The FBI and the Justice Department are reportedly investigating allegations that corrections officers at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, carried out brutal beatings during a prison-wide search last year.
A recent lawsuit filed in the New York State Court of Claims alleges that correction officers, including special teams from other prisons, descended on cells over a two-day period in November, ordering inmates to strip down to their boxers and then began punching and kicking them.
Officers allegedly slammed inmates’ heads against walls or floors, according to affidavits from 26 inmates included in the suit filed on Jan. 31.
The suit, which also cites hospital records and a separate interview with Shamel Capers, a former Sing Sing inmate, is seeking $1 million in damages for each prisoner involved.
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Bruce A. Barket, a lawyer whose firm filed the litigation, told The New York Times for a story published Thursday that his team has reported allegations to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Barket told the Times that federal prosecutors and the FBI were conducting an investigation.
A spokesman for the SDNY declined to comment to Fox News Digital Thursday.
Fox News Digital also reached out to Barket for more information Thursday but did not hear back before publication.
"This was nothing short of a planned attack on incarcerated men by correction officers," Barket told the Times. "Worse, it was approved of and overseen by high-ranking officials in the prison."
"In our view, staff and supervisors engaged in criminal conduct, and should be held accountable," he added.
The prisoners’ sworn statements detail how the officers allegedly held one inmate’s arm up against a radiator, burning him. Another officer allegedly twisted an inmate’s wrist and thumb, threatening to break his hand, according to the Times. One inmate claimed that he had been blinded for days after being doused with pepper spray while handcuffed.
Sing Sing is a maximum-security prison on the Hudson River that opened in 1825. It is located about 30 miles north of New York City and holds about 1,400 inmates, according to the State Department of Corrections.
A spokesman for the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision told the Times that the agency cooperates with all investigations but won't comment "to ensure the integrity of those investigations." He reportedly said that the agency has 21 of the special Corrections Emergency Response Teams, known as CERT, based in correctional facilities around the state that conduct facility searches.
