Former Queens Council Member Ruben Wills said he suffered “extreme anxiety attacks” after watching shocking bodycam video of multiple New York state correction officers mercilessly beating a defenseless inmate before his death in December. “It was not just the brutality of this man being beaten,” Wills told NBC New York in an exclusive interview, “It was because I remembered some of those officers.” Wills says some of the officers caught on bodycam assaulting Robert Brooks, 43, are the same officers who tormented and psychologically tortured him when he was incarcerated at the same Upstate Marcy Correctional Facility in 2017-2018. The former councilmember — who represented southeast Queens until his conviction — says he spent about eight months incarcerated at Marcy. At the time, he was serving a 2- to 6-year sentence for misusing roughly $30,000 in public and campaign money. Eventually, Wills’ conviction was reversed on appeal and dismissed by a judge, but not before having had some brutal experiences behind bars, he says. “There was one group that took particular joy in hurting people,” Wills said, describing what he says were daily beatings by a particular group of officers. Wills said the group was known as the “hands-on-crew” because they put their hands on prisoners. The group operated like a gang, he recalled, ruling with racist insults, fear of retribution, and even death threats. “I would never be found,” Wills said, describing what the officers told him when he questioned their conduct. “They would just put me in the back of the prison in the ground and my family wouldn’t know for months that I was gone.” Wills said two officers also taunted him to kill himself after he was put in a punitive, solitary cell called the SHU. They told him the solitary confinement was suicide watch, he told News 4, even though he had insisted he was not suicidal. According to Wills, “They said this is where they take everybody for punishment. I said suicide watch isn’t punishment!” During a recent sit-down interview with NBC New York at the Rochdale Community Center, Wills became emotional while describing the abuse he says he endured from the two correction officers outside that solitary cell. “They were coming and kicking the door, slamming against the door all night long, telling me to kill myself, singing “Suicide,” Wills said, describing a song by musical artist Sean Kingston. Wills says the officers held a hangman-style sketch of him up against the cell door while calling out “Is he dead yet? He’s not dead yet!” After Wills was released, he worked with an animation producer to create a series of video re-enactments he says represent his version of encounters with correction officers. He said one reason he created the re-enactments was to help people envision his version of how he ended up in a wheelchair for eight months. Wills said it happened on day one of his prison sentence on Rikers Island. He says that because of a pre-existing medical condition, he was supposed to be placed in the Rikers NICU, but that instead, correction officers took him on a violent van ride during which he was thrown around in a metal compartment of the van. When the van ride stopped, he was unconscious, Wills said. Citing medical neglect at Rikers, in 2018, Wills sued the city for $10 million, a fact that has been previously reported. Now, six years later, Wills says the city is “stonewalling” — withholding medical records he needs for his case. Wills suggested Mayor Eric Adams could have helped. “I mean, this is not a shot at him, but we have a mayor who went through police brutality when he was younger. So you would think that he would direct his Corporation Counsel to clear this backlog up,” said Wills. The NYC Law Department and Department of Correction both declined to comment on Wills’ allegations and lawsuit. At Marcy, multiple investigations are underway. Gov. Kathy Hochul demanded prison officials begin termination proceedings against 14 officers, calling the incident “sickening.” Two have already resigned. But state officials say terminating a correction officer is not easy, because under the rules of their contract, the governor does not have final say. An arbitrator does. A spokesman for Hochul told News 4 the Democrat is implementing a series of reforms and offering $26 million in her budget plan to expand independent oversight of prisons and body cameras. The New York State Department of Corrections and the Correction Officers Union declined to comment on Wills’ allegations about his time inside Marcy Correctional Facility. Footage of the December assault — which New York officials told NBC New York was unintentionally recorded by body cameras in stand-by mode — shows Brooks appearing limp and wearing handcuffs. Those bodycams were initially provided in 2024 with funding from Hochul, her office noted. In a statement, Hochul added that the vast majority of correction officers do extraordinary work under difficult circumstances. Ruben Wills agrees. “There are a lot of really, really good correction officers,” he said. “Some of them actually came to my aid.” Wills says when he first arrived at Marcy, he was surrounded by a group of correction officers who told him they knew who he was and that they were “happy he was there.” He said they told him they did not approve of the “hands on” approach of some of their fellow officers. One of Wills’ animated re-enactments posted online in 2021 depicts a group of officers urging Wills to use his political access to expose what he would see inside Marcy — but warned him not to do it until he was out. Wills said he tried to raise awareness once he no longer feared returning to Marcy. He wrote a series of essays, advocated in Albany, and went for therapy to deal with the trauma. But he said struggled to generate much interest in prison conditions. Currently, the issue is gaining traction after Brooks’ death and the video of what led up to it. “I started feeling a guilt that maybe if I did more, it would have prevented his death,” said Wills. Preliminary autopsy results determined that Brooks suffered numerous bruises, hemorrhages of the neck and genitals, and a broken nose. Brooks’ family filed a Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit and 62 state lawmakers sent a letter to the governor demanding that Marcy be closed. Ruben Wills was not the only one with something to say about what happens at Marcy. In 2022, The Correctional Association of New York, which has legal authority to monitor conditions in New York prisons reported rampant abuse, retaliation and assaults by staff after interviewing more than 110 incarcerated people. In its report, the CANY also highlighted other alleged patterns Wills had previously noted, including racial abuse,references to a “hands on ” facility and misuse of the SHU for suicide watch. Wills said he hasn’t decided if he’ll return to politics. Some suspect he is mulling another run for his old council seat currently held by term-limited Speaker Adrienne Adams, whose term is up this year. Either way, Wills is recommitted to pushing for prison reform. He said if he had the power, he’d immediately flood Marcy with mental health services. “Everyone must have heard that man’s screams,” said Wills. “There’s going to be recidivism and you’re going to create monsters from people who weren’t monsters when they went in.”