A PUPPY-SAVING-SOLDIER-TURNED-CO HELPED SPARK NYS PRISON GUARD STRIKE
'HONESTLY I FEEL SO FREE. I'VE NEVER FELT MORE FREE IN MY LIFE'
Strike line at the Bare Hill Correctional Facility. Shown Mar. 12, 2025. Strikers cleaned up but left a message behind for those that went back to work. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK Mar. 13, 2025
If a man is lucky in life, he'll live several different lives before he dies.
Another universal truth: karma is real.
It sounds so far-fetched it must be a lie, but it's not: 30 years ago a New York State prison guard tried to save a prisoner's life. 30 years later, that guard's son, also a guard, would allegedly help start a strike that paralyzed New York's prison system for 22 days.
This reporter, who served time with and was a friend of the prisoner who died 30 years ago, found the son of the guard who tried to save his friend’s life, the one who officials say sparked the strike, and, through his story, excavated the real reason for the strike. At least the reason that motivated him and many if not most of the strikers to act.
Only after I published the report, did we realize our connection.
That's it in a nutshell. It's complicated, a little messy and if you're lost that's totally understandable. It's a tale with many twists and turns but its worth unraveling. Now jump with me down the rabbit hole.
Tommy Greene was muscle for the Irish mob in Buffalo and a two-time convicted killer. I met him in 1992 at the Collins Correctional Facility. I shot a man to death in 1990 who was about to rob me and three friends. Because cops never found the gun I saw the man with, I was serving 19 years for manslaughter.
Greene was part of a crew I pumped iron and cooked with that included an Italian bookie from Albany, a heroin dealer from Spanish Harlem who made exquisite fried chicken and a Catskill mountain crack kingpin. I don't remember the names of the other two but Gary Hawley was an upstate outlaw legend. He taught me how to bake rhubarb pie.
Greene and Hawley left the prison Monday through Friday to work on the "outside gang" from about 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The outside gang was what we called the prison work gang. Because workers weren't chained together, we didn't call it a chain gang. It was just the outside gang.
Upstate Correctional Facility’s strike line was an abandoned gas station. Shown Mar. 12, 2025, as strikers say goodbye and clean up. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Correction Officer Charles F. Magee was the first officer to head-up the outside gang at Collins in 1982. He also convinced prison administrators to let him build and operate a genuine working sugar shack right on prison grounds. The mess hall served the fresh maple syrup on Sundays for as long as it lasted every spring.
My guy, Greene, was CO Magee's "right hand man" on the outside gang. Over the years, they grew close. Hawley was transferred to work release, but Greene stayed in Collins for years. One day, working on the outside gang in Allegheny State Park, Greene had a heart attack. Magee tried to save his life. He gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Greene vomited, and died.
Doctors prescribed Magee a cocktail of anti-AIDS drugs for 30 days in case Greene was HIV-positive.
I was transferred out of Collins in 1995, after I earned an Associate's Degree from Medaille College, which offered classes at the prison funded by PELL grants. After I earned my degree, the Federal Crime Bill of 1994 banned prisoners from receiving the grants. The ban lasted a quarter century, until it was repealed in 2021.
At the start of 2025, Charles F. Magee is retired. His son, also named Charles, is now a Correction Officer at Collins. Like many union jobs, they're frequently passed down.
Charles F. and Terri Magee with Lucky, the dog their son sent home from Kuwait at the start of the Second War in Iraq in 2003.
Chuck landed at Collins after serving in the US Army. He mailed a stray dog named "Lucky" home from Kuwait in 2003. Lucky's mom had a litter of pups under Chuck's watchtower in the desert along the Iraq-Kuwait border. Soon the dogs were barking when potential enemies approached—guarding all the American troops there.
One day, while Pfc. Magee was away from the post, the base dog-catcher came and rounded up all but one of the dogs. That's when Magee and Sgt. Daniel Christmas mailed Lucky to the US. The escapade was reported by USA Today. The newspaper included quotes from Chuck's mom—years before he became a CO.
"Chuck is so tender-hearted," Terri Magee said, "if he sees something getting hurt, he wants to protect it, no matter what it takes."
While Chuck was on his way to Iraq, I was on my way to New York City to build my second or third life, depending on how I count them.
I earned a bachelor's degree from NYU in 2006 and went to work as a news photographer for the New York Post. I was first officially credentialed by the NYPD as a news photographer in 2006 and the Secret Service in 2007. I photographed Pres. Barack Obama awarding the Medal Of Freedom to Bob Dylan, inside the White House in 2012. I've photographed every president since Jimmy Carter except Ronald Reagan.
In 2015, I became an investigative reporter. Crime, courts and prisons is my primary beat.
The author (center, burgundy shirt) at the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in 2003 days before his July 2003 parole. Photo credit: unknown Jaycees photographer.
When Robert Brooks was killed by guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9, 2024 I sprang into action. No journalist in New York has broken more news about Brooks' killing than I have. For example, a Prison Guard 'Beat-up Squad' Killed Robert Brooks, Operated for Years, Attorney General Letitia James's Office Knew It.
The same week murder charges against six of the guards who killed Brooks were filed, guards started a state-wide strike.
Prisoners' families, advocates, commentators and even Gov. Kathy Hochul said the strike was timed to distract the public from the murder charges.
I did what journalists are supposed to do. First I dug deep into the reasons guards themselves said were the reasons they went on strike. That's what led me to Magee. He allegedly helped start the whole thing by handing over a list of demands to a lieutenant at Collins the first morning of the strike.
That's according to Daniel F. Martuscello III, the Commissioner of the state agency that manages New York's prison system, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS. Martuscello filed an affidavit in a lawsuit against the guards, and successfully obtained a court order requiring them to go back to work—which they ignored for two weeks.
"On the morning of February 17, 2025, DOCCS received two demand letters, from correction officers striking at each of the two facilities," Martuscello's affirmation says. "The demand letters were provided by Correction Officer Terry Roush, Elmira CF, and Correction Officer Charles Magee, Collins CF."
"Reversal of the HALT bill, enabling meaningful and just disciplinary actions," topped the lists of both demand letters.
“We Love U” spray-painted on an oil tank cut in two that served as a makeshift fireplace for New York prison guards who waged a 22-day long strike from Feb. 17 to Mar. 10. Here, across from the Franklin Correctional Facility after the end of the strike on Mar. 12, 2025. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
At first, I didn't find Roush's telephone number but I found Magee's and called him up. He didn't want to speak at the time because DOCCS rules bar its employees from talking with reporters without permission—which is almost never granted.
More digging. I discovered Magee was at the center of a savage, bare-knuckle brawl in Collins' mess hall in 2023.
Clive Decolines started it by punching Magee when Magee asked Decolines for his identification card as he was leaving. In addition to Magee, Decolines sent five officers to the hospital. He injured one so bad he never worked as a Correction Officer again and is still in recovery, The Free Lance reported.
Magee and other COs blamed the HALT Act for the attack since Decolines was released from solitary into general population because of it before he attacked them. The Act wasn't supposed to work like that, but it did. Prisoners are supposed to spend months in Residential Rehabilitation Units before earning release with good behavior. Decolines didn't.
I reported Magee's story on Mar. 5, in Behind the Barrels: How a Mess Hall Brawl Sparked the Wildcat Strike by Prison Guards.
The strike spread like wildfire to 38 of New York's 42 prisons. At its height, almost 8,000 state Correction Officers were on strike. That's 9 out of every 10. The 22-day strike established a new record for strikes by prison guards in the US. Breaking the previous 17-day record—set by striking New York COs in 1979.
The State declared the strike over on Monday, when Gov. Hochul fired more than 2,000 guards, including Magee, who refused to return to work. She also banned them from ever working for the state again with an executive order.
Court records.
Magee talked with me on Thursday, after he’d been fired.
"This never had anything to do with Robert Brooks," he said. "It wasn't because we wanted to have beat-up squads."
Instead, he said, "We wanted change completely. We wanted it to be a better place for everybody."
Magee asked about me. I told him I'd been at Collins in the 1990s. He told me about his dad. I told him about Tommy Greene. The two time killer from Buffalo who died in his father’s arms. That’s when we discovered our connection.
"I think he was the guy my dad had to take a cocktail for," he said.
It was. After it sank in, I asked him what he was thinking.
"It's absolutely amazing," he said, of our unlikely connection. "It's almost like it was meant to be."
Magee said his only plan for the future was "to spend Summer with my kids. I'll find a job after that. I was smart with my money."
In the meantime, he said, he was headed outside to enjoy a sunny, late-winter day.
"Honestly I feel so free," he said. "I've never felt more free in my life."
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