NY PRISON CHIEF IGNORED 'TICKING TIME-BOMB' 3 1/2 MONTHS BEFORE GUARDS KILLED ROBERT BROOKS
'HE DISMISSED IT NONCHALANTLY. HE SAID 'THEY'RE TOO MANY CAMERAS INSIDE THE PRISONS FOR THAT TO HAPPEN.’’
DOCCS Commissioner Daniel J. Martuscello III testified at a state legislative hearing, Feb. 12, 2024. Photo credit: NY Senate via YouTube)
EXCLUSIVE
Feb. 10, 2025
Prisoners' rights advocates warned New York's embattled prison chief guards were regularly beating and abusing prisoners sadistically, and getting away with it, three-and-a-half months before guards tortured and killed Robert Brooks.
One even warned spiraling guard violence was a "ticking time-bomb."
The chief, Commissioner Daniel J. Martuscello III, of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, blew off the advocates’ concerns.
"He dismissed it nonchalantly," Anthony Dixon, Deputy Director of the Parole Preparation Project, revealed. "He said 'They're too many cameras inside the prisons for that to happen.'"
TeAna Taylor, Associate Director of the Release Aging People from Prison Campaign, was also at the meeting.
"We mentioned the beat-up squads of guards," Taylor recalled.
"We told him there needs to be a cultural shift inside," Taylor added. "We told him it just can't be OK for these things to be happening."
The advocates personally delivered their dire warnings in a rare, face-to-face meeting with Martuscello and his entire executive team at DOCCS' Albany headquarters on Aug. 27, 2024—14 weeks before Brooks was killed Dec. 9.
Looking back, Dixon said if Martuscello "had listened to us, Robert Brooks might still be alive."
Albany headquarters of the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision on the day a group of advocates had a face-to-face meeting with Commissioner Daniel J. Martuscello III.
Photo credit: Jerome Wright, co-director of the #HALT Solitary Campaign.
In addition to demanding Martuscello stop the systemic abuse, the advocates urged DOCCS’ Commissioner to close a number of prisons, specifically including the prison where Brooks would be killed, Marcy Correctional Facility, the advocates told The Free Lance.
"We talked about facilities that should be closed, we included Marcy about the highest percentage of people getting beat-up by these goon squads," said Jerome Wright, co-director of the #HALT Solitary Campaign, who also attended the late-summer sit down with Martuscello. "He downplayed violence by staff."
Under the 2025 state budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul was given the authority to close five prisons in consultation with DOCCS. She closed two.
Tyrrell Muhammad, now a Senior Advocate at the Alliance of Families for Justice, investigated violence against prisoners by guards for the Correctional Association of New York for 12 years. The association is a legally-empowered prison watchdog group.
He wasn't at the August meeting with Martuscello, but has been part of a group of leaders from other non-profit advocacy organizations that have held quarterly conference calls with the commissioner for about two years.
"Everytime we bring to his attention the assaults, the beatings, the lack of medical attention," Muhammad said. "He blows that off."
"I personally have told him, 'You got a ticking time-bomb about to go off,'" Muhammad revealed. "The officers are aggressive and heavy-handed. Particularly in the medium-security jails, where people are expecting to go home."
The revelations that Martuscello dismissed explicit warnings about guard violence, particularly at medium-security prisons including Marcy, comes a week after the union representing New York's prison guards voted no confidence in Martuscello.
New York's entire 42-prison system is facing a crisis. Its not just the fallout from Brooks' killing and the union’s no-confidence vote. Its also mass suspected Fentanyl "exposure" incidents, what Inspector General Lucy Lang called "significant workers’ compensation-driven staffing shortages" and a scarcity of new recruits.
Thomas Mailey, DOCCS’ director of communications, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the press contact for the guard’s union, James Miller.
Brooks was beaten, kicked and choked to death, while handcuffed, by a "beat-up squad" of guards inside the infirmary at Marcy. 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.
Unjustified, excessive and sadistic uses of force by guards has long been a fact-of-life inside New York's prisons—as the killing of 29 unarmed prisoners and the torture of survivors by police and guards at Attica in 1971 shows.
Today, systemic abuse by guards is fostered by a toothless and ineffective administrative disciplinary system that leaves the punishment of crimes and misconduct by guards up to private arbitrators instead of public officials.
Commissioner Martuscello defeated DOCCS' long-time counsel Anthony Annucci for the DOCCS' commissioner job largely on the basis of a glowing, GQ magazine-like 2016 Marshall Project profile. The story quoted him saying he was remaking DOCCS' internal affairs bureau and prepared to "do anything necessary” to make its’ overall employee disciplinary system effective.
"I'm not here to make the union happy," Martuscello claimed.
The Marshall Project finally did a follow-up investigation in 2023 and discovered they’d been deceived. Martuscello didn't change anything. In about 9 out of 10 cases where DOCCS paid cash to settle abuse lawsuits, DOCCS didn't even try to discipline the guilty guards. Even when it did try to fire guards, DOCCS lost 9 out of 10 attempts.
Still, Gov. Kathy Hochul nominated Martuscello to be DOCCS commissioner on a Monday in May 2024 and he was confirmed by the State Senate two days later.
“He truly seems to care about making DOCCS work better for everyone, including and especially incarcerated individuals,” Julia Salazar, chair of the Senate corrections committee, said at the time.
Sen. Salazar did not respond to an invitation to update her view of Martuscello.
"He's very media savvy," Muhammad, the formerly-incarcerated Correctional Association of New York investigator, said of the DOCCS commissioner. "He's not an old bureaucrat, he's definitely Madison Avenue."
Muhammad revealed that within days of the Dec. 27 release of the video capturing Brooks killing, Martuscello held a conference call with him and about a half-dozen "selected advocacy groups" and "tried to get ahead of it."
"He's a very good talker," Muhammad says, but "his record shows all it is is talk."
"He's still with the old boy's network," he added.
Gov. Hochul's press office did not respond to an invitation to state whether she still has confidence in her state prison chief.
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