Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old African-American inmate, was killed on December 9 by prison officers at Marcy Correctional prison in New York state. The images, captured by cameras worn by the guards, show a scene of pure violence: Brooks, bloodied and handcuffed, is held on the ground by six agents who strangle him several times and violently throw him against a wall. A few hours later, he died of asphyxia caused by neck compression, as confirmed by the autopsy.
In recent days, the video of this horror scene has been widely distributed after the Attorney General of the State of New York, Letitia James, chose to release it citing the need to maintain “transparency” in the ‘affair. She then announced the upcoming suspension and dismissal of thirteen prison officers and a nurse involved in this murder.
The video, which circulated on social networks, deeply shocked public opinion. The scandal reignites debates on systemic violence and impunity in American prisons. Many people make the connection with the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the starting point of a massive mobilization against systemic racism and police violence. Human rights organizations like theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) I don’t Correctional Association of New York (CANY) denounced violence by prison officers.
These revolting new images recall the police killing of George Floyd, which paved the way for the movement Black Lives Matter. If this time, it was the prosecutor herself who broadcast the video, the State’s strategy aims to sacrifice a few individuals, like the police officer Derek Chauvin, to protect the police and preserve the foundations of a judicial and deeply racist prison.
A hypocritical attitude which cannot hide an overwhelming reality: the over-incarceration of racial minorities and the assassinations of black men perpetrated by a structurally racist police institution in the United States. According to data from Bureau of Justice StatisticsAfrican Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, but nearly 40 percent of inmates, while Latinos, making up 16 percent of the population, make up 23 percent of those incarcerated. The murders perpetrated by the police, systematically presented by the media as isolated accidents, are in reality only the direct extension of a logic of repression institutionalized by the judicial and prison apparatus against racial minorities.
The murder of Robert Brooks illustrates once again, in a tragic way, the violence exercised by the agents of a racist and repressive system. The movement Black Lives Matter radically transformed the political consciousness of a generation of Americans, revealing the systemic nature of racism within judicial and carceral institutions, the impossibility of reforming them, and the dependence of the state on these institutions , as organs of repression. It is imperative that workers and their organizations become actively involved in this fight. The fight against systemic racism and police violence constitutes a central lever of mobilization in the United States, a few days before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
