[News] Chicago: Police torture

[News at freedomarchives.org]

IN CHICAGO
The implications of torture
 From Iraq to Chicago, appalling acts regarding the mistreatment of 
prisoners are unfolding

Seeing torture, stopping torture


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Carol Marin
Published May 5, 2004, Chicago Tribune

When it comes to torture, the message seems pretty clear.

Take pictures.

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Otherwise, those who don't want to believe you won't. And those in the know 
who could come forward often don't. It can take decades to know the truth.

This is not about the torture of prisoners by the U.S military in Iraq. 
This is about the torture of suspects by police officers on the South Side 
of Chicago to make the suspects confess to a crime. It's a story we should 
be sick about and one we should have dealt with long ago.

We haven't.

That's why Wednesday morning there will be yet another hearing at the 
Dirksen Federal Building as four pardoned Death Row inmates, Madison 
Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange, continue to wage 
their long battle for justice. They have filed civil lawsuits against 
Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors who, to this day, dispute there 
was ever a pattern and practice of torture at Area 2 by Chicago Police 
Cmdr. Jon Burge and his men.

Unlike the haunting and horrible photos out of Iraq, where naked suspects 
were piled up like human garbage, staged in sexually humiliating poses and, 
in one case, hooded and draped with electrical cords, there are no photos 
of what went on between 1973 and 1991 at Area 2.

Maybe it would have been different if in 1982 we'd actually had photos of 
accused cop-killer Andrew Wilson, plastic garbage bag over his head, 
electrical clamps on his ear and nose, chest pressed against a hot radiator 
and "spitting blood."

Maybe it would have been different if someone had snapped a shot of murder 
suspect Leroy Orange in 1984 when "his pants were pulled down while 
electroshock was applied to his body, including his buttocks."

And maybe we would have been moved sooner or more strongly if in 1982 we 
had watched Melvin Jones scream and spasm when alligator clips were 
attached to his testicles and an electric current run through his body. Or 
when a gun was pointed at his head and he was told it was there to "blow 
his black head off."

By the way, those aren't my descriptions. Or the descriptions of some civil 
rights lawyer.

Those are the words of Daniel Reidy, who in 1992 was special counsel to the 
Chicago Police Department. The city spent $1 million of our tax dollars 
defending Jon Burge against torture charges brought by Andrew Wilson. Then 
city officials abruptly reversed course, deserted Burge and in 1993 fired him.

There was no public explanation for the switch. No news conference was 
called by Mayor Richard Daley or the Chicago Police Department.

Reidy, in a legal brief filed before the Police Board back then, detailed 
seven cases of suspects tortured to confess and called it an "astounding 
pattern" of conduct by Burge and men under his command.

Today, court-appointed Special Prosecutor Edward Egan, who will decide if 
criminal charges are in order against Burge and others, puts the number of 
potential torture cases far higher, at 104.

Ultimately, though, Burge was only fired for the torture of one man, Andrew 
Wilson.

And ever since, the City of Chicago has tried to unwrite what it has 
written and unsay what it has said about this shameful period in police 
history or about systemic abuse.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a city attorney told me with a straight face 
there still is "only one" founded case of torture against Jon Burge and his 
men, the one involving Andrew Wilson.

Bill Clinton couldn't parse the city's position better.

But it doesn't wash.

For more than a decade now, too many secret reports, internal documents and 
buried files describing police torture have been forced out of a reluctant 
city by relentless civil rights lawyers. And just last week, court 
documents and sources disclosed the existence of e-mails between the head 
of the Law Department, Mara Georges, and one of her staff.

They were written in January of 2002. The city was feeling the heat. Death 
Row cases were being reopened by the Illinois Supreme Court. A special 
prosecutor was about to be appointed.

In an e-mail dated January, 2002, Georges wrote that Sheila O'Grady, Mayor 
Daley's chief of staff, "would like us to explore an action against Burge."

They were actually thinking of suing him.

Her colleague responded it might be better to mount a public relations 
offensive, an "organized campaign" to point out the Burge era "happened a 
long time ago."

Oh, yeah?

Tell that to Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and LeRoy 
Orange. They were still sitting on Death Row when those e-mails were flying 
back and forth.

PR wasn't on their minds. Survival was.

I can't figure out what the city, particularly the mayor, is thinking. Why 
is the city fighting these cases?

Just as in the torture cases in Iraq, isn't there a moral argument here? A 
crying need for those in command to stand up and take responsibility for 
what happened under their watch?

Until then, everyone keeps paying the price. Those who were tortured, 
certainly. And a majority of honorable men and women in the Police 
Department who don't deserve to bear the shame or carry the burden of the 
Burge years.

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Carol Marin is a Chicago journalist. E-mail: MarinCorpProductions at yahoo.com

Copyright © 2004, <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>Chicago Tribune




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