Robert Brooks.
Stanley Bellamy is an organizer with the advocacy group Release Aging People in Prison.
WEAVER: Why are you coming out here today, what is your message?
BELLAMY: The only reason that we're here where we are today with these indictments is because it was caught on tape.
WEAVER: Over 30,000 people are incarcerated in New York state, according to this month’s government corrections data. This week corrections officers across the state went on strike, despite their union not authorizing it. Bellamy and other activists here today say their strike is meant to distract from Brooks’ death.
BELLAMY: One of our messages is that you’re complaining about the conditions that you actually created.
WEAVER: Bellamy was released from prison in June 2023 after serving nearly four decades in six different facilities. While incarcerated, Bellamy says he witnessed correctional officers regularly abusing their power.
BELLAMY: There was an officer when I was in Attica in 1987 or 88 one day he came to work, and I said, “what’s the matter with you, why you so distraught?” He said, “I have to work in A
Block.” And if you’ve ever been to Attica, We called A Block "South Africa," because the
racism in that block was so terrible that he didn’t want to work there because he said
they told him that when you work in this block, this is how you have to treat individuals in
this block, and that wasn’t his character.
WEAVER: Hochul granted Bellamy clemency from what was originally a 62-and-a-half-year to life sentence. But Bellamy wants to see more from her to fix the prison system at its roots. Yesterday, Hochul sent the National Guard to prisons where correctional officers have been striking. The ralliers aren’t sure whether or not that’s a good thing.
Hannah Weaver, Columbia Radio News.
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