'MURDER SHOULD BE THE CHARGE': ROBERT BROOKS FATHER DEMANDS, KILLER GUARDS INDICTED
ROBERT RICKS SPEAKS OUT AS NEWS BREAKS GUARDS WHO KILLED HIS SON CHARGED IN SECRET INDICTMENT TO BE UNVEILED TUESDAY
EXCLUSIVE
Feb. 14, 2025
The father of the state prisoner killed by guards demanded they be charged with murder on the day news leaked of a secret, sealed indictment charging the guards.
"They murdered my son," Robert Ricks told The Free Lance on Friday. "Murder should be the charge they fightin’ against."
Robert Brooks, 42, was tortured and murdered by a "beat-up squad" of state prison guards inside the infirmary at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9, 2024. It was unintentionally captured on video by body cameras worn by four of the guards.
Sgt. Glenn Trombly was the alleged leader of the beat-up squad , The Free Lance exclusively reported. CO Anthony Farina was another alleged member of the squad, and was beside Trombly the night the squad killed Brooks, the video shows.
Brooks' killing was found to be a homicide by the Onondaga County Medical Examiner. A grand jury in Oneida County, where the killing occurred, began hearing evidence against the guards on Monday.
News of a secret indictment charging the guards was leaked to the Albany Times Union, which first reported it early Friday afternoon. The exact charges were not reported.
Brooks' father, Robert, 62, later told The Free Lance: "I feel like there's progress being made. I feel like the situation is playing out the way it should play out in a criminal case."
Brooks' killing is being investigated by Onondaga County District Attorney William J. Fitzpatrick, who was appointed special prosecutor by Attorney General Letitia James.
James was forced to recused herself by ethics rules, because her office was already defending some of the guards who killed Brooks from federal civil rights lawsuits alleging they used excessive force against other prisoners, The Free Lance reported exclusively.
Brooks' father said the two months' long delay hurt.
"Its painful to watch people who murder your child still getting up in the morning and taking their kids to school," Ricks explained.
Still, he said he understood why it was taking so long for Fitzpatrick to charge anyone: "The process is slow, because the case needs to be airtight."
One of the reasons Ricks said the guards deserved to be charged with murder was because they represented "the kind of evil that put on capes and ran around in the South lynching people."
The guards who killed his son, Ricks said, deserved to be punished "Just like I would get if I murdered someone on video."
Nurses helped cover-up the systemic abuse of prisoners at Marcy, The Free Lance exclusively reported.
Acknowledging his son was not the Marcy guards' first victim, Ricks said his son's murder was "one part of a bigger picture."
There was, he said, a lot of "structural problems in society" that produced "prisons packed with black men."
Because of that, Ricks said, "We should work on reforming the prison system," but "a lot of other systems need to be reformed too."
The Rochester resident said he wasn't sure if he would attend the unsealing of the indictment in Utica on Tuesday because he might just go to work as usual at his non-profit creative arts youth organization, Mentors Inspiring Boys & Girls.
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