Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 19, 2006 17:48:13 GMT -5
Attica Endures: Walled-Off Facts From the Old Prison Riot
35 years after the bloody Attica prison riot in upstate New York, the
families of 10 slain hostages at long last are receiving compensation from
the state for its indiscriminate storming of the rebellion that one
investigator aptly termed a "turkey shoot."
State police and guards fired hundreds of rounds from prison rooftops upon
inmates and hostages alike in a wild September siege after Gov. Nelson
Rockefeller abandoned his initial strategy of negotiation. The $12 million
settlement has finally arrived after decades of shameful stonewalling of
the families of the hostages who died and 38 others who survived. They
were gulled by state officials in the early days of grief into accepting
token workers' compensation and thus signing away their right to sue.
Money, however, hardly settles the issue for the families still frustrated
in their campaign to gain access to official records of the siege. They
want to find out precisely how state workers came to kill their loved
ones, also state workers, at the end of a five-day standoff. Who gave what
orders? How did official discipline break down? Where did the state's
first false cover story - that inmates murdered the hostages - originate?
Early investigations unveiled deep scandal in the slaying of the hostages
and 29 inmates. But the families find crucial details still denied to them
"that we need to heal ourselves," said Deanne Quinn Miller, a member of
Forgotten Victims of Attica, the group that persuaded Gov. George Pataki
to acknowledge the pleas for compensation.
Official truth does not flow easily when officials are at fault, even, it
turns out, 35 years later. "The state told people, you can't talk about it
- be a good soldier," said Gary Horton, a public defender in Genesee
County who volunteered to help the families.
Though living a few miles from Attica, Mr. Horton found the hostages and
members of their families such good soldiers that he never learned of
their quiet suffering until years later when his wife, Debbie, interviewed
a few on a local radio show. The tales they told included that of an
undertaker who felt compelled to show a grieving family that their loved
one was shot through the back, not slashed in the throat by a convict.
The state's cover story was undone by Dr. John Edland, a medical examiner
in Rochester whose finding of the hostages' death by official gunshot
stood up to fierce challenge from the Rockefeller administration. Dr.
Edland eventually left the state after his family was threatened with
violence by anonymous callers.
"There isn't a person up here who wasn't affected by Attica," Ms. Miller
said. Her persistent demand for the facts echoes the poet Robert Lowell on
the obligation to retrieve truth from disaster: "All's misalliance. Yet
why not say what happened?"
(source: New York Times)
35 years after the bloody Attica prison riot in upstate New York, the
families of 10 slain hostages at long last are receiving compensation from
the state for its indiscriminate storming of the rebellion that one
investigator aptly termed a "turkey shoot."
State police and guards fired hundreds of rounds from prison rooftops upon
inmates and hostages alike in a wild September siege after Gov. Nelson
Rockefeller abandoned his initial strategy of negotiation. The $12 million
settlement has finally arrived after decades of shameful stonewalling of
the families of the hostages who died and 38 others who survived. They
were gulled by state officials in the early days of grief into accepting
token workers' compensation and thus signing away their right to sue.
Money, however, hardly settles the issue for the families still frustrated
in their campaign to gain access to official records of the siege. They
want to find out precisely how state workers came to kill their loved
ones, also state workers, at the end of a five-day standoff. Who gave what
orders? How did official discipline break down? Where did the state's
first false cover story - that inmates murdered the hostages - originate?
Early investigations unveiled deep scandal in the slaying of the hostages
and 29 inmates. But the families find crucial details still denied to them
"that we need to heal ourselves," said Deanne Quinn Miller, a member of
Forgotten Victims of Attica, the group that persuaded Gov. George Pataki
to acknowledge the pleas for compensation.
Official truth does not flow easily when officials are at fault, even, it
turns out, 35 years later. "The state told people, you can't talk about it
- be a good soldier," said Gary Horton, a public defender in Genesee
County who volunteered to help the families.
Though living a few miles from Attica, Mr. Horton found the hostages and
members of their families such good soldiers that he never learned of
their quiet suffering until years later when his wife, Debbie, interviewed
a few on a local radio show. The tales they told included that of an
undertaker who felt compelled to show a grieving family that their loved
one was shot through the back, not slashed in the throat by a convict.
The state's cover story was undone by Dr. John Edland, a medical examiner
in Rochester whose finding of the hostages' death by official gunshot
stood up to fierce challenge from the Rockefeller administration. Dr.
Edland eventually left the state after his family was threatened with
violence by anonymous callers.
"There isn't a person up here who wasn't affected by Attica," Ms. Miller
said. Her persistent demand for the facts echoes the poet Robert Lowell on
the obligation to retrieve truth from disaster: "All's misalliance. Yet
why not say what happened?"
(source: New York Times)