DOCCS Commissioner Martuscello on the one year anniversary of the murder of Robert Brooks
Today marks one year since the tragic death of Robert Brooks, beaten the night before at the hands of now former New York State correction officers at Marcy Correctional Facility. No one deserves to die the way Mr. Brooks did. The officers responsible for his death violated the most fundamental duty of this profession and they broke the trust placed in them by the people of this state. Many have already been held accountable and will be serving time in prison. They were supposed to be better than this. We were supposed to be better than this.
This past year has forced me and my leadership team to look hard at ourselves and the system we steward. Corrections is difficult work. Every day, staff confront individuals convicted of serious crimes and manage an environment marked at times by violence, gangs, and drugs — conditions that undermine opportunities for rehabilitation and redemption. But none of those realities justify what happened.
On that night at Marcy Correctional Facility, the worst of human behavior unfolded on body-worn camera footage. The officers involved showed no remorse for their actions. They stripped Mr. Brooks of his dignity. They acted as judge, jury, and executioner for a man already serving the sentence imposed by the courts. Their actions made me question everything I believed about our culture and our mission, and they believed they would not be held accountable.
As Commissioner of DOCCS, it is my responsibility to ensure we do not look away from what happened to Robert Brooks. While no agency should be defined solely by its worst actors, we cannot deny the impact his death has had on the Department, our staff and on the people in our care. The question before us is not whether we remember but how we move forward. How do we rebuild trust with the people in our custody, the communities to which they will return, and the families who expect their loved ones to be treated with basic dignity? There is no single lever to pull, no instant solution that transforms an institution overnight. Culture changes through persistent, deliberate action. Facilities do not modernize themselves. Staffing challenges do not resolve themselves. And nothing we do can bring Robert Brooks back.
But this is about more than what we cannot change. It is about what we must change. We cannot pretend that what happened was an isolated moment with no implications for how we operate going forward. The hard but necessary opportunity this tragedy gives us is to confront our failures honestly, to reform the practices that enabled them, and to recommit to a system that protects safety while supporting second chances.
Over the past year, the Department has carried out targeted security enhancements designed to strengthen safety and improve the culture within our facilities, while expanding accountability and transparency. This includes conducting culture reviews through independent experts, expanding the use of body worn cameras to all security staff at every facility, continuing to expand fixed cameras in facilities, and improving the resources of our special investigations unit and medical teams. While our work is far from finished, we remain focused on learning from this tragedy and delivering a safer, more secure correctional system for all individuals in our care.
Prison should be many things but above all it should be a place of possibility. A place where a life that has gone off course can be redirected. A place where redemption is not theoretical but real. A place where people leave better than they arrived. That is our mission. And it is the vision that will continue to guide the changes we are making. But today, on the anniversary of Robert Brooks’s death, my message is simple and deeply personal: I am sorry. We must do better. And we will.
Daniel F. Martuscello III is Commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
