Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people

[muriel_volestrangler]

From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show.

The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”.

The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.
...
“Not much shakes me in this business – baby murder, sex assault, I’ve done it all,” said David Gaeger, an attorney whose client was taken to Homan Square in 2011 after being arrested for marijuana. “That place was and is scary. It’s a scary place. There’s nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square-chicago-police-disappeared-thousands

[haikugal]

1. I thought Chicago had a democrat for mayor....

This is horrific. What has become of our party? What can we expect?

[Facility Inspector]

3. Old school Regular Democratic Machine guys

weren't very liberal.

Rahm is a third way shitbird.

[haikugal]

5. Yeah I know...

We are doomed to repeat history in our own lifetimes it seems.

Thanks Obama.

[jwirr]

7. And the two are related. The old establishment and the new

establishment.

[tkmorris]

6. Actually no, they have Rahm Emmanuel

[wildbilln864]

2. k & r & thanks! n/t

[Faux pas]

4. Kickin'

[Eugene]

8. Chicago sued for 'unconstitutional and torturous' Homan Square police abuse

Source: The Guardian

Chicago sued for 'unconstitutional and torturous' Homan Square police abuse

Zach Stafford in Chicago
Monday 19 October 2015 16.50 BST

Chicago police “physically and psychologically abused” three wrongfully imprisoned black men at Homan Square, according to a new lawsuit, which details an officer holding a knife to one man’s throat as two others underwent strip searches and all were short-shackled without access to food, water, bathrooms, families or legal counsel.

The federal civil rights lawsuit, filed on Monday against six officers and the city of Chicago, alleges the use of “unconstitutionally coercive and torturous tactics” and connects the practices at Homan Square to a pattern of racially motivated policing.

In the suit, the third since the Guardian began an investigation into the secretive police compound, Atheris Mann, Jessie Patrick and Deanda Wilson charge that they were coerced into providing false information through a series of physical, verbal and psychological assaults at the facility which their attorney said “does fit into torture under the United Nations definition”.

These interrogation techniques included:

An officer holding a knife to Wilson’s neck, then slicing off parts of his hooded sweatshirt after he requested an attorney and refused to supply information on drug-dealing in his neighborhood, where he was picked up by officers while buying a soda.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/chicago-homan-square-police-abuse-lawsuit