Alternet - According to the Chicago-based People’s Law Office,
members of the Chicago Police Department carried out hideous acts of
torture against more than 120 Chicagoans, mostly African-American men.
The abuse, which took place inside of police stations, lasted from 1972
until the early 1990s, and was instigated by police commander Jon
Burge. Burge and his detectives subjected suspects
to cattle-prodding of the mouth and genital areas, hours-long beatings,
suffocation, and other forms of abuse to force them to confess to
crimes of which they were often innocent. Most of the torture was
carried out against residents of the city’s predominantly
African-American Southside neighborhood.
Burge was fired from the force in 1993 for “mistreating a suspect”
but it took until 2010 for him to be convicted on perjury charges for
lying about using Chicago’s jails as torture chambers; as of 2015, he
has not been convicted for torturing any of his victims. Burge was
released from prison into a halfway house in Florida in October. Though
the statute of limitations has expired for most of his victims to sue
for damages, Burge still collects
a $4,000-per-month pension and has cost the city and Cook County more
than $100 million in legal fees and settlements. Approximately 20 of his
victims have received $67 million in settlement money in connection
with the torture they endured.
Because many of the
victims aren’t able to sue for damages, local activists are pursuing
reparations. They argue that the damage Burge caused can’t be fixed with
money alone. Joey Mogul, a partner at the People’s Law Office, drafted a reparations ordinance
that is under review by the city council’s financial committee. The
ordinance seeks, among other things, $20 million in damages for the
victims of Burge’s torture; a mental health clinic to be built on the
Southside that will help the city’s underserved people; the introduction
of courses into the city’s public school curriculum to teach students
about the police department’s history of torture; free tuition for
torture victims and their families at city colleges; and public
evidentiary hearings for victims who suffered at the hands of Chicago
police officers—including those who are locked up.
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