Dewer was a slightly built twenty-three-year-old from New York City, serving a five-year sentence. He had just been released from his cell after seven days of keeplock for disobeying an officer’s order. After all the long hours of being cooped up in his tiny cell, he had really been enjoying the release of horsing around out in the open air. When Dewer reached Maroney, he tried to explain what he had been doing, but the lieutenant insisted that he leave A Yard immediately and return to his dreaded cell.
Incredulous, Dewer asked, “What for?”
Maroney replied, “I said, get inside.”
A ten-year veteran of Attica, Maroney was used to being obeyed.
Dewer countered, “I asked you for what, why? I haven’t done anything.”
Maroney repeated, “I said, get in there.”2
Furious, Dewer turned his back on Maroney and started to walk away. Then Maroney reached out to grab him. In a shocking move, Dewer spun around and hit Maroney in the middle of his chest. Again the lieutenant repeated his order, and again Dewer hit Maroney, before running out into the middle of the yard, with Maroney hard on his heels. As this highly unusual scene played out, a crowd of almost two hundred gathered around. Some of Dewer’s supporters began threatening Maroney with assault if he took Dewer anywhere. In response, Maroney tried to assure the crowd that Dewer would not be harmed—he just needed to leave the yard. By the summer of 1971, however, COs’ promises meant virtually nothing to the men at Attica, and many were certain that Dewer would suffer a serious beating the moment he was out of their sight.3
All of a sudden, another prisoner, a white twenty-eight-year-old named Ray Lamorie who had been playing football in another section of the yard, burst into the circle that had formed around Dewer and Maroney. Later, no one could agree whether Lamorie tried to hit Maroney, or was just calling him names. But at that moment another Attica officer, forty-nine-year-old Lieutenant Robert Curtiss, looked out of A Block corridor and saw what he felt was an escalating confrontation between prisoners and guards, and immediately moved in to try to cool things down. Curtiss entered A Yard and told Maroney and the other COs to walk away; they would deal with Dewer and Lamorie later.
When Lieutenants Maroney and Curtiss walked out of A Yard without Dewer in tow, it was hard to say who was more surprised, they or the prisoners who looked on warily as they departed. Curtiss returned to his post at “Times Square,” a very small, dark room enclosed by massive steel gates at the very center of the prison—the command center where the halls to A, B, C, and D Blocks all converged and where a tiny stairway led up to Attica’s catwalks. Although Curtiss had decided to walk away from the altercation in A Yard, he felt it vital to report what had just happened to Superintendent Mancusi and Mancusi’s deputy superintendent, Leon Vincent.4
Curtiss finally located both Mancusi and Vincent in the Parole Hearing Room of the administration building located nearest to A Block, where they, along with Assistant Deputy Superintendent Karl Pfeil, were in a tense meeting with the Attica guards’ union, Council 82 AFSCME. This meeting had been going on since 10:00 a.m. and, as it happened, the issue that had kept all parties there for so long was none other than officer safety.5 Union rep Captain Frank “Pappy” Wald argued that prison administrators were not taking the employees’ concerns seriously. It was the second time in two days that Attica’s union had confronted prison management with an urgent request to do something to guarantee safety on the job. The previous day, COs had met with Mancusi and were so concerned about safety that they had asked that the prison be placed on total lockdown to avert a possible crisis. Nothing seemed to get through to management. Even now, as Curtiss reported what had just transpired in A Yard, Mancusi just stared impassively. In his view, the fact that some prisoners had acted up earlier that day just meant that they needed to be punished. He instructed Curtiss to wait until the men in Dewer’s and Lamorie’s companies had been locked up for the night, and then to take the two offenders to HBZ.
This was most men at Attica’s worst fear, and all of the men in the A Block companies were especially worried about what might happen to Dewer or Lamorie once they were placed in segregation. For starters, no man had ever hit an Attica lieutenant, and the punishment for such an act was sure to be harsh. Even worse, however, both Dewer and Lamorie had come to Attica from Auburn because both had been in the rebellion there the previous November.6 Everyone knew that this too would make them a target of Attica guards still furious that their Auburn counterparts had been taken hostage in that uprising. That night, when the men of A Block’s 3 Company heard Maroney and three other COs heading to Dewer’s cell, all grew silent and wary.
Dewer stalled at first, asking for time to gather his books to give to another prisoner. When the guards refused, Dewer announced that he wouldn’t go, and the men came in after him, tearing up the cell.7 Those in the cells nearby could hear the sounds of furniture breaking and glass shattering and began banging on their bars while yelling, “Leave that kid alone!” None of them could actually see what was happening inside Dewer’s cell, so they imagined the worst. When they saw Dewer being carried out motionless, one guard holding each of his extremities, the other prisoners thought he was dead. Stunned silence reigned after Dewer was taken away. “It was like a member of the family had just died,” recalled one prisoner. Everyone was now very frightened.8
Then, mere minutes later, the sound of another confrontation could be heard coming from the floor below, where Ray Lamorie’s group, A Block’s 5 Company, was locked down for the night. Even though Lieutenant Curtiss was not sure what Lamorie’s offense was, he and four other COs had dutifully followed Mancusi’s instructions and had ventured over to cell 24 to take this man to HBZ. Terrified after having just heard the commotion that accompanied the removal of Dewer, Lamorie had already picked up a stool to defend himself. However, he soon saw the futility of this act, and even though he found it unbelievable that Curtiss could not tell him exactly why he was being disciplined, Lamorie went peaceably with the officers.
Because 5 Company was a so-called grading company, and the men on it were relegated to doing the absolute worst kind of scut work at the prison, they had their own lengthy list of established grievances against Attica’s guards and the removal of Lamorie and Dewer was like a match to kindling. As the COs walked Lamorie out of the gallery, men flung various objects at them from their cells while screaming obscenities. One of them, William Ortiz, hurled a soup can and managed to strike an officer, which landed him on keeplock until he could be taken before the adjustment committee the next day.9 Word that Ortiz too was now being disciplined only escalated the men’s outcries, so Lieutenant Curtiss sent the other officers with Lamorie to HBZ, while he himself stayed for a while to make sure things did not get any more out of control. Feeling the situation still most unstable, Curtiss called for backup. Soon, eight more officers were walking the gallery that night.10
Curtiss had reason for concern. The forty men in 5 Company were some of Attica’s angriest prisoners, and they were also some of the most vocal of them. The group included Sam Melville, the white radical who had bombed buildings in protest of the Vietnam War and had written the treatise on how badly Attica’s prisoners were being exploited in the laundry. Also in this company was Tommy Hicks, the Black Panther and Auburn transferee who had been one of the leaders of the rebellion there; and L. D. Barkley, another young member of the Panthers who was not only very well read, but also most outspoken about his politics. Eventually, though, A Block did grow quiet. Lieutenant Curtiss decided to head back to the room where Attica’s upper-level administrators were still meeting with the union. Breaking into their meeting yet again, Curtiss told Mancusi that he felt that “inmate unrest had reached a point of crisis.”11 Given that this pronouncement didn’t even prompt his boss to adjourn the meeting, Curtiss was not at all sure that he had conveyed the true volatility of the situation.12
Taking a different tack, Curtiss decided to ask if his superiors might at least all
ow the late shift to stay over into the next morning in case there was trouble. He also requested permission to bring in the next day’s 10 a.m.–7 p.m. shift three hours earlier.13 That way, he reasoned, the period of the day when COs would be most at risk—the breakfast hour, when every company was going back and forth from their cells to the mess hall—would be well covered. Deputy Superintendent Leon Vincent responded curtly, “Who in the hell is going to pay the overtime?”14 Giving up, Curtiss left the room. As he walked away, he decided that he would keep at least the current shift over for an hour while the hall captains made their usual late night rounds, and deal with the overtime consequences later.15
That night the lights were extinguished in Attica’s cell blocks without further incident, but Curtiss couldn’t relax. He knew that many of the prisoners in A Block believed that Leroy Dewer was dead, and he was aware that no amount of reassurance would convince them otherwise.16 Worse, he knew that the uproar that had accompanied the removal of both Dewer and Lamorie had traveled through the radiators and ventilators throughout every one of A Block’s galleries.17 And, indeed, it had. Before the clock struck midnight on September 8, the rumor that “they beat up both guys,” and that Dewer might be in a coma or dead, had circulated through the prison. As dawn broke, prisoners and COs alike greeted the new day with dread.18
9
Burning Down the House
At 7:00 a.m. on September 9, 1971, Attica’s lights came on, rousing all of the men in A Block from their fitful slumber. Throughout the night, speculation had raged regarding Leroy Dewer’s fate. Many couldn’t sleep, fearing that COs might again descend upon their galleries. The silence was deafening as the men lined up by their cell doors, waiting for the hall captain to disengage the master lock so they could step out for the routine head count before breakfast.1 When the doors did unlock, a number of the men just stood there, afraid to exit their cells or to leave the block.2 But eventually they did, and as they walked to the mess hall, peering nervously from side to side, each seemed to “sense that just a sigh, a cry, or maybe a spark, anything” could send the place up in flames.3
The correction officers felt the same way. As COs Richard Lewis and William Quinn prepared to leave home for their 7:00 a.m. shift, neither of them wanted to alarm their families but both were deeply apprehensive. After patting his Great Dane and Doberman pinscher on their heads, and waving goodbye to his twelve-year-old daughter, Patty, and fourteen-year-old son, David, CO Lewis, who wished that he could call in sick, headed to work. Quinn was also reluctant to leave that day. After checking in on his still sleeping daughters, Deanne and Christine, he slipped out the door and hoped for the best.
When Quinn and Lewis arrived at the prison, they joined other jumpy day shift officers getting ready for a briefing from Lieutenant Robert Curtiss, who clearly had not had much rest. Curtiss tried his best to apprise them of everything that had happened in A Yard and A Block over the past thirty-six hours, and then he told his men he would make sure to place an extra officer in the mess hall for the 7:15 breakfast sitting, just in case anything went down. He wished them luck as they filed out the door.4
Officer Gordon Kelsey had been assigned to take 5 Company to the mess hall that morning, which worried him since he had no experience with this company and he knew that the events of the previous evening would have left their mark. When it was time to lift the lever that released the locks on the cells, Kelsey made sure to keep William Ortiz’s cell bolted since he had been informed that this man was to stay there—under keeplock—for having struck an officer the night before. While Kelsey was trying to get the other men to leave the gallery, many of them demanded to know exactly what would happen to Ortiz in their absence. Other than the fact that Ortiz was slated to meet with the adjustment committee, Kelsey knew nothing about what prison officials had in mind, but his perceived evasiveness only agitated the men in his charge. Abruptly, several declared that they weren’t leaving the gallery unless Ortiz was with them, and they headed back to their cells. Unruffled, Kelsey proceeded with the remaining men out to A Block corridor. Unbeknownst to Kelsey, however, as these men passed by the central lockbox, one of them managed to throw the switch that was keeping Ortiz locked in. When his door slid open, Ortiz, along with the men who had hung back in solidarity with him, rushed to join the larger group heading to the mess hall.5
The hall captain of 5 Company raced to the phone to report this security violation. It was relayed to Lieutenant Curtiss, who was in the administration building finally writing up his report on the Dewer-Lamorie incident. Superintendent Mancusi sent Curtiss to A Block to investigate; he confirmed that the gallery was empty and that all the men, including Ortiz, had gone to breakfast. When Curtiss returned to the administration building, Mancusi was gone. Curtiss asked Mancusi’s assistant deputy superintendent, Karl Pfeil, what he should do.
Pfeil ordered that Ortiz be returned to keeplock and all of 5 Company returned to their cells after breakfast. None of them would get rec time in A Yard today. Though he was fearful of what this might set off, Curtiss dutifully telephoned William Quinn, who was manning Times Square. He told Quinn to lock the A Gate to Times Square as soon as 5 Company passed through on the way back from the mess. Quinn knew immediately that something must be wrong, since it was standard practice to leave all the gates surrounding Times Square open during high-traffic times, such as meals.6
Meanwhile, at breakfast, the men of 5 Company were oblivious to all of this. With Ortiz eating alongside them, it looked as if all had been forgiven and, for the first time since leaving the cell block, they relaxed, just a bit. The men remained in a fairly good mood as Kelsey led them in a neat double line from the mess hall through C Tunnel to Times Square and then out into A Tunnel, where they assumed they would exit into A Yard. Right behind 5 Company was 2 Company, another grading company, and behind it was 9 Company. The men in all these companies were lined up peacefully, waiting to be let out for their rec time. None of them, including CO Kelsey, knew that the door leading from A Tunnel out into A Yard had been locked ahead of their arrival. No one had bothered to inform CO Kelsey of the change to regular procedures.7 The prisoners looked on, puzzled, as Kelsey, equally mystified, tried the door. Finally he gave up and, leaving the men in line, headed toward the gate at the far end of the tunnel from Times Square that led into A Block. Halfway there he met Lieutenant Curtiss, who was heading into the tunnel to inform 5 Company that they were being taken back to their cells.8
Just as Curtiss came abreast of the first four prisoners in line, the men closest to the A Yard door realized that they had been locked into A Tunnel on purpose. They panicked. Coming toward them in A Tunnel was the man they believed had played the central role in the beatings of Dewer and Lamorie the night before, and within seconds the 5 Company line began to break down as the men at the front began backing away from Curtiss, unsure what he might do. Suddenly, one of them decided to fight rather than flee, landing a blow to Curtiss’s left temple. Several others then jumped him.9
While these men were hitting Curtiss, the rest of the men in the 5 Company formation, and those in the two companies behind it, stared on in confusion and terror. As Curtiss later described it, “I looked over my left shoulder [and]…the men were standing there with a dumbfounded look on their faces. The back end of the company, I would say probably 40 men, still stood in a column of two’s in perfect formation.”10 All of a sudden, it seemed to dawn on them too that they were little more than sitting ducks locked in the tight confines of this ill-lit tunnel. As prisoner Richard X Clark put it, “We expected the goon squad any minute.”11 Sheer chaos ensued as men began grabbing anything they could find to protect themselves.
In this melee some of the men broke off, trying to hide. Others, however, saw this bedlam as an opportunity for revenge on officers whom they particularly hated, or on fellow prisoners against whom they had grudges. Still others wanted to head for the commissary and loot it for food, or go to the prison pharmacy to score dr
ugs. Within mere minutes A Tunnel had disintegrated into a blur of flying fists, breaking windows, and screaming men.
William Quinn, who was safe behind locked gates in the Times Square command center, was one of a number of COs who were witness to this pandemonium. Others watched what was happening from where they stood, waiting their turn to enter Times Square to head to B, C, and D Tunnels with their companies after morning mess. All were unnerved, but most felt that whatever was happening in A Tunnel could be contained.
Meanwhile, more than one hundred A Block prisoners who had been on the earlier breakfast shift were already in A Yard having their rec time. When they heard the shouting and glass smashing in A Tunnel, they crowded around the windows of the tunnel to see what was going on. Word spread like wildfire through A Yard that a riot was under way. These men began arming themselves with anything they could find—rakes, boards, football helmets, and other pieces of sports equipment. The two COs watching over the A Yard group, John D’Arcangelo and Walter Zymowski, felt their knees go weak as a group of prisoners approached them and snatched their rings of keys. These officers watched helplessly as the group went over to the door to A Tunnel and, after struggling a bit to open the lock, flooded into the already cramped space to join in the fracas.
In Times Square, the guards on the outside of the command center could see that William Quinn was growing more nervous. As he began double-checking to make sure that all the gates were still secure, he looked up and saw his friend Gordon Kelsey with blood streaming down his face. Taking an enormous risk, Quinn opened the gate a crack to let Kelsey in to safety. He then did the same for CO Don Melven, who was waiting in C Tunnel with the men he was bringing back from breakfast. The prisoners in C Tunnel still hadn’t quite figured out that a full-scale riot had engulfed A Tunnel, but Quinn feared that once they did, Melven would become a target.
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