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| Ex-Attica Officers Recall Uprising |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/20/2002 |
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John Stockholm, an officer taken hostage at Attica prison in 1971, stood blindfolded on a catwalk as state police responded to a four-day inmate uprising with an assault that left dozens of corrections officers and prisoners dead. Gunfire bounced off the ground all around him, kicking up a hail of cement chips. An inmate who'd been holding a knife to his throat suddenly dropped away, apparently felled by a bullet. 'You could hear the sounds and (taste) the smell of pain and death,' Stockholm said last week. 'It's haunted me for over 30 years and it keeps replaying in my nightmares.' Surviving hostages and their families, along with widows and children of their slain comrades, recounted their harrowing ordeals at the start of a two-day public hearing designed to redress grievances they say have long been ignored. Police fired more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition in six minutes on Sept. 13, 1971, quelling the siege at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo. In all, 11 corrections officers and 32 inmates died. All but four were shot to death when state troopers retook the prison. The hearing was held by a task force appointed by Gov. George Pataki last year to hear the pleas of The Forgotten Victims of Attica, a group representing surviving Attica prison officers and the relatives of those who were killed. The group wants state officials to apologize for the slayings of 'loyal state employees.' It also wants the state to pay about 50 families between $30 million and $50 million in total compensation, and provide counseling to those who still need it. After Attica was retaken, the state urged the families of slain hostages to accept limited death benefits and offered survivors six months of paid leave. Unknown to them, the pay included workers' compensation funds that, once accepted, barred them from suing the state. One widow who didn't accept the money sued and, more than a decade later, was awarded $1.6 million for the death of her husband, Herbert Jones. Forgotten Victims, created in 2000 after a federal judge in Rochester awarded $8 million to former inmates who were injured, is seeking reparations in like amounts. |
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