Newly released body-camera video shows guards at an upstate New York prison beating a handcuffed prisoner to death. Forty-three-year-old Robert Brooks was pronounced dead on December 10, a day after guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Utica repeatedly punched and kicked him in the face, chest and groin. Four of the officers involved were wearing body cameras but did not activate them. At least three of the officers involved were previously accused of assault. Brooks was Black; all of the officers who took turns beating him appear to be white. Ahead of the video’s release, New York Governor Kathy Hochul fired 14 state prison staffers and ordered an investigation into Brooks’s killing. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has also opened an investigation, said it was a difficult decision to release the bodycam footage.

Letitia James: “I do not take lightly the release of this video, especially in the middle of the holiday season, but as attorney general, I released these videos because I have a responsibility and duty to provide the Brooks family, their loved ones, and all New Yorkers with transparency and accountability. My deepest condolences go out to Mr. Brooks’s family.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union said in a statement, “It shouldn’t take a cold-blooded killing captured on film to be a wake-up call to our leaders that the culture of officer brutality in NY prisons must be stopped.”