FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH, MEET THE FORMERLY-INCARCERATED LEADERS SEEKING JUSTICE FOR ROBERT BROOKS
'THIS IS OUR GEORGE FLOYD'
Derrick Hamilton and other formerly-incarcerated leaders are organizing to fight for justice after Correction Officers tortured and killed Robert Brooks at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9, 2024. Here, protesting outside Gov. Kathy Hochul’s mid-town Manhattan office on Dec. 30. The group brings the fight to state lawmakers at the State Capital in Albany on Monday. Photo credit: Shabaka Shakur via Facebook.
EXCLUSIVE
Jan. 25, 2025
It's been almost a month since state Attorney Letitia James released body camera video capturing an all-white gang of guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility torturing Robert Brooks in the prison's infirmary before killing him on Dec. 9, 2024.
Since then, a small group of formerly-incarcerated activists have been leading the fight to have the guards charged with murder. They also want new laws passed reforming the state's entire prison system—to ensure guards don't torture and kill anyone else ever again.
On Monday, the group plans to bring their fight to state lawmakers in Albany. They’re calling it “Robert Brooks Advocacy Day.”
"We immediately sprang into action" after watching the video, Derrick Hamilton told The Free Lance on Friday. "We organized the rally outside Gov. Kathy Hochul's office on Dec. 30."
Hamilton served 25 years for a murder he didn't commit.
"We want the guards arrested," Hamilton said, "We also think there should be Robert Brooks' laws passed that hold Correction Officers immediately accountable."
Shabaka Shakur being released from the Shawangunk Correctional Facility after serving 27 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Shabaka Shakur, Anthony Dixon, Renny Smith, Rev. Kevin McCall and others are working together with Hamilton.
Shakur was set-up for a double murder he didn't commit and sentenced to life times two in prison. He met Hamilton at Auburn where they discovered they'd both been set up by the same crooked Brooklyn cop, NYPD Det. Louis Scarcella.
They established what they called the "A.I. team"—short for actual innocence—and mined the books in the prison's law library for the right combination of words that would win them their freedom. Hamilton was paroled in 2011 and exonerated in 2015—the same year Shakur was exonerated and released.
I was at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility the day 10 years ago Shakur was released, covering it for the New York Daily News. Hamilton was there too, to welcome his old comrade home.
"This is our George Floyd," Shakur told me on Friday. "Anybody whose been to prison knows this happens all the time. We all know it."
"Most of us have been beaten-up by Correction Officers," Shakur explained. "We're lucky to be alive. We could have been Robert Brooks."
The group used social media and word-of-mouth to promote a protest outside Gov. Hochul's office. Mainstream news organizations covered it. 100s of people showed up, including Hawk Newsome's New York Black Lives Matter faction, AMNY's Dean Moses reported.
The group had a town hall meeting to discuss future action at a Brooklyn church on Jan. 7.
Meanwhile, Donald Lee Curtis's Unified Black Caucus led the first protest at Marcy itself, a four-hour drive north of New York City. The UBC also helped organize rallies in Syracuse and Rochester with Brooks' family.
"We've done three protests," Curtis told The Free Lance. "We're the only ones that went to the prison."
"We'll probably go back to the prison," he added. "If the protests should be anywhere, they should be at the prison."
Curtis was paroled in 2019 after serving 35 years in New York's prisons. He said he was coordinating with dozens of formerly-incarcerated activists, including many in other states.
"There's people that were on the inside, out now, fightin' the system," Curtis explained. "We talkin' about some dangerous people. I know 'em all. All murderers. That are out fighting the system now. Living right."
"And this is why the State is scared," Curtis said. "The guards know that we know the truth."
Marcy is not the first-time ex-felons led a criminal justice reform fight in New York.
Formerly-incarcerated leaders including Donna Hylton and Glenn Martin launched the fight to close Rikers Island in 2016. When the City Council voted to close Rikers on Oct. 17, 2019, Hylton was there inside the council chamber as a honored guest.
I was there too. This formerly-incarcerated journalist chronicled that fight and others in the legendary Village Voice newspaper before it shuttered in 2018.
On the steps of City Hall in 2017, (left-to-right) Shabaka Shakur, JB Nicholas, Glenn Martin and Akeem Browder, whose brother’s suicide after being wrongly jailed on Rikers Island sparked the Close Rikers movement. Photo credit: unknown, , courtesy of the archive of JB Nicholas.
Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, recognized the contribution of formerly-incaercerated leaders before the vote.
“They have led this effort,” Johnson said. “They have led the coalition.”
“I am so proud, of these activists and leaders, who have brough us to this point,” Johnson added. “We would not be here without each and every one of them.”
Since Brooks’ killing, G has worked behind the scenes like an old-school switchboard operator, putting the right people in touch and prospecting for news. Before being released from Marcy, G served 24 years in New York's prisons.
"Yes, even one person can make a difference," he says. "I network, and make sure people are aware."
He says he "monitors all the news," scours social media posts for leads and collects tips from informants.
Two or three times a week, G sends an email list of links featuring the latest reporting and notable social media on Marcy and Brooks to formerly-incarcerated activists, members of the news media and state legislators. It takes a lot of work, but G says it's worth it.
"You need the extensive media coverage," he explains, "to make sure these officers are brought to justice."
Donna Hylton (holding banner third from left) and Glenn Martin (holding banner second from right) leading a protest to Rikers Island through Queens on Sept. 23, 2016. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Former City Councilman Ruben Wills was wrongfully convicted on bogus public corruption charges in 2017. Wills was sentenced to 2-to-6 years in state prison and sent to Marcy. When the video of guards killing Brooks was released, he revealed "I actually had to go take medication for a trauma that I thought was over," Wills told NBC New York 4.
"There was one group that took particular joy in hurting people," he recalled. Guards threatened to kill him. They kicked the door of his cell "all night long, telling me to kill myself."
Wills said he was on suicide watch at the time.
He actually produced a video depicting his ordeal after his release, years before Brooks was killed.
For Anthony Dixon, like Wills, Brooks' killing forced him to confront buried emotions from beatings inflicted by guards long ago while he was serving 32 years for murder, robbery and gun charges.
"Many of us have experienced something close to what we saw," he said. "All type of suppressed emotions are coming up in us, including myself."
Dixon pointed out that, like him, many former felons now hold positions in nonprofit criminal justice reform organizations. That gives them a megaphone to speak "like never before about this."
Leading this fight is "where we belong," Dixon stressed. "As has often been said, 'those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.'"
Dixon, Hamilton, Smith and Rev. McCall were arrested Wednesday evening protesting Brooks' killing—and officials’ failure to arrest his killers, notwithstanding the video—at the Atlantic Avenue subway station under Barclay's Center.
The site had symbolic significance since it was the location of frequent protests during the Black Lives Matter protests inspired by the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Smith said he and the others were willing to get arrested to call attention to Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick's on-going failure to charge Brooks' killers because "I don't want any other incarcerated person to suffer that same fate."
"I care," he explained, "because I know how when you complain about this stuff to the authorities it's being ignored, they sweep it under the rug."
"These police gangs, these corrections gangs,” he added, “they continue to exist because they don't do nothing, they don't hold them accountable or nothing."
On Monday, Smith said he and others are going to the State Capital in Albany to deliver "a list of demands" to state legislators. Smith called it "Robert Brooks Advocacy Day." The group was going to "speak with some legislators, and see if they behind us on this."
"We been in prison," Smith added, "so we know the changes to be made."
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