Post written by special guest contributor, Freddy Martinez.
Chicago has become the first U.S. city to formally acknowledge torture by its police department. Community activists, victims and lawyers first pushed to expose widespread torture under police commander Jon Burge over twenty-seven years ago. The work began when People’s Law Office represented Andrew Wilson’s civil lawsuit against Chicago Police and Burge in the early 1980s. Human Rights Watch notes that Wilson was burned by cigarettes and electrocuted by a “black box” for over seventeen hours.
In 1990, John Conroy reported that a different person, Roy Wade Brown, was interrogated by police and his finger was placed in a bolt cutter with threats to cut it off. Furthermore, “he was taken to the roof of the police station and was told he would be thrown off.” In another instance, while under police custody, Burge and another officer beat a victim named Will Porch “with a .44 Magnum pistol… emptied the revolver of all but one bullet, and then forced him to play a one-sided game of Russian Roulette.” Other abuses included electric shocks to the genitals, beatings, suffocation with plastic bags, and coercions into false confessions. The torture was so endemic that in 2009, Illinois established the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Act to review and investigate hundreds of cases of alleged abuse. The Commission was defunded in 2012, essentially destroying their ability to investigate further.
The torture committed by the Chicago Police Department occurred long before the much-publicized torture of Iraqis by US troops in Abu Ghraib. Indeed as the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UN CAN) notes “However, it [UN CAN] remains concerned that, despite the fact that [Jon] Burge was convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, no Chicago police officer has been convicted for these acts of torture for reasons including the statute of limitations expiring. While noting that several victims were ultimately exonerated of the underlying crimes, the vast majority of those tortured most (sic) of them African-Americans, have received no compensation for the extensive injuries suffered”. Of course, Chicago did not unilaterally adopt UN CAN’s recommendations. The People’s Law Office who worked alongside the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, alongside other groups, to lobby for this reparations package. After decades of struggle, the Chicago’s City Council has finally created a formal reparations package funded with more five million dollars of compensation to victims among other concessions. The concession package includes a formal apology from the City Council, a public memorial to torture survivors, free enrollment at City Colleges, psychological counseling services and more. Of particular importance is that Chicago Public Schools will create a curriculum that teaches the history of police torture.
To understand the history of torture further Ruby Hornet spoke with Shubra Ohri, staff attorney at the People’s Law Office, about the package.