Add The California Post on Google This is the shocking moment a corrections officer is sucker punched then beaten for three minutes with no one coming to help.
The attack happened at the Morey Unit of Arizona’s Lewis prison complex, according to the video from July 28, obtained by ABC15.
Carlos Garcia, head of the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association, told the outlet the officer that was beaten is still facing complications from the assault.
The vicious thumping highlights a long list of safety and security failures inside Arizona prisons, according to Garcia.
He said: “He sucker-punches. His radio comes off, as you see. It’s over here, and now, he has no idea where he’s at, and the inmate’s wailing on him for no reason at all.”
The inmate who attacked the officer was named as Martin Franco, who has been in and out of prison since 2001, and is currently doing time for aggravated assault.
His online prison profile says that he has a history of assaulting other inmates and staff. “He’s lucky he didn’t kill the staff member. He could have killed him,” Garcia said.
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The Arizona Department of Corrections said Franco, a former maximum-security risk, was “properly housed in a lower-custody unit because of his “prior behaviors, including his active participation in case planning.”
The attack lasts about 3 minutes and 35 seconds in the video. After that, the officer is able to get out of the room.
Garcia continued: “New staff that don’t have the experience of these convicts are being indoctrinated into, ‘Hey, it’s okay to be alone, be a team player, shut your mouth.’ So there’s no pushback on what’s dangerous.”
The department described the incident as an “isolated, one-on-one attack” and said “all other inmates were securely locked in their cells/areas.”
But the video appears to contradict that claim, showing a second inmate outside his cell throughout the assault. The department also said staff assaults have declined over the past year.
But under Thornell’s leadership, assault numbers have sharply climbed overall. Inmate-on-inmate assaults rose from 1,436 to 2,330 to 3,552 to 3,605 across fiscal years 2023 through 2026, according to official department statistics, ABC15 reported.
Staff assaults increased from 426 to 528 during that period, while staff injuries more than doubled from 38 to 78.
Lewis prison’s Morey Unit has a history of violence and has been nicknamed “Murder Morey.” In 2019, leaked videos obtained by ABC15 exposed widespread problems with cell doors that did not lock.
Garcia, according to ABC15, called the prison “Jurassic Park” at the time and repeated the comparison after seeing the latest video.
“This video is a rarity. This escaped Jurassic Park. This dinosaur broke through the gate. Here we have everything that we dreaded, neatly in one video,” Garcia said.
