Bad air in the Windy City:

CHICAGO, July 19 2006 — Special prosecutors said today that scores of criminal suspects were routinely tortured by police officers on the South Side in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but that extensive legal research convinced them that there was no way to skirt the statute of limitations preventing prosecution.

[NY Times: Link]

“Skirt” the statute of limitations? I dislike this usage — we’re talking about wide-scale police torture, not some punk dodging misdemeanors on technicalities. But then, the New York Times is not suggesting that we experience outrage.

Eric Ruder of Counterpunch takes a stronger position:

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.”
[Eric Ruder, Counterpunch: Link]

Democracy Now has an interview with Flint Taylor, an attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago. Taylor represented many of the torture victims and was directly involved in spearheading the special prosecutor’s investigation.

[The report is] kind of a mixed bag in the sense that the evidence was so strong that the special prosecutor found that over half of the 148 people that said they were tortured and abused were, in fact, that they believed they were. But they used the legal out of saying it wasn’t beyond a, quote, “reasonable doubt.”

[T]he other thing that’s outrageous about the whole thing, is we see now that there is a blueprint that’s been developed in various cases for prosecuting people for perjury, for obstruction of justice, when in fact they’re able to cover things up for so long and avoid prosecution until the, quote, “statute of limitations” has run on the acts themselves, that being the torture, etc. If you accept the fact that there’s not a continuing conspiracy, which we say there was, that starts with the torture and continues to this day in covering it up, if you just look at it in terms of obstruction of justice and perjury and racketeering violations under the RI

[Democracy Now: Link]

WBBM Radio Chicago on “Top Cops React to Torture Report”:

Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline on Wednesday described the city’s current police force as “very different” from the Chicago Police Department of 20 years ago during the Jon Burge-era.

Despite uncovering evidence of past police torture, special prosecutors praised the Chicago Police Department for adopting new procedures for handling suspects, including a requirement that interrogations be tape recorded.

“We accept the special prosecutor’s report,” said Cline. “What they’re citing happened but the fact that they said that this couldn’t happen today speaks volumes about the Chicago Police Department.” Cline added, “We take this very seriously because past perceptions can erode all of the good work and progress that been accomplished.”

[WBBM: Link]

Google News: Chicago Police Torture

Google Web: Jon Burge