September 13, 2004

•  

  
  

  33 YEARS AGO TODAY

  
  

    

  
  

  Sep 13 1971

  
  

  New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller orders an attack to retake Attica prison. In all, 29 prisoners die and 85 are wounded; and 10 hostages are killed.

  
  

  After a prison guard mistakenly thought they had been fighting, two inmates were taken from their cells for punishment. A rumor spread through the cellblock that both had been beaten.

  
  

   

  
  

  Riot squad outside the prison walls.

  
  

  The next morning, angry inmates rioted. They seized control of an exercise yard and took guards as hostages. Thus began the worst prison insurrection in U.S. history, indeed the bloodiest single clash between Americans since street riots in New York City a century earlier.
  

  Altogether, 43 people died at Attica, nearly all -- inmates and hostages alike -- when state troopers stormed the prison Sept. 13 and fired indiscriminately through a thick haze of tear gas. It was, a state investigating commission would later conclude, an assault both ill-conceived and poorly executed, leading to needless loss of life. One disenchanted state prosecutor ended up calling it "a turkey shoot."
  

   
  

  Officials at first said inmates had killed the hostages, slitting their throats and castrating them. None of that was true, as autopsies showed.

  
  

  Troopers and Attica guards resorted to brutal reprisals. They forced inmates to strip and crawl over broken glass. One man had a screwdriver repeatedly shoved into his rectum. Another, forced to lie naked for hours with a football propped under his chin, was warned that if he let the ball drop, he would be killed or castrated.

  
  

  -http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/010900attica-review.html 

  
  

    

  
  

  "They beat, whipped, clubbed - on top of the tear gas men who were there - including men on stretchers, men lying down. If a guy raised his head a little bit that was an invitation to get a club over the head. If you moved your finger, you got a finger whack"

  
  

  "We have reason to think that some men were seen alive by inmates, even after the uprising, who were subsequently reported dead."-Herman Schwartz

  
  

  
   

  • 1:55 pm
  • 3 Comments