Police 'tortured black suspects': claim (Chicago)

[Judi Lynn]

Police 'tortured black suspects': claim
From: Agence France-Presse From correspondents in Chicago
August 30, 2005

CIVIL rights lawyers have asked a rights panel to investigate allegations that Chicago police detectives used electric shock and other forms of torture to extract confessions from black suspects.

The lawyers said the request for a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was meant to shame authorities who failed to prosecute up to 20 detectives said to have carried out abuse from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
The allegations said police detectives staged mock executions, shocked the ears and genitalia of suspects with a makeshift torture device, suffocated them with plastic and slammed them with telephone books so as not to leave bruises, the lawyers said. At least 135 black male suspects were tortured, they said.

Several civil cases have wound through the courts and juries found that torture was routine under the command of now-retired Commander John Burge.

When called to testify, Mr Burge has repeatedly cited his right not to incriminate himself. The city of Chicago has provided for Mr Burge's defence despite firing him.
(snip/...)

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16431962-401,00.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. not so sure this is breaking news

It has been bouncing around Chi-Town for years.
Burge lives in Florida, the life of leisure, while many innocents sit in a cell.

This man deserves whatever the system can throw at him.

[Barrett808]

3. How do you pronounce "Chi-Town"?

I always wonder when I read it.

[alarcojon]

4. Shy-Town

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. stinkie onion swamp

kind of like our politics.

[Barrett808]

17. Cool, thanks. n/t

[WhiteTara]

2. Abu Ghraib didn't come out of a vacuum

the prison system here has been honing torture skills to perfection. I wonder when they will become bold enough to begin throwing dead torture victims out on the streets here.

[alarcojon]

5. Unfortunately, the victims of torture are not the right color

So this thread won't get as much attention as most of the other stuff.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Now that I think of it, I've never heard of Republican torture victems.n/t

[orleans]

7. chicago police torturing people? i'm shocked....

the city picking up tab to defend someone they fired? um...shocked....

(sure...really shocked....yeah, that's the ticket...super-duper shocked)

[bobbieinok]

8. Malloy when at WLS talked about this several times

as a relative newcomer to Chicago he was always inviting old-timers to explain life there

[psychopomp]

10. This story needs more eyeballs

kicked and nom'd

[NNN0LHI]

11. All the cops involved in this are either retired or still on the job...

http://www.truthinjustice.org/jon-burge.htm

Torture allegations dog ex-police officer

When Jon Burge was fired and left Chicago for Florida 10 years ago, he left turmoil in his wake.

<snip>Amnesty International asked for an independent investigation, calling the treatment "a clear violation of international law."

An investigator for the police department's professional standards office reviewed 50 complaints of abuse against Burge and his officers - electric shock, beatings, jabs with a cattle prod, pistols jammed in mouths in a mock execution, suffocations - and declared that the abuse was "systematic."

As many as 108 men have accused Burge and his detectives of torturing confessions from them.

With fundraisers and benefits, thousands of officers supported Burge and his men.

In 1993, Burge and his officers, who had been suspended without pay for more than a year, met different fates. The officers were reinstated. Burge was fired.

He took his pension and moved south to Florida. He left behind people angry not only with him but with the system that took his job but otherwise let him walk away unpunished.

[The Magistrate]

12. There Is No Doubt Whatever This Is True

It has been the basis of successful civil suits and of reversals of convictions already.

[NNN0LHI]

13. After 13 of 25 men on Illinois' death row were proven to be innocent...

...the Republican governor converted all their sentences to life and put a moratorium on any future executions. That was many years ago now.

Don

[noonwitch]

14. Aren't Chicago police known for their corruption?

They tried to shake my brother down for a bribe when they pulled us over on the Dan Ryan for going 5 miles over the speed limit. The officer asked my brother if he had a bail bond on him, and my brother said no, the cop said "I hope you like baloney sandwiches because that's what they serve in jail". When my brother told him he was just driving his mom and sisters to O'Hare, the cop asked if that was his mother in the car. When my brother said yes, he let him go.

My criminal justice prof in college was from Chicago, and complained about the police corruption daily.

[davsand]

15. I have read accounts of this from prisoners.

When I was at the Pro Bono Center we'd get letters from inmates looking for representation for post conviction appeals. A lot of the time it was the SODDI defense (Some Other Dude Did It) or the old "my lawyer sucked" appeal. However, SOMETIMES the letters would have very graphic stories of police abuse during interrogation.

The first few times I was able to deal with it by thinking it was probably some guy telling a story in desperation. After I saw so MANY of them that outlined many of the same types of abuses I began to realize that this was truly happening in my state. It made me sick.



Laura

[psychopomp]

16. As well it should (make you sick)

When are we going to clean our own house? The world would benefit from such a national focus on criminal corruption in our "justice" system much more than from our building Abu-Ghraib -type prisons abroad.

[davsand]

18. What is especially nauseating is the attitude about it in legal circles.

I tried a few times to talk to some Judges and Lawyers about it, and each time I was met with a general attitude that the police were doing some kind of public service to remove these horrible criminals from the streets.

Literally, I had a judge say to me that even IF they didn't do the crime they'd been forced to confess to there was probably one they SHOULD have been jailed for and never got caught. (He's no longer on the bench, I am happy to say.)

I was reluctant to post this given the fact that there ARE good lawyers out there who DO care about justice. I hate opening the door to lawyer and cop bashing, but in some cases it is deserved.



Laura

[NNN0LHI]

19. You darn right it is deserved

And I am really disappointed that some of the cops here at DU won't comment on this. I had been gaining much respect for many of them lately too. Oh well.

Don