Lonsberry: JUSTICE FOR ROBERT BROOKS

        Benjamin Crump is coming to Rochester, to get justice for Robert Brooks.

               He shouldn’t.

               He should go to Manhattan.

               He should pound on the doors of the television networks and demand that they show America the video of Robert Brooks being lynched by New York prison guards. He should rub the country’s nose in what happened and then use the rage and indignation to tear down the hateful culture the New York state government has allowed to fester in its prisons for decades.

               By coming to Rochester, he shows respect and compassion for the family of Robert Brooks, and that is good. But by going to Manhattan, by standing like a modern Jeremiah and calling a state government to repentance, he turns a tragedy into a weapon for good in the battle against evil.

               And what happened to Robert Brooks is evil.

               Government sanctioned and funded evil. The monsters who killed Robert Brooks had the state seal on their shoulders. This is about what New York state did to Robert Brooks, and possibly to unknown numbers of other inmates over the years and across the state, their beatings and abuse undiscovered and unreported.

               Robert Brooks was doing a dozen years for assault. It was domestic violence. He stabbed his girlfriend 22 times. He was in prison because he deserved to be. A competent court of the state of New York justly sentenced him.

               But 7 years in, early last month, he was transferred from one small prison near Utica to another. That was because he had been savagely beaten twice at the first prison. The state says those beatings came at the hands of other inmates.

               Maybe, maybe not.

               But the beating that killed this black man wasn’t at the hands of inmates, it was at the hands of predatory white prison guards too stupid and lazy to have ever read the instructions that came with their body-worn cameras. Unfortunately for them, the Troopers who got called when Robert Brooks turned up dead at the hospital had read the instructions and knew how they operated and found, in the passive recordings made by the devices, video documentation of Robert Brooks being lynched.

               And he was lynched.

               Yes, there was a beating. A hellacious beating of a semi-conscious, handcuffed man by a circling cloud of monsters. The guy trying to cram a rag into his mouth, the repeated punches to his shackled body, the knuckle rub against the breastbone – not to determine level of consciousness, but to inflict pain. The horse kick by one fat bastard directly into his groin as he lay restrained on an infirmary bed.

               Yes, there was a beating.

               But this was a lynching.

               The medical examiner said so. It’s what killed him.

               “Asphyxia due to compression of the neck.”

               It wasn’t the shattered face. It wasn’t the broken ribs. It wasn’t the blood loss from the bruising. It wasn’t the ruptured scrotum.

               It was the “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.”

               You get that from a rope and a tree – or from anything that puts the weight of the suspended body on the physical structures of the neck. Like when they lifted him up off the infirmary bed by his neck, or held him up against the wall, by his neck, the weight of his body dangling.

               Remember how Gunnery Sergeant Hartman did Gomer Pyle in that scene early in “Full Metal Jacket?”

               That’s how they killed him.

               And that’s what Benjamin Crump needs to show America.

               Put it right on the evening news. And not pixilated like the cowards on local TV. Make America see, make America witness, make the people in charge pay.

               Sure, the guards must face justice. Every one of those bastards who laid a hand on him, and every one of the cowards who stood there and watched. Every one of them deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. But anybody who thinks this is just about those guys is nuts. Because anybody who thinks that sort of behavior was one time in one room with one inmate at one prison is also nuts.

               The calm, methodical nature of the killing of Robert Brooks – with one guy stopping casually to check off some paperwork – shows that this was nothing out of the ordinary. This was just another day at the office. This was a glimpse into the system that the New York state government has created.

               And there is hell to pay.

               The governor isn’t the judge in this matter, she is the defendant.

               Replacing a temporary warden at one prison isn’t a response, it’s a dodge. Why haven’t the commissioner of corrections and his entire nepotistic regime been fired? Why haven’t the Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader empaneled commissions to get to the bottom of this? Why haven’t individual state legislators howled from the rooftops about this?

               Why hasn’t the governor been held accountable, or even apologized? Does a photo op at a prison in her state windbreaker make it all better?

               Will no one point out that New York’s prisons are desperately underfunded and understaffed? Does no one think that the practice of forcing prison staff to work mandatory double shifts on their days off is a bad idea? Does removing all accountability for both guard and prisoner misconduct really seem like a good idea?

               Those guards were the bullet that killed Robert Brooks, but they weren’t the ones who loaded the gun and pulled the trigger. That was the state government. That was the governor and her corrections commissioner. They hired the guards, they trained the guards, they supervised the guards. And all of them – politicians and guards alike -- need to be held accountable. That’s justice for Robert Brooks.

               And Benjamin Crump can’t get that in Rochester.