Impunity For Guards Who Abuse Prisoners In Cuomo's State Prison System, Silence From Political Establishment

Along with the Dutchess district attorney, the US attorney for the southern district is investigating  the beating death of an inmate at Fishkill prison by a group of guards called the "Beat Up Squad."

There were 60+ allegations of prisoners being beaten, choked, and threatened with waterboarding at Clinton Correctional after Governor Cuomo visited the facility to re-enact a prison break in June.

Both these stories were reported by the NY Times - and now the Times has another one about prisoner abuse in the state prison system:

A few days after Ramon Fabian arrived at the Ulster Correctional Facility on the southern edge of the Catskill Mountains last year, a guard conducting the morning head count yelled at him to shut up.

Inmates at Ulster, a medium-security New York State prison, are required to stay in place and keep their voices low during the count. Mr. Fabian, who was serving a one-year sentence for a drug conviction, had been talking to another inmate, but he said in a recent interview that he thought he had been following the rules.

After the count was over, the guard escorted him past a set of double doors out of view of other inmates and the prison’s electronic surveillance cameras. Mr. Fabian said the officer, Michael Bukowski, a seven-year veteran, had then ordered him to face the wall and brace himself in the “pat-frisk” position, arms outstretched and legs spread. As he did so, Mr. Fabian recalled, he looked down and saw the toe of a boot swinging up between his legs.

He saw a flash of light, felt a piercing pain and collapsed. “He told me to get up, but all I could do was crawl back to my cube,” Mr. Fabian, who is now 21, told investigators later. He lay on the floor in his cubicle in the prison’s dormitory, groaning and crying, for almost an hour before hobbling to lunch. In the mess hall, a sergeant sent him to the prison’s medical unit. He was soon loaded into a van and driven 80 miles north to a hospital in Albany. Doctors there performed emergency surgery, removing part of his right testicle.

Questioned by an investigator from the state corrections department’s inspector general’s office a few days after the episode on July 22, 2014, Officer Bukowski said he knew nothing about the injury. He said he had “counseled” Mr. Fabian about the importance of keeping quiet during the count. He acknowledged that he had raised his voice, and that when he sent Mr. Fabian back to his cubicle, the inmate was “crying a little.” Corrections officials concluded that the guard had used excessive force and was lying. Officer Bukowksi was suspended without pay on July 31, 2014, and the department soon moved to fire him.

More than a year later, however, Officer Bukowski is still a state employee. His disciplinary case remains unresolved, although he faces a criminal charge of assault. His case, described in court documents and interviews, offers a stark example of the intricate protections that shield New York’s 20,000 corrections officers, even when there is compelling evidence of abuse.

A former state commissioner of corrections blames the union contract, says the following:

Current and former corrections officials say the union contract deserves part of the blame. “It is tough to get rid of a bad officer, just like it’s tough to get rid of a bad teacher,” said Brian Fischer, a former superintendent at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the state corrections commissioner from 2007 to 2013. “It’s very frustrating.”

Ah, but Cuomo has spent the last five years pushing through changes to law and the teacher evaluation system that allows the state to fire teachers much more easily.

State guards who abuse prisoners?

Cuomo defends them, downplaying the allegations.

Aren't you glad Hakeem Jeffries gave Cuomo a "criminal justice reform leadership" award?

I mean, who else could get PR that he's great for criminal justice reform while overseeing a prison system that is medieval in its abuse of the prisoners?

The problem for these prisoners getting abused in the state system is that they're not in Rikers.

If they were, the Daily News would be all over it, hammering de Blasio not eh front page day after day after day.

But since this is Cuomo and the state system they'd have to take on, all we get is crickets out of them.

Same goes for politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, who'd be all over this if it was Rikers and de Blasio but can't seem to even comment on the state prisoner abuse allegations, let alone go on the offensive against Cuomo over them.

Hypocrisy at its finest.

Meanwhile the horror show that is the New York prison system continues on.

Cuomo Downplays Prisoner Abuse, Beating Death Of Fishkill Inmate

The news media has been largely ignoring the allegations of prisoner abuse in the state prison system that the NY Times reported this summer.

There have been 60+ allegations of prisoners being beaten, choked, and threatened with waterboarding by guards at Clinton Correction after the June escape of two convicted murderers, both of whom were later caught (with one killed in the process.)

There is also the allegation that a prisoner at Fishkill was beaten to death by guards known as the "Beat Up Squad," then the homicide covered up with the story that the prisoner died as a result of synthetic marijuana use.

Matthews Chayes of Newsday got Cuomo on the record about these allegations and predictably, "criminal justice reform leader Cuomo" downplayed the allegations.

Here is the Newsday story, in full (it's behind a paywall so I want to put the whole story up for readers):

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, addressing allegations of medieval beatings in the state prison system, said Friday that correction officers, who work a tough job, "have to make sure they get a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they get hurt."

Investigators are probing claims by inmates in at least two state prisons that officers exacted unnecessary beatings, including one by a "Beat Up Squad" that left a prisoner dead and is being scrutinized by federal prosecutors.  

Asked whether the state prison system has a brutality problem, Cuomo said, at an unrelated event at Ground Zero, "Well, state prisons have brutal people in them. So, unless you call that a brutality problem, no. State prisons are very difficult to manage, state prisons are filled with very dangerous people.

"They are policed by a relatively small number of correction officials -- who are unarmed, I might add. It is a very, very difficult job. They have to make sure they get a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they get hurt. So, I think they're doing a good job.

"To the extent there is an incident that has to be looked into, then we look into that incident. But you're managing dozens of facilities with tens of thousands of people, don't take one or two alleged incidents -- and they're only alleged -- ...and then take a broad brush and make a general statement."

Inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility charge that after two murderers staged a daring escape earlier this year, guards exacted days of retribution by brutalizing other prisoners and violently interrogating them about what they knew, or didn't know.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, is involved in a separate probe at the Fishkill Correctional Facility of the death of a bipolar prisoner, allegedly at the hands of as many as 20 guards who were said to have punched, kicked, and threw or dragged a black inmate down the stairs while shouting racial slurs. 

The labor union representing the officers has urged against a rush to judgement, "rather than simply relying on allegations made by a handful of violent convicted felons," according to The New York Times.

One or two alleged incidents?

Try 60+ beating/choking/threatened with waterboarding incidents and one homicide.

That's not one or two incidents.

And according to the NY Times, one of the prisoners who was beaten, choked and threatened with waterboarding had it happen to him just hours after Cuomo himself "stared" him down:

Night had fallen at the Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York when the prison guards came for Patrick Alexander. They handcuffed him and took him into a broom closet for questioning. Then, Mr. Alexander said in an interview last week, the beatings began.

As the three guards, who wore no name badges, punched him and slammed his head against the wall, he said they shouted questions: “Where are they going? What did you hear? How much are they paying you to keep your mouth shut?” One of the guards put a plastic bag over his head, Mr. Alexander said, and threatened to waterboard him.

Hours earlier, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat had made their daring escape from the unit — called the “honor block” — where they were housed. Now it appeared that Mr. Alexander, a fellow convicted murderer who lived in an adjoining cell, was being made to suffer the consequences.

...

Mr. Alexander got the news at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, where he had been transferred. He said he had earned his place on the Clinton honor block because he had not been written up for any serious infractions since entering the prison system in 2004. He occupied the cell next to Mr. Matt, who was in prison for murdering his boss and then cutting up the body. (Long before he cut his way out of prison, Mr. Matt was known around Clinton by the nickname Hacksaw.)

For Mr. Alexander, his cell’s location apparently made him a target for investigators.

The night of the escape, Mr. Alexander said, he worked late at the tailor shop, and when he returned to his cell around 9:45 p.m., Mr. Matt gave him bowls of salad and fried chicken that had been bought at the commissary. “He told me: ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get the bowls from you in the morning,’ ” Mr. Alexander recalled.

He said he was awakened around 5:15 a.m. for the morning count. “The officer comes banging on the bars,” he said. “He goes to Matt’s cell and bangs on the bars, and then he leaves and he bangs on Dave’s bars.” When there was no response, he said, a sergeant and several guards rushed up and down the cellblock shouting to one another that two inmates were gone.

“The sergeant comes over to me: ‘You hear something? You had to hear something,’ ” Mr. Alexander recalled.

It would be several hours before the first details of the escape were made public. Around 11 a.m., Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo toured the honor block and inspected the holes the inmates had cut in the backs of their cells with hacksaw blades.

Governor’s Stare

The governor then stopped to question Mr. Alexander.

“Must have kept you awake with all that cutting, huh?” Mr. Cuomo asked, according to video of the exchange. Then, Mr. Alexander said, the governor “gave me his best tough-guy stare and walked off.”

Later, the governor said he would be “shocked” if any corrections officers had been involved.

Twice during the day of the escape, Mr. Alexander said he was questioned by investigators from the State Police and the corrections department inspector general’s office.

Then, around 8 p.m., he was handcuffed and taken to a broom closet where, he said, three corrections officers whom he had never seen before interrogated him. An officer wearing a jacket with the initials C.I.U. — Crisis Intervention Unit — sat down and asked him, “Do you know the difference between this interview and those other interviews?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

This time, the officer warned, there were only uniformed guards in the room, Mr. Alexander said.

“The officer jumps up and grabs me by my throat, lifts me out of the chair, slams my head into the pipe along the wall,” he said. “Then he starts punching me in the face. The other two get up and start hitting me also in the ribs and stomach.”

With each punch, Mr. Alexander said, the officers shouted another question.

“The whole time he’s holding me up by my throat,” he added.

When Mr. Alexander repeatedly insisted that he had no information, one officer pointed to a plastic bag hanging on some pipes, asked if he knew what it was for and said, “You know what waterboarding is?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

The officer then put the bag over his head and started beating him again, Mr. Alexander said.

He said the interrogation lasted about 20 minutes, and he was then taken, bleeding, back to his cell.

Later, Mr. Alexander said, the same officer “began quietly taunting and threatening me, telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Fat Boy, we’ll be seeing you really soon.’ ”

That's one of the allegations, one with a direct connection to Cuomo himself.

There are at least 59 others at Clinton Correctional.

So, "one or two alleged incidents" that need to be looked into?

Try 60+.

As for the Fishkill incident, here's how the Times reported that:

On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell, an inmate with a history of erratic behavior linked to bipolar disorder, packed his bags and announced he was going home, though he still had several years left to serve on his drug sentence.

Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.

Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”

“His eyes were open,” the inmate wrote, “but they weren’t looking at anything.”

Corrections officers called for an ambulance, but according to medical records, the officers mentioned nothing about a physical encounter. Rather, the records showed, they told the ambulance crew that Mr. Harrell probably had an overdose of K2, a synthetic marijuana.

He was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and at 10:19 p.m. was pronounced dead.

In the four months since, state corrections officials have provided only the barest details about what happened at Fishkill, a medium-security prison in Beacon, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. Citing a continuing investigation by the State Police, officials for weeks had declined to comment on the inmates’ accounts of a beating.

An autopsy report by the Orange County medical examiner, obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system, only an antidepressant and tobacco. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, the autopsy report said, “following physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The manner of death: Homicide.

Does that sound like an incident that can be downplayed as just an "allegation" by "violent prisoners"?

That's what Cuomo's doing in his comments.

Fortunately Preet Bharara and the local D.A. are looking into the matter:

ALBANY — U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating the death of an inmate at the state's Fishkill prison.

The Manhattan-based federal prosecutor said in a statement that a joint probe with Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady is investigating the death of Samuel Harrell, who died after several prison guards beat him, according to affidavits from more than a dozen other prisoners first reported by The New York Times.

State officials announced Tuesday that Fishkill was getting a new superintendent whose mandate would include reviewing “all safety concerns” in the building where Harrell died. The Correctional Association, an advocacy group with a legislative mandate to inspect state prisons, had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a probe of conditions in the state's prison system, citing a “pervasive culture of violence and abuse.”

A pervasive culture of violence and abuse in the state prison system, but Cuomo says it's just a couple of allegations, no big deal.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a criminal justice reform advocate when it comes to the city jails, gave Cuomo an Urban League award for being a "leader" in "criminal justice reform" just days before these allegations of beatings, choking, threats of waterboarding and the Fishkill homicide were reported by the Times.

Jeffries hasn't said a word since about the “pervasive culture of violence and abuse" in the state prison system or the reports of beatings, chokings and at least one homicide that were reported by the NY Times.

The Urban League hasn't taken back its award from Cuomo yet either.

They continue to carry water for Governor Cuomo and his "leadership" in criminal justice reforms even as he runs a state prison system that is described as "medieval" in the beatings handed out by the guards.

But at least one member of the news media got Cuomo on the record about the allegations.

Now we know that Cuomo, the criminal justice reform leader, doesn't think much about any of this since he downplays 60+ allegations of prisoner abuse and one homicide to "one or two alleged incidents."

Family Of Murdered Fishkill Inmate Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against State Agencies And Employees

They should add Governor Cuomo to this list:

The family of Samuel Harrell, the mentally ill inmate whose death at Fishkill Correctional Facility has been ruled a homicide, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against a myriad of state employees and agencies.

The 36-page complaint filed late Tuesday includes 11 causes for action against everyone from the state Department of Corrections and Community Services and Office of Mental Health commissioners to named and unnamed DOCCS and OMH employees. The agencies themselves, as well as the state correctional officers union, also are named in the complaint.

Harrell’s death was detailed in a New York Times article last month. Many of the same details regarding the alleged beating he received while seemingly in mental distress are included in the lawsuit.

...

Fallout from the Times report has included a swapping-out of superintendents at the Dutchess County prison, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office taking on an investigation into Harrell’s April death and now the lawsuit.

Harrell's death is not the only allegation of prisoner abuse in the state prison system.

In August, the NY Times reported that 60+ prisoners at Clinton Correctional Facility have alleged they were beaten, choked and tortured by guards after two inmates escaped from the prison in June.

One of those prisoners was "stared down" by Governor Cuomo hours before he was taken to a closet, beaten, choked and threatened with waterboarding.

Just days before the Clinton Correctional story was reported in the NY Times, Governor Cuomo was given a criminal justice reform leadership award  from the Urban League by Hakeem Jeffries.

Since then, 60+ allegations of beatings and one homicide by guards in the state prison system have been reported by the NY Times.

Some leadership on criminal justice reform.

The Harrell Family deserves justice for the death of Samuel Harrell and New York deserves a prison system where prisoners aren't beaten, choked and killed with impunity by the guards.

Alas, what we have under Governor Cuomo is Gitmo on the Hudson.

Preet Bharara Launches Probe Into Homicide At State Prison

This news should throw chills into Cuomo:

ALBANY — U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating the death of an inmate at the state's Fishkill prison.

The Manhattan-based federal prosecutor said in a statement that a joint probe with Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady is investigating the death of Samuel Harrell, who died after several prison guards beat him, according to affidavits from more than a dozen other prisoners first reported by The New York Times.

State officials announced Tuesday that Fishkill was getting a new superintendent whose mandate would include reviewing “all safety concerns” in the building where Harrell died. The Correctional Association, an advocacy group with a legislative mandate to inspect state prisons, had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a probe of conditions in the state's prison system, citing a “pervasive culture of violence and abuse.”

Spokespeople for the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The NY Times has reported over the past few weeks that there have been 60+ abuse allegations levied against guards at Clinton Correction Facility since June as well as allegations that a group of corrections officers known as the "Beat Up Squad" had beaten a prisoner to death at Fishkill prison, then covered the murder up by claiming he died of a complications from synthetic marijuana use.

Other than the Times and the Times Union, the abuse allegations and homicide were ignored by news media around the state.

The Daily News ignored the abuse allegations and the homicide even as they blasted Bill de Blasio and his handling of Rikers Island two days in a row on the front cover of the paper.

Same goes for New York politicos - for example, Criminal Justice Reform Warrior Hakeem Jeffries, who had just given Cuomo an award from the Urban League for his "leadership" on criminal justice reform issues, completely ignored the Clinton/Fishkill allegations.

With Bharara picking up the probe into the Fishkill homicide, the story ought to be ignored no more.

It's a big story and it needs to get the same attention that the Rikers abuse has gotten.

We'll see if it does.

Given that the story affects Cuomo and not de Blasio, I have a feeling it won't get the attention it deserves from either media or politicos.

That's how things have gone so far and I see no reason for any of that to change.

Hope I'm wrong - what's going on in the state prison system is horrendous, needs to be stopped and those responsible need to be brought to justice.

Daily News Carries Water For Cuomo, Continues To Ignore Systemic Prison Abuse In State System

Enough is enough.

The New York Daily News continues to hammer the Rikers prison scandal, putting stories on the front page day after day, calling for resignations and investigations and kinds of change at the prison.

Good for them.

But they inexplicably continue to ignore the systemic abuse, torture and murder of prisoners in the state prison system by corrections officers even as they hammer the Rikers story.

There have been 60+ allegations of prisoners being beaten, choked, abused, and threatened with waterboarding at Clinton Correction Facility in Dannemora and an allegation of a prisoner being beaten to death by corrections officers known as the "Beat Up Squad" at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon.

The NY Times reported on both of these stories the past few weeks, but other New York papers, including the crusading Daily News that never met a Rikers story it didn't want to put on the front page and editorialize about, has ignored them.

Today the Albany Times Union published an editorial, asking when the Department of Justice will investigate these allegations of torture, abuse and murder in the state prison system under Cuomo:

Cruel and All Too Usual

“There is no protection from the freezing temperature … the prisoners are still standing in the courtyard, shivering with cold, tortured by hunger and fainting from exhaustion. In such conditions, the prisoner has only one hope left, to die.”

So goes a description of a roll call by photographer-author Brian Gaylor in “Ghosts of Auschwitz,” about the most infamous Nazi death camp.

“Once the frisking was done, they continued to make us stand with our hands on the fence. Those of us that didn’t have gloves were suffering, and the staff didn’t care.”

That second account is not from World War II. It’s from an modern-day inmate of a Feb. 7, 2013, incident at Bare Hill Correctional Facility in northern New York. The incident, related by reporter Alysia Santo of The Marshall Project, a journalism nonprofit that focuses on criminal justice, involved a prison yard search for weapons after an inmate’s face was slashed. The search that went on, inmates claim, for 30 minutes or more in the 5- to 10-degree cold. Inmates say they were ordered to remove their hats and gloves and hold a chain-link fence, even after the search was over, as guards waited for someone to come clean about the assault. Ten prisoners suffered frostbite.

Which brings us, once again, to the question: What is going on in New York’s prisons, and when will the U.S. Department of Justice take notice?

The question springs from Clinton Correctional Facility where, after the escape by two prisoners this summer, inmates told The New York Times that guards beat handcuffed prisoners, slammed them against walls and cell bars, and choked them or suffocated them with plastic bags over their heads.

The question lingers at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, a prison with a history of complaints of official brutality, where the Times recently reported on allegations that an inmate was beaten to death in April by what’s known at the prison as the “Beat Up Squad,” and witnesses put in solitary confinement and threatened.

The response from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration on the allegations at Clinton Correctional? They’re being looked into. At Fishkill? Looking into it; State Police will turn over their findings to the Dutchess County District Attorney in the “near future.” At Bare Hill? No comment, since it’s a matter of litigation.

When is enough enough? When does one report of abuse after another add up to a possible pattern of systematic, dehumanizing brutality?

When will the Cuomo administration concede that this demands an outside investigation, not one by the same state government that operates these prisons and stands to be on the hook for possible civil rights violations and potential damages?

And when will the Justice Department take notice? When these prisoners’ terms are done, and they return to society, to put into practice all the lessons they have learned about how civilized people behave?

When will the DOJ take notice of these allegations?

Hell, when will the New York Daily News?

It seems that if prison abuse doesn't occur at Rikers Island, they're not interested in the allegations in the least.

The cynic in me wonders if they continue to do Rikers stories day after day because they get to hammer de Blasio but they ignore the state prison abuse allegations because that would reflect badly on Governor Cuomo and they wouldn't want to hurt his feelings (or his political standing.)

The same goes for the politicians in this state, all of whom continue to ignore the state abuse stories even as some talk about criminal justice issues.

Some of these politicians have been hailing Cuomo as a criminal justice reformer - take Hakeem Jeffries, for example, who gave Cuomo an award from the Urban League for being swellest politician on criminal justice reform issues even as allegations of systemic abuse, torture and murder of prisoners by New York correctional officers surface in the NY Times.

The newspapers and many in the political establishment have it out for de Blasio these days, the Rikers story being just the latest example of where they take the rhetorical bludgeon out and bash him over the head with it.

I think the Daily News is justified to do so with the Rikers mess.

Yet I cannot fathom why the Daily News and other newspapers (outside of the Times and Times Union) or politicians like Hakeem Jeffries stay silent on the state prison abuse allegations even as they speak out on the Rikers mess other than they have a political agenda to protect Andrew Cuomo and destroy Bill de Blasio.

Guards Beat And Kill Prisoners In Andrew Cuomo's New York With Impunity

Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz have another piece in the NY Times detailing the systemic abuse of prisoners by guards that goes on in the New York State prison system under Governor Cuomo's leadership.

Last week they detailed prison abuse at Clinton Correction Facility after two prisoners escaped there in June - more than 60 prisoners have alleged being beaten, choked, threatened with waterboarding and other abuses at the hands of corrections officers at the prison.

This morning Winerip and Schwirtz detail the homicide of a prisoner at the hands of corrections officers known as the "Beat Up Squad" at Fishkill Correctional Facility:

On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell, an inmate with a history of erratic behavior linked to bipolar disorder, packed his bags and announced he was going home, though he still had several years left to serve on his drug sentence.

Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.

Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”

“His eyes were open,” the inmate wrote, “but they weren’t looking at anything.”

Corrections officers called for an ambulance, but according to medical records, the officers mentioned nothing about a physical encounter. Rather, the records showed, they told the ambulance crew that Mr. Harrell probably had an overdose of K2, a synthetic marijuana.

He was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and at 10:19 p.m. was pronounced dead.

In the four months since, state corrections officials have provided only the barest details about what happened at Fishkill, a medium-security prison in Beacon, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. Citing a continuing investigation by the State Police, officials for weeks had declined to comment on the inmates’ accounts of a beating.

An autopsy report by the Orange County medical examiner, obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system, only an antidepressant and tobacco. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, the autopsy report said, “following physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The manner of death: Homicide.

A week ago, Governor Cuomo received an award from the National Urban League for showing leadership in criminal justice reform.

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries handed that award over to Cuomo at a roundtable discussion on criminal justice reform.

Since that time, Winerip and Schwirtz have written two articles detailing what amounts to the systemic abuse and murder of prisoners in the New York State prison system and we have heard not a peep from any New York politician or criminal justice reform advocate on these allegations.

The National Urban League just gave Cuomo an award for being a leader in criminal justice reform - you'd think they might be upset that Cuomo's running a prison system with endemic prisoner abuse and murder in it.

But you'd be wrong about that - so far silence from them.

As for Congressman Jeffries, the guy who handed over the Urban League award to Cuomo, so far silence from him too on these allegations.

The same goes for the rest of the New York political establishment - crickets abound.

Last I saw, Russell Simmons and other celebrity criminal justice advocates who were hailing Cuomo a couple of months ago as a criminal justice reform warrior have been silent on the horrific allegations of abuse, torture and murder of prisoners by NY corrections officers.

It looks like these prisoners who are getting beaten, choked, threatened with waterboarding and murdered are out of luck because its happening under Governor Cuomo's leadership and the very same politicians and reformers who were happy to hammer Bill de Blasio over "Broken Windows" policing or Rikers Island prisoner abuse are loathe to say anything untoward about the abuse and murder that is taking place in the state prison system under Governor Cuomo's leadership.

In short, prisoners can be beaten, choked, abused, tortured and murdered in Governor Cuomo's New York by prisoner guards known as the "Beat Down Squad" and nothing - nothing - will happen to them.

Not unless these prisoners get a transfer to Rikers, where Russell Simmons or Hakeem Jeffries will be happy to stand up for them then, since they're fine taking a rhetorical bat to de Blasio any old time.

But so long as standing up for the prisoners getting beaten, choked and killed in the prison system means taking on Governor Cuomo, not so much.

Silence From Cuomo Water Carrier Hakeem Jeffries On Clinton Correctional Facility Prison Abuse

Two days ago Cuomo ally (and de Blasio critic) Hakeem Jeffries gave Governor Cuomo an award from the Urban League:

.@RepJeffries on behalf of @NatUrbanLeague presents award to @NYGovCuomo for leadership in criminal justice reform. pic.twitter.com/WuOeMxsdYI

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) August 10, 2015

Yesterday the NY Times broke the news that 60+ prisoners who were housed at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora where two prisoners escaped in June have filed complaints that they were beaten, choked, and tortured by correction officers.

The governor himself helped inaugurate the "tough guy" interactions at Clinton Correctional with this exchange with a prisoner whose cell was next to one of the escaped prisoners:

It would be several hours before the first details of the escape were made public. Around 11 a.m., Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo toured the honor block and inspected the holes the inmates had cut in the backs of their cells with hacksaw blades.

Governor’s Stare

The governor then stopped to question Mr. Alexander.

“Must have kept you awake with all that cutting, huh?” Mr. Cuomo asked, according to video of the exchange. Then, Mr. Alexander said, the governor “gave me his best tough-guy stare and walked off.”

Later, the governor said he would be “shocked” if any corrections officers had been involved.

That prisoner who Cuomo gave his "best tough-guy stare" to was taken into a broom closet a few hours after the governor left Clinton Correctional and beaten, choked and threatened with waterboarding by correctional officers:

Around 8 p.m., he was handcuffed and taken to a broom closet where, he said, three corrections officers whom he had never seen before interrogated him. An officer wearing a jacket with the initials C.I.U. — Crisis Intervention Unit — sat down and asked him, “Do you know the difference between this interview and those other interviews?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

This time, the officer warned, there were only uniformed guards in the room, Mr. Alexander said.

“The officer jumps up and grabs me by my throat, lifts me out of the chair, slams my head into the pipe along the wall,” he said. “Then he starts punching me in the face. The other two get up and start hitting me also in the ribs and stomach.”

With each punch, Mr. Alexander said, the officers shouted another question.

“The whole time he’s holding me up by my throat,” he added.

When Mr. Alexander repeatedly insisted that he had no information, one officer pointed to a plastic bag hanging on some pipes, asked if he knew what it was for and said, “You know what waterboarding is?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

The officer then put the bag over his head and started beating him again, Mr. Alexander said.

He said the interrogation lasted about 20 minutes, and he was then taken, bleeding, back to his cell.

Later, Mr. Alexander said, the same officer “began quietly taunting and threatening me, telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Fat Boy, we’ll be seeing you really soon.’ ”

There are serious allegations of systemic abuse by correctional officers and members of the Crisis Intervention Unit in the Times piece, but so far, other than outrage online in the form of social media tweets and comments left at the Times story, there has been silence from the "civil rights activists" who were allied with Cuomo in his push to give the Attorney General power to subsume power from local district attorneys in incidents of death caused by law enforcement authorities.

There is plenty of scorn to go around here, but I'm going straight at one of the more vocal Cuomo allies, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a Cuomo ally who just gave Sheriff Andy an award from the Urban League two days ago for his "leadership" on criminal justice reform.

It would seem to me that this story in the NY Times that details how 60+ allegations of abuse, beatings and torture took place in Clinton Correctional after the June escape of two prisoners would be a perfect time for Andrew Cuomo to show some "leadership" in criminal justice reform and get to the bottom of the matter, but since Cuomo seems to have set off the whole mess with his tone of "by any means necessary" and tough guy show at Dannemora, he's nowhere to be found on this.

And it would seem that this story in the NY Times would at least precipitate a public statement from Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the man who has been quick to criticize Bill de Blasio for any real or alleged misstep on criminal justice reform issues.

I've left a few messages for Criminal Justice Reform Warrior Jeffries on twitter to see if he'd reply:

@RepJeffries Thoughts on systemic beating, torture of prisoners at Dannemora? http://t.co/updtPinnM5

— rbe (@perdidostschool) August 12, 2015

@RepJeffries One prisoner was beaten, choked by guards hours after Gov Cuomo "stared him down" http://t.co/updtPinnM5

— rbe (@perdidostschool) August 12, 2015

.@RepJeffries What award will you give Gov Cuomo for his leadership in the Dannemora prison beatings/torture mess?

— rbe (@perdidostschool) August 12, 2015

So far, silence from Jeffries, which isn't a surprise since these allegations involve his buddy, Andrew Cuomo, and not his rival, Bill de Blasio.

You can bet had the NY Times published a story about Rikers, Jeffries would have been on it quicker than you can say "National Urban League" award, but alas, this wasn't an opportunity for Jeffries to bash and weaken de Blasio or aggrandize Cuomo, so there has been no public statement about the issue so far from Jeffries.

I would assume Criminal Justice Reform Warrior Jeffries will eventually have to make some statement about the abuse allegations, that he won't be able to ignore them completely just because they seem to have been kicked off at the hands of his buddy, Sheriff Andy Cuomo, but who knows when that will be.

Jeffries has thrown his lot in with Andrew Cuomo and you can bet the Dark Lord in Albany (yes, that's a Cheney reference) will not suffer gladly any "friends" or "allies" who criticize the him over the prison abuse issue at Clinton Correctional.

Thus the "cricket sounds" out of Jeffries on the matter - and the same goes for many of Cuomo's other criminal justice reform allies.

Cuomo Complicity In Beating, Torture Of Dannemora Prisoners?

NY Times with a damning expose of the harsh treatment of prisoners at Clinton Correctional Facility after two prisoners escaped in June:

For days after the June prison break, corrections officers carried out what seemed like a campaign of retribution against dozens of Clinton inmates, particularly those on the honor block, an investigation by The New York Times found. In letters reviewed by The Times, as well as prison interviews, inmates described a strikingly similar litany of abuses, including being beaten while handcuffed, choked and slammed against cell bars and walls.

They were also subjected to harsh policies ordered by the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision: Dozens of inmates, many of whom had won the right to live on the honor block after years of good behavior, were transferred out of Clinton to other prisons. Many were placed in solitary confinement, and stripped of privileges they had accrued over the years — even though no prisoners have yet to be linked to Mr. Matt’s and Mr. Sweat’s actions.

Indeed, it is prison employees who have been implicated: One has pleaded guilty to aiding the escape; another faces criminal charges; nine officers have been suspended and the prison’s leadership has been removed.

More than 60 inmates have filed complaints with Prisoners’ Legal Services, an organization that assists indigent prisoners. And 10 members of an inmate council at Clinton signed a letter last month to state corrections officials making similar allegations.

“We have been daily getting complaints along these lines from around the state,” said Michael Cassidy, a lawyer for Prisoners’ Legal Services.

One of the prisoners was beaten just hours after Governor Cuomo spoke to him and "stared him down":

It would be several hours before the first details of the escape were made public. Around 11 a.m., Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo toured the honor block and inspected the holes that the inmates had cut in the backs of their cells with hacksaw blades.

The governor then stopped to question Mr. Alexander.

“Must have kept you awake with all that cutting, huh?” Mr. Cuomo asked, according to video of the exchange. Then, Mr. Alexander said, the governor “gave me his best tough guy stare and walked off.”

Later, the governor said he would be “shocked” if any correction officers were involved.

Twice during the day of the escape, Mr. Alexander said that he was questioned by investigators from the State Police and Corrections Department inspector general’s office.

Then, at about 8 p.m., he was handcuffed and taken to a broom closet where, he said, three corrections officers whom he had never seen before interrogated him. An officer wearing a jacket with the initials C.I.U. — Crisis Intervention Unit — sat down and asked him, “Do you know the difference between this interview and those other interviews?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

This time, the officer warned, there were only uniformed guards in the room, Mr. Alexander said.

“The officer jumps up and grabs me by my throat, lifts me out of the chair, slams my head into the pipe along the wall,” he said. “Then he starts punching me in the face. The other two get up and start hitting me also in the ribs and stomach.”

With each punch, Mr. Alexander said, the officers shouted another question.

“The whole time he’s holding me up by my throat,” he added.

When Mr. Alexander repeatedly insisted that he had no information, one officer pointed to a plastic bag hanging on some pipes, asked if he knew what it was for and said, “You know what waterboarding is?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

The officer then put the bag over his head and started beating him again, Mr. Alexander said.

He said the interrogation lasted about 20 minutes, and he was then taken, bleeding, back to his cell.

Later, Mr. Alexander said, the same officer “began quietly taunting and threatening me, telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Fat Boy, we’ll be seeing you really soon.’  ”

Gee, how convenient that the prisoner next to Richard Matt, the guy Cuomo gave a tough guy stare down to, got beaten just hours after Cuomo left the prison.

Coincidence?

Clearly the message came from the top, do whatever you have to do to get information that will help track down the prisoners.

Did Cuomo order the beatings of the prisoners?

Probably not in so many words, no.

But the visit to the prison, the tough guy stance, certainly contributed to the disgraceful doings at Dannemora after the prison break.

There needs to be an independent investigation of this, one that is not controlled by Cuomo.

Louis Flores noted this on twitter:

Preet probed Rikers over inmate abuse. Now abuse at #Clinton ? @perdidostschool @N8TchsGr8 @sullio @CuomoWatch @danarubinstein @MercyMercyf

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) August 11, 2015

If the Rikers abuse needed a Bharara investigation, so does the Dannemora abuse.