Early morning, December 4, 1969, fourteen police officers executed a search warrant on a Chicago flat rented by the Black Panther Party. Supposedly looking for illegal weapons, instead, they shot and killed two people, leaving four others wounded.
Darrell Canon, one of the over 100 men tortured by the former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who died yesterday. He acted with complete impunity over almost two decades before reporters, activists, and human rights attorneys stopped him.
Still, it’s worth emphasizing that these findings may not be exclusive to Chicago. Whether it’s Baltimore, Cleveland, New Orleans, or Ferguson, Missouri, the Justice Department has found horrific constitutional violations in how police use force, how they target minority residents, how they stop and ticket people, and virtually every other aspect of policing. These issues come up time and time again, no matter the city that federal investigators look at.
Chicago Police Department officers stashed microphones in their squad car glove boxes. They pulled out batteries. Microphone antennas got busted or went missing. And sometimes, dashcam systems didn’t have any microphones at all, DNAinfo Chicago has learned. Police officials last month blamed the absence of audio in 80 percent of dashcam videos on officer error and “intentional destruction.”
Relatives demand accountability and changes to the way the police interact with Black residents.
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It should shock no one that the odds are even longer if you’re not white, and awful if you’re black. Black Chicagoans lodged 61 percent of the complaints that comprise the CPDP data and white Chicagoans only about 20 percent. Twenty-five percent of the charges deemed sustainable were leveled by black people;58 percent were brought by whites.
Over a period of nearly 20 years, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his "midnight crew" allegedly tortured at least 119 people, forcing them to make confessions. The police officers beat the victims, burned them with lit cigarettes and handcuffed them to hot radiators. They tied plastic bags over their heads and nearly suffocated them. They put cattle prods on their genitals and in their mouths and electrocuted them. (Adeshina Emmanuel, The Chicago Reporter)*
Two ex-senior Justice Department officials say allegations about police operation are ‘very disturbing’ and raise serious questions about constitutional violations
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