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When Chicago Tortured
Chicago Police Torture

When Chicago Tortured
Noah Berlatsky
The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/chicago-police-torture-jon-burge/383839/

In response to the CIA torture report, President Obama stated that torture was "contrary to who we are." (Peter Beinart explained why this statement is not logically coherent last week.) But Obama didn't comment on how odd it is for a Chicago politician like him to claim that torture is somehow separate from the American experience. Chicago, as the president must know, has a dark legacy of torture and cover-ups for which the city is still trying to confront and atone. But whether Chicago ever will be willing to truly say that torture is "contrary to who we are" remains unresolved.

Chicago's history of torture is centered on police commander Jon Burge, who was assigned to Chicago's south side in 1972. Between then and 1981, Burge and his men used torture to elicit confessions from more than 110 African-American men. In addition to beatings, the police under Burge allegedly suffocated suspects with plastic bags and used electrical shocks to victims' genitals, a technique Burge may have learned as a military police investigator in Vietnam.  Burge also suffocated his victims with plastic bags. Anthony Holmes, one of the victims, provided this description of the torture in a statement to special prosecutors:

"[Burge] put some handcuffs on my ankles, then he took one wire and put it on my ankles, he took the other wire and put it behind my back, on the handcuffs behind my back. Then after that, when he—then he went and got a plastic bag, put it over my head ... so I bit through it. So he went and got another bag and put it on my head and he twisted it. When he twisted it, it cut my air off and I started shaking. ... So then he hit me with the voltage. When he hit me with the voltage, that's when I started gritting, crying, hollering … It feel [sic] like a thousand needles going through my body. And then after that, it just feel [sic] like, you know—it feel [sic] like something just burning me from the inside, and, um, I shook, I gritted, I hollered, then I passed out."

As with the CIA case, torture involved not only those who administered electric shocks and beatings, but those in power who directly or indirectly benefited from it. Despite widespread accusations of torture, Richard M. Daley, then the Cook County State's Attorney and later Mayor of Chicago, did not investigate Burge and continued to use confessions elicited by torture to make convictions.

Given Daley's power and a justice system where the testimony of arrested black men is rarely given the same weight as that of white police officers, it seemed impossible that justice would ever be done—as it seems impossible that justice will ever be done in the CIA torture case. But activists and torture survivors themselves continued to push the issue in the media, in the courts, and in the international community, winning one slow, improbable victory after another. In 2001, campaigners managed to convince then-Governor of Illinois George Ryan to pardon four men tortured by Burge, and commute all death sentences in the state because of concerns about the fairness of the state's justice system.

The statute of limitations for most of Burge’s alleged criminal acts ran out long ago, but prosecutors were still able to charge him with perjury because he had lied under oath about his acts of torture during a civil case. Though Burge was convicted in 2006, he was released in October after serving less than four years in prison, and a police board determined that he could retain his pension. Meanwhile, most of those Burge tortured have received no compensation. At least nineteen people who were convicted on the basis of confessions elicited with torture remain in prison.

In October 2013, Aldermen Proco Joe Moreno and Howard Brookins filed an ordinance in Chicago's City Council titled "Reparations for the Chicago Police Torture Victims." If passed, the ordinance would officially acknowledge and apologize for the torture committed, provide at least $20 million in reparations to the victims, provide resources for the legal defense of those victims still incarcerated, fund a memorial, and mandate a school curriculum focused on teaching about Burge's abuses. According to Moreno, who has been working on the issue of police torture since before he became alderman in 2010, the ordinance is necessary because "we're trying to wipe this scar off of Chicago."

"We need to be educated about and have education on this,” Moreno told me in an interview. “Look at what we're going through right now in Ferguson and New York with police brutality against African-Americans. This was the torture capital of the United States under John Burge. And it took so long to get it out into the open, and we need to make sure that people know about this so that it's not repeated, and so we know the injustices that happened here in Chicago."

Despite Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s acknowledgment that the city needs to address the damage done by Burge, action is more difficult. The ordinance has been stalled in the City Council by the administration for more than a year. Moreno says that supporters of the ordinance have been in meetings with the city and that he's hopeful that there will be a hearing no later than January, but the process remains grindingly slow. Even if the hearing is finally held, it's not certain that the ordinance has enough votes to pass despite substantial support. In the meantime, activists continue to lobby the city and Emanuel; a march was held on December 16.

The struggle to recognize and confront torture in Chicago mirrors the struggle to recognize and confront torture nationally. Joey Mogul, a partner at the People's Law Office and co-founder of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial who has been working on the Burge torture case for years, told me that "people like to make statements that we, as a country, are against torture. And I think those statements are important. But beyond those statements what we see is a series of equivocations, and these very distressing qualifications about what is torture and whether it happened."

In Chicago, she says, "I can say from the experience of the Burge torture cases, for years, political leaders, the media, they refused to even describe these acts—electrically shocking people on their genitals, suffocating people with plastic bags—as acts of torture. […] It's been a battle for us," she concluded, "and I think it's a battle to this day. What I see is that when we have domestic acts of torture by police and prison guards, mostly against African-American and Latino people within the United States, people do not want to describe those acts as torture."

A similar evasiveness can be felt in the debate surrounding the Senate torture report. Officials and even the media continue to refuse to use the word "torture" after the Senate report because of its moral, financial, and legal weight. That weight suggests the possibility—and even necessity—of accountability. Part of the power of the powerful, both historically and today, is the ability to victimize others without repercussions. That power can seem overwhelming; Mogul said that people told her, for years, that there was no way that Jon Burge would ever face jail time. But will Daley ever face any consequences for his role as a prosecutor in using confessions elicited by torture to rack up convictions, and ultimately to advance his career? Will George W. Bush or Dick Cheney ever be held accountable? The campaign against torture in Chicago should have taught Obama that torture is not contrary to who Americans are—unless, through decades of effort, injustice, and disappointment, the American people are willing to work to make it so.

Chicago Police Torture
People's Law Office
http://peopleslawoffice.com/issues-and-cases/chicago-police-torture/

Jon Burge, Chicago Police Torture and Justice for Survivors

For over a quarter century, People’s Law Office has been at the forefront of uncovering and publicizing the police torture ring led by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, and has obtained exonerations, release from prison and money damages for torture survivors in civil rights lawsuits.

This scandal features two decades of systemic violence perpetrated on over 110 African American men and women, and has implicated at least two Chicago Mayors and numerous officials of the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State’s Attorneys’ Office. The work of People’s Law Office was instrumental in obtaining the 2008 federal indictment of Jon Burge, which led to his conviction and imprisonment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

People’s Law Office represents torture survivors in both criminal and civil rights cases, including Michael Tillman.  The office, along with MacArthur Justice Center obtained Tillman’s exoneration in 2010 after over 23 years in prison, and now represent him in a civil rights case. In Tillman’s case, the judge ruled that former Mayor Richard M. Daley should remain a defendant for his role in the conspiracy to cover-up the pattern and practice of torture and that he should be required to give a deposition.

People’s Law Office, along with the Mac Arthur Justice Center and Northwestern’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, also represents Ronald Kitchen in a civil rights law suit for money damages. Kitchen was wrongfully convicted of five murders based on a coerced confession and sentenced to death, who was imprisoned for 21 years before being exonerated; and Darrell Cannon, whose release the office obtained in 2007 after forcing a new hearing on his motion to suppress, and who the office with the Mac Arthur Justice Center now represents in his appeal of the unfair dismissal of his damages claim.

Work on these police torture cases began in the 1980s, when People’s Law Office represented Andrew Wilson who was extensively tortured and brutalized by Burge. Through this case, the office exposed the practice of police torture, which included the use of electric shock, dry submarino, baggings, burning and mock executions. These revelations led to the firing of Burge and the release of a police department report (the “Goldston” Report) which found a policy and practice of torture and abuse at Area 2 under Burge.  After two trials and two successful appeals to the Court of Appeals, People’s Law Office obtained $1.1 million in damages, fees and costs against Burge and the City.

In the early 1990s, the office obtained the exoneration of torture victim David Bates, and settlements for three torture survivors, including a diminutive 13 year old juvenile named Marcus Wiggins, who was electric shocked by detectives.  The office also took on the representation of Death Row prisoner and torture survivor Aaron Patterson. In twelve years of litigation, People’s Law Office lawyers obtained a landmark decision in the Illinois Supreme Court that won Patterson a new hearing on his claims of torture Patterson later received an innocence pardon from Governor George Ryan.

Attorneys from the office were also co-counsel with attorneys from Northwestern University’s Bluhm Legal Clinic for pardoned torture survivor Leroy Orange and obtained a settlement of more than $6 million for Orange. People’s Law Office, working with the Mac Arthur Justice Center, also obtained a new trial for torture survivor Victor Safforld on the basis that he was tortured.

People’s Law Office was also at the forefront of the Campaign to Prosecute Torture which secured the appointment of Cook County Special Prosecutors to investigate police torture. Unfortunately, the prosecutors published a whitewash report in 2006 and refused to indict Burge and his men. In response, People’s Law Office, in collaboration with Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions wrote and released a Shadow Report.  This Report, signed by over 200 organizations and prominent individuals led to Cook County Board and Chicago City Council hearings at which People’s Law Office attorneys and their clients testified.  The Cook County Board passed resolutions calling for federal prosecutions of Burge and his men and new hearings for torture survivors behind bars. Chicago City Council members also called for federal prosecution of Burge and demanded the City cease funding Burge’s defense and settle torture civil rights cases.  Soon thereafter, the City settled four of the torture cases for $19.8 million.

People’s Law Office’s has also worked to bring the Chicago Police torture scandal to local, national, and international attention.  Attorneys from the office have appealed to numerous international bodies, including the U.N. Committee Against Torture, which specifically cited the Chicago Police Torture cases in 2006 when it called on the U.S. Government to “bring the perpetrators to justice.”

People’s Law Office continues to call for the reversal of all convictions which are tainted by the false confessions obtained by Burge and his henchmen and seeks reparations on behalf of those affected by the Chicago Police torture cases.