[Ppnews] Chicago - Police torture
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jun 9 12:07:47 EDT 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/ruder06092006.html
June 9, 2006
The Chicago Files
Police Torture in America
By ERIC RUDER
B
Will the real story finally come out?
Chicago police torture exposed
June 9, 2006 | Page 5
ERIC RUDER looks at the struggle to expose police torture in Chicago.
DURING THE last four years, a court-appointed
special prosecutor has spent more than $5 million
investigating a police torture ring that
terrorized nearly 200 Black men on Chicago's
South Side during the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
But the report has still not seen the light of
day--kept under wraps by the efforts of some of
the city's most powerful politicians.
Edward Egan, a former Illinois appellate judge,
issued subpoenas, reviewed records of all sorts,
heard testimony and finally wrote a report
documenting the findings of his investigation
into the torture of African American suspects in
custody at Area 2 and Area 3 police headquarters.
Judge Paul Biebel, who appointed Egan, ruled that
the report should be released, calling the
torture allegations an "open sore on the civic
body of the city of Chicago which has festered
for many years." Biebel wrote that the "interests
of justice require the full publishing of the
special prosecutor's report." But the police
under investigation and their allies in the
city's political machine have so far kept the findings under wraps.
The torturers
The facts of the Chicago police torture scandal
are well established. Former Chicago Police
Commander Jon Burge and officers working under
him used a variety of torture techniques--Russian
roulette, electroshock, suffocation and
beatings--to extract "confessions" during
interrogations at Area 2 and 3 police stations.
For more than a decade, the officers suffered no
consequences for their crimes. In fact, they were
often promoted for "getting the bad guys" and
"closing their cases" with speed and certainty,
at a time when politicians nationally were declaring a "war on crime."
Even if their victims did come forward, the
detectives reasoned, who would take the word of
poor, Black "criminals" over white cops? That
assumption served them well--until an anonymous
tip written on a Chicago Police Department (CPD)
letterhead landed on the desk of Flint Taylor of the People's Law Office.
Taylor was representing Andrew Wilson, who was
beaten so badly by detectives investigating a
1982 double police murder that he had to be
hospitalized. After Taylor filed a civil rights
lawsuit on Wilson's behalf, he received the tip,
which encouraged him to interview Melvin Jones,
then being held at Cook County Jail. Jones
suffered a torture session so similar to Wilson's that it stunned Taylor.
Taylor himself uncovered 60 cases going back to
1983, and the numbers have only increased since.
After Wilson won his suit, the CPD's own internal
affairs division launched an investigation. In
his 1990 report, CPD investigator Michael
Goldston not only concluded that the torture had
occurred, but that the cover-up reached far up into the chain of command.
"The preponderance of evidence is that abuse did
occur and that it was systematic...that the type
of abuse described was not limited to the usual
beatings, but went into such esoteric areas as
psychological techniques and planned
torture...and that particular command members
were aware of the systematic abuse and
perpetuated it, either by actively participating
in some or failing to take any action to bring it to an end," wrote Goldston.
Grayland Johnson was one of the victims of this
"planned torture." Police handcuffed him to a
metal ring in a wall and beat him with a
telephone book. They placed the book on his head
and hit it with a long flashlight, which produces
an excruciating crushing sensation. Next, they
put a plastic typewriter cover over Grayland's head until he nearly suffocated.
Because Grayland still refused to confess and
kept asking for a lawyer, the cops hung him out a
bathroom window, threatening to drop him and make
it look like he died during an escape attempt.
When they brought him back inside, they forced
his head into a toilet that an officer had just urinated in.
They continued with the typewriter cover, and
Grayland could hear people laughing as he was
gagging for air. "Guess who, nigger?" said the
detective who took the bag off his head.
Grayland ended up on death row. Prosecutors went
so far as to use someone else's medical records
to cover up the abuse inflicted on Grayland.
Like many victims of torture, Grayland, who is
still behind bars, carries a sense of shame about
what happened. "No, I don't like remembering what
they did, nor the fact that I was scared to tell
the doctor all they had done, because the police
were there, and I feared they would take me back
and finish," said Grayland. "I don't like to
remember because I was such a coward not to make them kill me right there."
The cover-up
In all likelihood, Burge learned about
electroshock while torturing Vietnamese prisoners
before he was honorably discharged from the
military in 1969--and brought the method back to Chicago's South Side.
On one end of the device he and his officers used
are alligator clips, which are attached to the
ear lobes, testicles or limbs, or inserted into
the rectum. On the other end is a black box with
a hand crank that acts as a generator. The pain is intense.
The Goldston report led to Burge's forced
retirement in 1993. But to this day, Burge
receives a police pension, enjoys the Florida sun
and spends time on his boat--aptly named The
Vigilante--while many of his victims still
languish behind bars. Only two other officers
were "disciplined" along with Burge, and they
were reinstated after serving relatively brief suspensions.
How could torture carried out by Chicago police
over two decades and corroborated by the CPD's
own investigation result in nothing more than
this? Goldston's report acknowledged the
complicity of senior commanders, but the report
didn't say anything about the role of even more
powerful people outside the police department.
In 1980, Chicago's current Mayor Richard Daley
was the Cook County State's Attorney. As the
city's top prosecutor, he added to his resumé
convictions against defendants who had
"confessed" during torture sessions conducted by
Burge and other officers. In 1989, Daley left the
State's Attorney's office to become mayor.
Dick Devine was Daley's right-hand man when the
two held jobs at the prosecutor's office, and he
was eventually elected as Cook County State's
Attorney, a position he holds today.
How much did Daley and Devine know about Burge's
activities? We may never know the full extent,
but we do know that former Chicago police
Superintendent Richard Brzeczek, now a criminal
defense lawyer, received a letter from Cook
County Jail's chief physician documenting
"electric shocks" to a suspect's mouth and genitals.
Brzeczek wrote to State's Attorney Daley, seeking
his direction on proceeding with an
investigation. "I will forbear from taking any
steps until I hear from you," wrote Brzeczek. Daley never responded.
"I think he was more concerned with making
political decisions as to what would be
appropriate for his political career, rather than
the appropriate legal decision," Brzeczek told a reporter in May.
We also know that the city of Chicago spent more
than $1 million in legal fees defending Burge
from torture allegations. And we know that Dick
Devine personally represented Burge in federal
court on at least one occasion--and that Devine
billed the city $4,287.50 in fees for legal work on Burge's behalf.
Daley and Devine have a lot to lose and nothing
to gain from a new report detailing the
complicity of police and prosecutors in torture.
The struggle
For years, activists, lawyers and family members
of torture victims organized press conferences,
pickets and lawsuits to publicize the allegations
against Burge. Their efforts paid off when a
court ruled that Dick Devine's conflict of
interest in the case warranted the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Recently, a series of pickets outside the special
prosecutor's office calling for the release of
the report got headlines and lead coverage on the
local news. With all the attention, the campaign
to get the report out has taken on a life of its own.
In late May, Frank Sirtoff became the first
independent eyewitness of the torture to come
forward. In 1975, he was a 14-year-old Boy Scout.
Along with his cousin, he regularly visited his
scout leader, who was a detective at Area 3 headquarters.
One day, they stumbled on a horrifying scene--a
Black man strapped to a chair with wires all over
his body. "I've tried to put it in the back of my
mind most of the time and tried to live my life
as good as I could," said Sirtoff, explaining his
decision to put aside his fear and come forward
after all these years. "But after seeing
something like that, it's a life-changing experience."
The United Nations Committee Against Torture
released a report in May, noting "the limited
investigation and lack of prosecution in respect
of the allegations of torture perpetrated in
areas 2 and 3 of the Chicago Police Department"
and calling on authorities to "promptly,
thoroughly and impartially investigate all
allegations of acts of torture" and to "bring perpetrators to justice."
So far, a string of legal motions--first by
police and now by the State's Attorney's
office--have bottled up the special prosecutor's report.
Darby Tillis, who spent more than nine years
behind bars--several of them on death row--before
he was exonerated and released in 1987, has been
centrally involved in the struggle to expose police torture.
"One of my biggest concerns is the men rotting
away in the penitentiary," Darby said of the
delay in the release of the special prosecutor's
report. "If they can stall for two or three years
and get it tied up in the Illinois Supreme Court,
that's two or three years that innocent men will remain behind bars."
But with continued pressure, many think the
report will come out sooner--perhaps this summer.
It's time that Jon Burge faces prosecution--and
that all the other powerful men who built careers
by victimizing poor Black men finally pay a price.
ERIC RUDER is a reporter for the
<http://www.socialistworker.org/>Socialist Worker.
The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org
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