[News] Chicago's Abu Ghraib

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/09/1415210

Chicago's Abu Ghraib: UN Committee Against 
Torture Hears Report on How Police Tortured Over 
135 African-American Men Inside Chicago Jails


----------
For nearly two decades a part of the city’s jails 
known as Area 2 was the epicenter for what has 
been described as the systematic torture of 
dozens of African-American males by Chicago 
police officers. In total, more than 135 people 
say they were subjected to abuse including having 
guns forced into their mouths, bags places over 
their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to 
their genitals. Four men have been released from 
death row after government investigators 
concluded torture led to their wrongful 
convictions. [includes rush transcript]

----------
Extraordinary rendition. Overseas prisons. Abu 
Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Practices and places that 
have become synonymous with the abuse of 
detainees in US custody are getting renewed 
attention at the United Nations this week, where 
the UN Committee Against Torture is holding 
hearings on U.S. compliance with its 
international obligations. But there is one name 
expected to arise this week that few people in 
this country will have heard about – and it’s the one that’s closest to home.

It’s called Area 2. And for nearly two decades 
beginning in 1971, it was the epicenter for what 
has been described as the systematic torture of 
dozens of African-American males by Chicago 
police officers. In total, more than 135 people 
say they were subjected to abuse including having 
guns forced into their mouths, bags places over 
their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to 
their genitals. Four men have been released from 
death row after government investigators 
concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions.

Yet the case around Area 2 is nowhere near a 
resolution -- to date, not one Chicago police 
officer has been charged with any crime.

The most prominent officer, former police 
commander Jon Burge, was dismissed in the early 
1990s. He retired to Florida where he continues 
to collect a pension. Today, a special prosecutor 
is now in the fourth year of an investigation. 
Just last week, a group of Chicago police 
officers won a court ruling to delay the release 
of the prosecutor’s preliminary report.

    * David Bates, one of dozens of men to come 
forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police.
    * Flint Taylor, an attorney with the People’s 
Law Office in Chicago, which he helped found in 
the late 1960s. He has represented many of the 
torture victims and was directly involved in 
spearheading the special prosecutor’s investigation.
    * John Conroy a journalist and author who has 
covered the case for over a decade. He has 
written several articles for the Chicago Reader, 
and is the author of the book "Unspeakable Acts, 
Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture."

----------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. 
However, donations help us provide closed 
captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on 
our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - 
<https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&amount=25&business=order@democracynow.org&item_name=Democracy%20Now&no_shipping=1&return=http://www.democracynow.org/thankyou.htm&cancel_return=http://www.democracynow.org>$25,<https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&amount=50&business=order@democracynow.org&item_name=Democracy%20Now&no_shipping=1&return=http://www.democracynow.org/thankyou.htm&cancel_return=http://www.democracynow.org> 
$50, 
<https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&amount=100&business=order@democracynow.org&item_name=Democracy%20Now&no_shipping=1&return=http://www.democracynow.org/thankyou.htm&cancel_return=http://www.democracynow.org>$100,<https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=order@democracynow.org&item_name=Democracy%20Now&no_shipping=1&return=http://www.democracynow.org/thankyou.htm&cancel_return=http://www.democracynow.org> 
more...

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Chicago, where we're 
joined by three guests: David Bates, Flint Taylor 
and John Conroy. David Bates is one of dozens of 
men to come forward with allegations of abuse at 
the hands of the Chicago police. Flint Taylor is 
an attorney with the People's Law Office in 
Chicago, which he helped found in the late 1960s. 
He has represented many of the torture victims 
and was directly involved in spearheading the 
special prosecutor's investigation. And John 
Conroy is a journalist and author who's covered 
the case for over a decade. He’s written several 
articles for the Chicago Reader and is the author 
of the book, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: 
The Dynamics of Torture. We welcome you all to 
Democracy Now! I want to begin with Flint Taylor 
for an overview. You have been working on this 
case for years. You have represented people who 
said they were tortured. Give us the scope of this story.

FLINT TAYLOR: Well, the scope started out with 
one man who was tortured by electric shock and 
having a plastic bag put over his head and being 
beaten by Jon Burge and others at the Area 2 
police station. He, on his own, brought a lawsuit 
in the mid-‘80s. That lawsuit, we got involved 
in, and over the years we were able to uncover, 
with the help of journalists such as John Conroy, 
others such as David Bates, who had also been 
tortured and had told their stories in various 
courts, but no one had put all this evidence together.

e were able to assimilate, over many years, over 
60 cases of torture, and when I say “torture,” I 
mean electric shock, I mean suffocation with 
bags, I mean mock executions, I mean racial 
attacks, that kind of thing. And they were all 
coming out of the same station, and they were all 
headed up by this man, Jon Burge, who came out of 
Vietnam, started out as a detective and quickly 
rose in the ranks through sergeant, lieutenant 
and commander. This went on -- the actual 
documentation now shows that this went on for 
over 20 years, from 1972 to 1992, when in fact 
Burge was finally, after community outrage, suspended and fired from his job.

As you said, he has never been prosecuted. The 
State's Attorney of Cook County at the time this 
evidence first came to light in the mid-‘80s was 
none other than the now major Richard Daley. The 
Superintendent of Police at that time contacted 
him with the evidence of torture and said, “Are 
you going to prosecute this?” Daley did not 
intervene or prosecute at that time. Later on, 
his first assistant, Richard Devine, became 
State’s Attorney of Cook County. Remarkably, 
Devine, while he was in private practice, had 
been Burge’s lawyer, defending many of these 
civil cases. He then became prosecutor in 1997. 
Of course, he did nothing either, because his 
clients were the ones that needed to be 
investigated. So for 20, 25, 30 years, no one in 
the prosecutor's office, the current mayor or the 
current state's attorney, no one else did any investigation.

Finally, the community outrage was so strong with 
regard to all of that that a special prosecutor 
was appointed. That was four years ago, as you 
said. Four years of investigation has led to his 
publicly saying that he now has 192 cases of 
torture and abuse at Area 2 and later at the Area 
3 station, where Burge was transferred to later 
on. He now is talking about releasing a report. 
He still is not talking about indicting anybody. 
The rumor has it that, because it is so long, 
that we're going to have a catch-22 situation, 
and we're going to have the statute of 
limitations invoked by the special prosecutor, 
who's going to release a report but say it's too late to indict anybody.

Of course, we all say that that's ridiculous, 
that there are ongoing conspiracy allegations and 
evidence that there's an obstruction of justice 
going on in the various courts. There's perjury 
going on. So, no one's going to be satisfied if, 
in fact, all that happens is a report, no matter 
how damning the report may be. So the struggle 
here in Chicago continues and will continue, as 
long as people are still in jail because of the 
confessions that were tortured from them, and as 
long as Burge and others sit in Florida and other 
places and collect hundreds of thousands and even 
millions of dollars in police pensions, rather 
than to face criminal charges, whether they be 
state charges, federal charges or charges before 
the International Court of Justice.

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by David Bates. 
Can you tell us what happened to you? When did it 
happen? Tell us the whole course of events.

DAVID BATES: Well, I believe it was October the 
28th or 29th of 1983, when a few officers knocked 
on my mom's door and announced that they were 
police officers and let my mom know that I’ll be 
taken away and that I’ll be coming home shortly. 
There were supposed to be some questions 
regarding a case. Of course, I got to the police 
station. I was questioned. I let the officers or 
detectives know that I had nothing to do with the 
case. I knew nothing. This went on for two days.

At that time, it was five sessions of torture, 
starting with two with slaps and kicks and 
threats. It was two particular sessions of 
torture that was very devastating, in which a 
plastic bag was placed over my head. I was 
punched and kicked. And I’ll tell you, when you 
talk about torture, you're talking about 
individuals who, most part, were young, had a few 
brushes with the law, but never in a million 
years thought that they would have a plastic bag placed over their head.

More importantly, the torture has never been 
resolved. No one has ever owned up to the 
torture. So we have hundreds of individuals who 
have psychologically been warped, been destroyed. 
There's never been any clinical resolution to the 
torture. No one has owned up to it.

And I tell you, the fact that this attorney and 
this journalist have spent years trying to 
uncover the truth and community organizations and 
individuals -- we're talking about a city. We're 
talking about a state. We're talking about 
legislators, who have not looked into the issue 
of torture, and I say it's a shame. And I would 
like to commend these gentlemen for working hard 
to bring the issue of torture out. But I say it's 
time for the legislators and mayor and 
individuals who had firsthand knowledge of it to 
come clean with it and bring these individuals to justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Flint Taylor, I remember years ago 
with a especially active group of mothers, 
mothers in Chicago of men on death row, who kept 
raising the issue of this police commander, 
Burge, and saying that their sons had been 
tortured, that one had engraved in a metal bench 
in the police station, “I am tortured, I’m forced 
to confess,” something like that. What about 
this? What about death row cases, where men ended up on death row?

FLINT TAYLOR: That's been a major, major piece of 
this whole struggle against police torture. In 
the early and mid-‘90s, the movement against 
police torture and for human rights came together 
with the anti-death penalty movement here in 
Chicago and raised a very strong set of voices, 
some of whom you’ve just mentioned. For people, 
there were at least ten to twelve people on death 
row here in Illinois who alleged and had evidence 
to show that Burge and his men had tortured them 
into giving confessions, one of whom was Aaron 
Patterson, whom you just mentioned, who during a 
break in one of his torture sessions etched in a 
bench that he had been suffocated with a bag and 
was being tortured. That later came out.

Ultimately, due to the combination of the 
factors, and articles that John wrote, and 
speaking out by David and others in the 
community, and the work of various lawyers, 
Governor Ryan looked at all of these cases, and 
as you know, he not only commuted the sentence of 
all of those on death row, some 160-odd people, 
but he looked specifically at four cases of 
torture by Burge and others and found that those 
individuals were innocent, that they had been 
tortured into giving false confession, and he 
gave full innocence pardons to those four 
individuals. That’s Aaron Patterson, Stanley 
Howard, Madison Hobley and Leroy Orange.

Those four men are now “fortunate” enough -- and 
I put that with quotes around it -- to be able 
to, because they've been exonerated, bring 
lawsuits in federal courts. So there is not only 
the special prosecutor, but there are these 
lawsuits by the individuals who have been 
pardoned in federal court, where we are fighting 
the issues of torture and bringing out evidence in that forum, as well.

And there's an obstruction of justice going on in 
that courtroom, as well as against the special 
prosecutor, as the city has paid over $5 million 
to a set of private lawyers to represent the 
police officers, including Burge, in all these 
cases. Burge now and his men -- and there's now 
over 50 detectives that are named in one or more 
of these192 cases -- they are all getting free 
lawyers, and they’re getting the advice from the 
city-paid lawyers to take the Fifth Amendment. So 
you now have the spectacle of, in these federal 
cases and in front of the special prosecutor, 
that former and present law enforcement officers, 
rather than to answer questions about whether 
they tortured and abused people like David Bates 
and the men on death row, they have all lined up 
and taken the Fifth Amendment as to each and 
every allegation of police torture.

AMY GOODMAN: John Conroy, you’re a journalist and 
author. You've covered the torture case for over 
a decade for the Chicago Reader, and you wrote 
the book, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The 
Dynamics of Torture. How has this taken so long 
to come out, though it has come out in parts over 
the years and in certain communities well-known? 
And now the question of whether, in fact, it will 
be released, this report that among other people 
calling for this, four black aldermen are calling 
for the public release of this report.

JOHN CONROY: Well, it hasn't taken that long to 
be out. It was out in 1990, when we did the story 
in the Chicago Reader, the first story, and we’ve 
done more than 100,000 words since. And I think 
that what's dragged on -- the reason why it's 
dragged on -- I differ with the estimable Mr. 
Taylor here on this -- is that there is no 
community outrage. People don't care. As in every 
society in which people are tortured, there's a 
torture book class in Chicago. It's African 
American men, most of them with criminal records. 
And they’re just beyond the pale of our compassion. We just don't care.

And that's why it's taken 15 years for you 
probably to do this program and many others now 
interested in this report, when the information 
has been out there for a very long time. The New 
York Times, I think, it’s covered this twice: 
once, when the men were pardoned; and once, when 
there was a float in the St. Patrick's Day parade 
that was going to honor four of the officers who 
had been accused, and the float never came to be 
in the parade, but there was a controversy about 
it. So, that shows you, I think, the level of 
concern in the United States about this issue.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to John Conroy, 
author of Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The 
Dynamics of Torture. We're also joined by David 
Bates, a torture victim, and Flint Taylor, an 
attorney who has worked on this case for decades.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests in the Chicago studio are 
John Conroy, who is a journalist and author, 
covered the torture case for over a decade for 
the Chicago Reader, author of Unspeakable Acts, 
Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture; David 
Bates is also with us, as is Flint Taylor, 
attorney with the People's Law Office in Chicago. 
David Bates, are you going to sue the police department?

DAVID BATES: Well, I have to consult with my 
attorneys regarding that. I’ll just have to say 
that in conjunction with what Flint said and 
John, this has been going on for so long, and 
there hasn't been the outrage needed to bring 
attention to the torture in order to get those 
convictions. But, again, I just want to commend 
individuals who have been tirelessly working to 
keep this issue of torture in the news. We have 
to look at this from a human perspective. These 
are individuals who were tortured and beaten at 
the hands of people who basically are supposed to 
serve and protect them. And imagine keeping this 
thing and not being able to talk to people about 
this. A lot of these gentlemen went to prison and 
served long stints of time incarcerated. There 
was no one to talk to about the torture. Even 
contact with public officials or community 
leaders, it was no one to talk to about it. And, 
again, I just want to commend everybody for 
coming on board with this issue. But there's a lot need to be done.

AMY GOODMAN: David Bates, did you hear about this 
happening to other people at the time that this happened to you?

DAVID BATES: Well, see, the problem comes in, is 
that when you’re in prison and you're in an 
environment like that, you do not want to let 
anyone know that you made a confession, whether 
you were tortured, whatever -- however you made 
the confession, it was not in your best interest 
to expose that while you were in prison. You 
would be considered weak. So, imagine these 
individuals in prison not able to even seek legal 
help and advice. I liken it to being raped, 
honestly. Individuals not able to be -- go for 
help. Then, when you did go for help, when you 
had the opportunity to go for help, people said 
it didn’t happen. So, I tell you, when you get 
rid of all -- when you get down to the human 
aspect of this problem, you're going to deal with 
a lot of sick men, a lot of sick men that need 
clinical -- some type of clinical help to deal with the torture.

AMY GOODMAN: David Bates, when you saw the 
pictures at Abu Ghraib, what were your thoughts?

DAVID BATES: Well, the pictures, I’ll say this. 
My thoughts on the whole process was: how the 
hell did they get hearings, and torture from 
anywhere is wrong. But as we’ve spoke on, this 
torture has taken place for over two to three 
decades in America, on the Southside of Chicago. 
Why didn't we have public hearings? Why didn't 
the state legislators come in and do 
investigations? We actually had to go outside the 
country to an international court to deal with 
police torture. On October the 14th, the People's 
Law Office and other attorneys met in front of 
the Organization of American States to bring 
attention to the issue of torture, and we're 
looking for delegation of individuals to come in 
and to ask Mayor Daley questions that he hasn't 
been able to answer to the public since this Jon 
Burge stuff has been going on. And I tell you, 
it's going to be an embarrassment to a lot of 
people, but like my good friend Conroy said, they've been knowing about it.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask about the knowledge to 
the very top. Some are saying -- and I want to 
put this question to Flint Taylor, attorney with 
the People's Law Office in Chicago -- that the 
report could well implicate, as you were talking 
about, the State's Attorney, Richard Daley, his 
assistant Richard Devine, who now holds the top 
job. Can you talk more about how they knew, the 
whole issue of them being told early on?

FLINT TAYLOR: Well, as I said, Richard Daley was 
previously the State’s Attorney of Cook County. 
In 1982, when one of the major -- the first major 
case broke with regard to police torture, the 
Andrew Wilson case, the superintendent of police 
was informed by the head of the hospital, the 
prison hospital where Andrew Wilson was being 
held, that there was serious evidence of torture, 
that Andrew Wilson not only said, but had 
physical evidence that supported the conclusion 
that he had been tortured by electric shock, by 
beating, and he had 15 injuries all over him, 
burns and everything like that. And the head of 
the hospital was so shocked, he brought it 
straight to the superintendent of police.

The superintendent of police then brought it 
straight to Richard Daley. He knew that Andrew 
Wilson had been charged with very serious 
offenses, shooting two police officers and 
killing them. So Daley decided that rather than 
to investigate the criminal activities of Jon 
Burge in torturing Andrew Wilson, that that 
would, in fact, undercut and undermine, he 
thought, the prosecution of Wilson, so he did 
nothing. He did no prosecution at that time.

He then presided over the next eight years over 
the State's Attorney's office, which was 
complicit in taking over 55 confessions from 55 
different victims of Burge and police torture. In 
all of those or many of those cases in the 
individual courts, there was testimony from those 
victims that they had been tortured. However, 
Daley defended all those cases, put all those 
people behind bars, many of them on death row, 
and in no instance did he investigate the 
continuing allegations that were coming out of 
Burge's police headquarters that people were 
tortured. Daley then went on to be the mayor of the City of Chicago.

There was -- and John and I disagree in the sense 
that there had been at times public outrage. The 
public outrage reaches certain proportions at 
different times. We're at one those key points 
again today. We had been in the early ‘90s. And 
one the reasons for that was this Andrew Wilson 
trial that brought out all this evidence and put 
together all these different allegations of 
torture. Because of all of that, the police 
department was forced to reinvestigate. This was in the early 1990s.

They put an honest investigator in charge of the 
investigation, and lo and behold, he came to an 
obvious conclusion. He said there was systematic 
torture at Area 2. He said he had looked at 50 
cases, and there was systematic torture. Well, 
what did the superintendent of police do? He 
suppressed that report. He then met with the 
mayor of the City of Chicago, after we had gotten 
that report released by a judge, and he and the 
mayor, who is now Richard Daley, instead of 
saying, “Now we have the evidence to prosecute. 
Now we should proceed. Now we should lock Burge 
up,” what did they do? They not only attempted to 
suppress the report, but then they went publicly 
and discredited it. Daley stepped forward and 
said, “These are only rumors and innuendo.” So, 
at every point, as I’ve mentioned, Daley, rather 
than taking his responsibility as chief law 
enforcement officer and chief executive officer 
of the City of Chicago, moved to suppress and to do nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: Legally -- let me ask you, Flint 
Taylor. Legally, if crimes are known about, and 
they are covered up, is Mayor Daley criminally liable?

FLINT TAYLOR: Well, at this point, is he 
criminally liable? I suppose you could see him a 
co-conspirator, in that it was certain 
obstruction of justice over the years, certainly. 
But I think at this point what we're looking is 
if a special prosecutor comes out with a report 
and says, “I can't indict, because it's too 
late,” then the people of the city of Chicago 
have to look in two directions. They have to look 
backwards to Daley and Devine and say, “Well, the 
special prosecutor was hamstrung by the fact that 
Daley and Devine didn't act when they should 
have,” and then we have to look forward and say, 
“That's not sufficient. That's not right.”

There are continuing criminal violations here, 
and if the special prosecutor won't do anything 
about them, then Fitzgerald, who is the U.S. 
Attorney here and who, of course, has made his 
name in the Valerie Plame case and has already 
indicted Daley's people in a wide-ranging truck 
scandal, he has to open his investigation into 
federal RICO or racketeering charges, as well as 
obstruction of justice and perjury. And as David 
has mentioned, it has been taken to the 
international forum, not only last fall to the 
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which 
is the Organization of American States, who is 
still looking into this issue, but this past week 
and right now, it's been presented to the 
Committee Against Torture of the United Nations 
in Geneva, and one of our people has spoken with 
and presented evidence to the Committee Against 
Torture, and that committee has ordered the 
government to respond and to speak to the issues 
of torture here in this country. And in its 
concluding remarks, it put with Abu Ghraib and 
put with Guantanamo the situation of Chicago.

And so, perhaps there's not enough public outrage 
here, but the international community is looking 
at it in a very strong way, and to hear Chicago 
put in the same breath with Guantanamo and Abu 
Ghraib is something that -- if that doesn't wake 
up the powers that be here in the City of Chicago 
and that doesn't wake up the U.S. Attorney’s 
office and that doesn’t, in fact, put on the 
carpet the State’s Attorney of Cook County and 
the Mayor of the City of Chicago, I don't know what will.

AMY GOODMAN: John Conroy, the Midwest Coalition 
for Human Rights will present a report that 
includes the Chicago torture allegations to the 
U.N. Human Rights Commission. How significant is 
this? And, finally, why do you call your book 
“Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People”?

JOHN CONROY: Well, let me take the second 
question first. I call the book “Unspeakable 
Acts, Ordinary People,” because torture is always 
done by -- we want our torturers to be monsters, 
but it turns out that they're just ordinary 
people like you and me. And I can go back and 
cite you all kinds of psychological experiments 
in which they have found that people will do 
extraordinary things, inflicting pain on other 
people, if they are simply ordered to do so, 
simply following orders someone else is taking 
responsibility. And it doesn't require any sort 
of a twisted mind to do this. We are all -- most 
of us are given to obedience. And so, I’ve 
interviewed torturers from around the world, 
former torturers, and they all struck me as very ordinary men.

How significant the international attention will 
be remains to be seen. It's a unique turn, and 
it's somewhat thrilling, I think, for those of us 
who have been watching this for a long time to 
see it finally raise to the level of being 
mentioned in a phrase with Abu Ghraib and 
Guantanamo. But whether this will just be one of 
those media -- you know, where the media comes in 
for a day or two and then leaves remains to be seen.

AMY GOODMAN: And what's the timetable on this?

JOHN CONROY: The special prosecutor is supposed 
to -- I’m sorry. The judge who oversees the 
prosecutor is supposed to rule, I believe, on the 
12th of May, as to whether the report will be released or not.

AMY GOODMAN: That will be Friday, and we will 
certainly follow it up. I want to thank you all 
for being with us: David Bates, torture victim 
himself, telling his own story; Flint Taylor, 
attorney with the People's Law Office in Chicago, 
who has represented many of the victims; and John 
Conroy, who has written about this for years for 
the Chicago Reader, author of Unspeakable Acts, 
Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20060511/607f2360/attachment.htm>