{"id":6393,"date":"2025-10-17T13:54:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/6393\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T13:54:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:54:14","slug":"how-the-killing-of-robert-brooks-and-a-strike-convulsed-new-yorks-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/6393\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Killing of Robert Brooks and a Strike Convulsed New York\u2019s Prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"

But Locke brought up another practice that he thought should be ended: double-celling, which had persisted at Upstate even as New York\u2019s prison population shrank. Eliminating double-celling would \u201calleviate inmate-on-inmate assault, because there\u2019s no one in there for them to fight,\u201d he explained. (In August, after we spoke, there was another homicide at Upstate, with one man strangling his bunkmate in their cell.)<\/p>\n

Sometimes when a bus of new arrivals to Upstate learned that they would have to double-bunk, a man would refuse to enter his new cell. Ashley said, \u201cWe were always, like, \u2018Nah, put them in a cell. They don\u2019t want to? We\u2019re putting their ass in there.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

But, recently, Ashley has seen the situation differently. When speaking about the months since he lost his job, he repeatedly used the phrase \u201cbecoming human.\u201d \u201cThe more I become human again,\u201d he said, the more he could see this predicament from the incarcerated man\u2019s point of view. \u201cI don\u2019t want to do that\u201d\u2014live in a cell with another man. \u201cWhy would they want to do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The day the footage of Robert Brooks\u2019s murder was released, the officers inside Upstate were on edge, wondering how much the Marcy officers were at fault. \u201cAnd then we had that video\u2014it speaks for itself,\u201d Ashley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that you can say where it\u2019s a reasonable explanation,\u201d Locke added.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can just see\u2014there\u2019s a lot of evil,\u201d Ashley said.<\/p>\n

After the footage came out, some of their co-workers stopped wearing their uniforms on their commute and instead changed once they got to the prison. Ashley said that some officers stopped \u201chaving any pride for being in law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has never been a job where we walked around and got a lot of appreciation and respect from the public, and that video set us back twenty years,\u201d Locke said.<\/p>\n

The two men spoke about how losing their jobs had brought them a sense of relief. \u201cYou start to notice that your blood pressure is better. You\u2019re sleeping through the night. You\u2019re more rested when you do wake up,\u201d Locke said. \u201cYou\u2019re repairing relationships with your kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Father<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday, if you make enough money, you\u2019ll get much better advice from a therapist.\u201c<\/p>\n

Cartoon by Emily Bernstein<\/p>\n

Job hunting, however, was not easy. Several hundred officers in the area were unemployed, and they were competing for whatever work was available. \u201cPeople do make assumptions, even people in a prison town that are pro-officers,\u201d Locke said. \u201cThey\u2019re still going to ask that question.\u201d What question? \u201cHow do you think that you can deal with an irate customer? We don\u2019t want to see you guys beating somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across New York, more than eight hundred officers and sergeants who were terminated have been rehired by DOCCS. After listening to the two men\u2019s critiques of Upstate prison for hours, I was surprised to hear them say that they, too, wanted to go back inside. \u201cI saw things that were wrong, obviously, and those things are important to me, but I actually liked the job,\u201d Locke said. \u201cIf I was offered to come back, it would be very difficult for me to turn that down.\u201d But, he added, \u201cI don\u2019t think that offer is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

On May 14th, the same day I sat down with Ashley and Locke, state legislators held a hearing in Albany about New York\u2019s prisons. Among those who testified was Robert Ricks, the father of Robert Brooks. Ricks runs a youth program in Rochester, and, like so many other Americans who have lost a loved one at the hands of law enforcement, he had been visiting his state\u2019s capitol to speak with politicians. \u201cI hate coming here,\u201d he told legislators that afternoon. \u201cFrom the moment I set foot in this building, I want to cry. And I don\u2019t want to cry because my son is dead. I want to cry because there\u2019s an eerie, omnipresent feeling in the African American community that\u2019s unspoken, often unspoken, that nothing is going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ricks and others were testifying in support of the Robert Brooks Blueprint for Justice & Reform\u2014an ambitious package of twenty-three bills that was intended to improve New York\u2019s prisons, including one that would give the commissioner of DOCCS more authority to get rid of abusive officers. \u201cIf we can send rockets to the moon, if we can create bombs that blow up whole countries\u2014we can\u2019t stop people from beating people to death?\u201d Ricks asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Locke brought up another practice that he thought should be ended: double-celling, which had persisted at Upstate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5685,1619,5686,1472,9,11,10,49,51,50,1470,5687],"class_list":["post-6393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-annals-of-justice","tag-audio","tag-inverted","tag-magazine","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-onecolumnnarrow","tag-splitscreenimagerightfullbleed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}