ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — Criminal justice advocates rallied at the state Capitol Thursday, accusing Governor Kathy Hochul of hypocrisy for demanding federal accountability while ignoring deaths in New York state prisons. While they demonstrated outside her office, Daniel Martuscello III, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, testified down the hall before the legislature at a budget hearing on public protection.
The protest in the Capitol’s War Room followed Hochul’s January call for U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign in the wake of violence from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota. The coalition urged Hochul in turn to fire Martuscello, the corrections commissioner, in the wake of violence from correction officers in state-run prisons.