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<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/homan-square-chicago-police-station-house-of-screams"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/homan-square-chicago-police-station-house-of-screams">http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/homan-square-chicago-police-station-house-of-screams</a></a></small></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Homan Square is Chicago's new 'House of
Screams' | Flint Taylor</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Flint Taylor April 13,
2016<br>
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<p><span class="drop-cap"><span class="drop-cap__inner">W</span></span>hen
your local police station is nicknamed the “House of
Screams”, you know you’ve got a problem. That’s what a
Chicago police station in the south side was known as
several decades ago, when police detectives, working
with the now notorious Jon Burge, routinely took young
African-American men into custody there. Now, a new
House of Screams exists in Chicago. It’s called <a
class="u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square">Homan
Square</a>.<br tabindex="-1">
</p>
<p>Back in the 1970s and 80s, men were often kept
sequestered from their family and lawyers for hours and
days while Burge and his colleagues interrogated them,
using tactics that included <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/chicago-police-torture-victims-deal">electric
shock</a>, suffocation, brutal beatings with batons
and other instruments, “<a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/chicago-police-torture-victims-deal">Russian
Roulette</a>” with a handgun and death threats. <br
tabindex="-1">
</p>
<p> The station had numerous interrogation rooms on the
second floor, with old-fashioned steam radiators that
would burn the skin, a garage with dingy holding cells
and a dark, foreboding basement. Men were tortured in
all of these locations, as well as at a remote torture
site. <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/chicago-police-torture-victims-deal">Confessions</a>
were obtained, false police reports were filed, <a
class="u-underline" data-component="in-body-link"
data-link-name="in body link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/chicago-police-torture-victims-deal">perjured</a>
testimony was routinely offered, and scores of men, many
of them innocent, were sent to prison – some to death
row – as a result. At least one man, Jessie Winston,
died under questionable circumstances. <br>
</p>
<aside data-link-name="rich-link-2 | 1"
data-component="rich-link" class="element
element-rich-link element--thumbnail
element-rich-link--upgraded">
<div class="rich-link tone-special-report--item ">
<div class="rich-link__container">
<p class="rich-link__standfirst u-cf"> Documents
disclosed in Guardian lawsuit reveal for first
time how Chicago police used punches, baton blows
and Tasers at the off-the-books interrogation site
</p>
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</div>
</aside>
<p>Prosecutors, <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/30/racism-killed-his-family">judges</a>
and a politically powerful mayor joined in promoting a
broad-based cover-up, repeatedly denying that there was
anything untoward happening. The torturers were
commended and promoted, while a complicit police
disciplinary agency exonerated the torturers in each and
every investigation. <br>
</p>
<p>An investigative journalist wrote extensive exposés
setting forth the mounting evidence uncovered by the
torture victims’ lawyers, evidence which established
that the torture was systemic. Activists demonstrated,
but the local mainstream media, for the most part,
ignored the scandal, and the cover-up continued for
another 20 years. </p>
<p>Sound familiar? This past year, in the shadow of the
Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal, investigative
reporters from the Guardian and their lawyers have
exposed, in numerous articles, that Chicago’s history of
torture and cover-up is repeating itself, this time at
Homan Square. <br>
</p>
<p>As the Guardian has documented, Homan Square, named
after a notorious <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/30/racism-killed-his-family">Chicago
slumlord Samuel Homan</a>, was, until recently, a
secret site where thousands of people of color have been
– and apparently still are – held and interrogated for
hours, “off the books”, often without being under
arrest. <br>
</p>
<aside data-link-name="rich-link-2 | 2"
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<p class="rich-link__standfirst u-cf"> Jaime Galvan
is the second person known to have died at the
secret interrogation site. Family and friends
contend that the official autopsy and police
report don’t add up </p>
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</div>
</aside>
<p>They are handcuffed to a wall in dark and foreboding
rooms and cells, with inconsistent access to food, drink
or access to bathroom facilities. The Guardian’s
continuing investigation reveals that when this sensory
deprivation does not yield sufficient cooperation, the
police interrogators all too often employ physical
brutality that meets the United Nations Convention
Against Torture’s definition of torture. <br>
</p>
<p>Cases of tasering, which is a very real form of
electric shock, suffocation, <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/14/homan-square-detainee-police-abuse">anal
rape</a>, beatings with <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/11/homan-square-chicago-police-internal-documents-physical-force-prisoner-abuse">batons</a>,
threats with a <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/11/homan-square-chicago-police-internal-documents-physical-force-prisoner-abuse">weapon</a>
and questionable <a class="u-underline"
data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body
link"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/homan-square-chicago-police-files-custody-death-jaime-galvan">deaths</a>
while in custody are now all on the public record. And,
once again, we see police officers committing perjury
and innocent victims being charged with crimes that they
did not commit. </p>
<p>Most recently, the Guardian has obtained police reports
that purport to document some of these cases, but they
are laced with self-serving falsehoods. The latest
shameful iteration of the CPD’s disciplinary agency –
and the CPD’s supervising officers – have exonerated the
alleged torturers in each and every case that they chose
to report. This time the mayor is Rahm Emanuel, not
Richie Daley, but the official denials of wrongdoing
sound eerily familiar. <br>
</p>
<p>The local media – beaten on this story too many times
to count – continues to studiously ignore both the facts
that outline another police torture scandal in the
making, and demonstrations by local activists who seek
to draw the obvious connections between the history of <a
class="u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/chicago">Chicago</a>
police torture, the current Laquan McDonald police
shooting scandal and Homan Square.</p>
<p>Activists, progressive politicians, Homan Square
victims and their lawyers have urged the Department of
Justice’s civil rights division to broaden its nascent
investigation of the policies and practices of the
Chicago police department to include Homan Square.
Hopefully, with continued scrutiny, activist agitation
and a proper reading of Chicago’s sordid police history,
Homan Square will soon be shut down and justice will be
delivered – and the screams will stop.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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