Image: The Attica Prison Riot, 1971. (Wikimedia Commons.)

On this day in history, September 13, 1971, the four-day uprising at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility close to Buffalo, New York, ends when hundreds of state and local police officers storm the complex in a hail of gunfire. Thirty-nine people died in the disastrous assault, including twenty-nine prisoners and ten correctional officers and employees held hostage since the onset of the ordeal.

On September 9, prisoners rioted and seized control of the overcrowded state prison. Their bold actions followed months of protests over inhumane conditions, including overcrowding, minimal food, harassment, lack of medical care, and an allowance of one roll of toilet paper a month and one shower a week. One correctional officer was fatally beaten. Later that day, state police recaptured most of the prison, but 1,281 convicts had inhabited an exercise field called D Yard, where they held thirty-nine prison guards and employees, hostage for four days. After negotiations stalled, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller ordered the state police to regain control of the prison by force.

On the rainy Monday morning of September 13, an ultimatum was read to the inmates, demanding they surrender. They answered by placing knives against the hostages’ throats. At 9:46 a.m., helicopters navigated over the yard, dropping tear gas as state police and corrections officers stormed in, firing their guns. The police fired over 3,000 rounds into the tear gas haze, killing twenty-nine inmates and ten hostages and wounding eighty-nine. Most had been shot in the initial indiscriminate barrage of gunfire, but other prisoners were shot or killed after surrendering.

The force that stormed the prison consisted of five hundred-fifty uniformed members of the New York State Police plus hundreds of sheriffs, deputies, and police from neighboring counties, many brandishing their weapons, eager to take a shot at prisoners who killed one of their own. State officials later said these officers arrived of their own accord, but the officers claimed they were invited.

Many officers removed their identification before entering the prison, allowing them to act with impunity. One officer, who arrived with his rifle, said he was told by a member of the state police to “pick a target” and “shoot to kill.” While the plan called for officers to clear one section of the prison after the gas was dispersed, there was little set-in stone after that.

Once the gas was dropped, recapturing Attica was quick and easy. What happened after that was something else altogether. It was instantly clear that troopers and Cos were no longer merely trying to regain control of the facility. This was already done. They now seemed determined to make Attica’s prisoners pay a high price for their rebellion.

What followed were acts of brutality so heinous that they baffled the imagination. Officers were shooting indiscriminately, smashing in convicts’ heads with the butts of their guns and shooting them, then sticking gun barrels in their mouths for laughs. One prisoner was shot seven times, then handed a knife by a trooper and ordered to stab a fellow prisoner. (He refused, and the officer moved on.) Another was shot in the abdomen and leg, then ordered to walk. When he couldn’t, he was shot in the head.

Some of the black prisoners heard the N-word screamed at them as they were shot or taunted with yells of “White power!”

As this happened, a group of prisoners formed a circle of protection around the hostages but were soon gunned down. Several guards found themselves staring into a fellow officer’s barrel, seconds from death, saved only by a last-minute scream of, “He’s one of ours!” But in the chaos and savagery, both hostages and members of the rescue force fell victim to their fellow officers.

A half-hour after the operation began, 128 men had been shot; 29 prisoners and ten hostages had been killed. And the real chaos had just started.

In the hours and days following the retaking, while Rockefeller touted the mission as a great success and the public was told the dead hostages had been killed by the prisoners, Attica became a chamber of horrors.

Naked prisoners were forced to run gauntlets and beaten with batons as they ran. One 21-year-old inmate shot four times heard troopers debating whether to kill him or let him bleed to death. As they discussed this, the troopers had fun jamming their rifle butts into his injuries and dumping lime on his face and injured legs until he fell unconscious. Prisoners were made to crawl naked on concrete through blood and broken glass, subjected to Russian roulette, and even forced to drink officers’ urine.

For the victims of this abuse, no medical care was made available, sometimes for days or weeks. Meanwhile, thanks to a pliant press, the nation was initially convinced that all the savagery had come at the hands of the prisoners.

In 1974, lawyers representing the 1,281 inmates filed a $2.8 billion class-action lawsuit against state and prison officials. It took eighteen years for the suit to come to trial and five more years to reach the damages phase, delays caused by a lower-court judge against the case. New York State and the inmates settled the suit for $8 million in January 2000,  divided unevenly among the 500 inmates, depending on the seriousness of their suffering during the raid and the following weeks.

In 1976, Governor Hugh Carey, overwhelmed by the complexities and the political minefield of it all, announced clemency and pardons for every Attica prisoner for cases related to the riots.

Families of the murdered prison officers could not sue because they had accepted the modest death-benefit checks given to them by the state. The hostages who survived also lost their right to sue by cashing their paychecks. Both groups maintain that state officials never apprised them of their legal rights and were refused compensation that New York should have paid them.

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