Chicago's Dirty War

[pmbug]

Back in February, The Guardian broke a story about how Chicago was operating a "black site" that effectively "disappeared" people:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

• Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
• Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
• Shackling for prolonged periods.
• Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
• Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

More: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site

Now we are finding out the extent of the operation:

Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.

From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show.

The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”.

The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.

“The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.”

According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years. ...

More: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...disappeared-7000-people/ar-AAfCnJx?li=AAa0dzB

The hubris of the American experience - it can't happen here.

 

[Penn]

...it isnt working. thugs shooting dead residents....

 

[11C1P]

More of the whole "give up some liberty for safety" b.s. that both libs and conservatives are touting as the way to "keep us safe" programs.

 

[Penn]

the city is ..segregated. the gang shootings are exploding. these are the black lives matter folks- combined with the illegals.

...I am glad I got out of there alive. The gangs put 6 bullets thru my window- I was car jacked and my car was stolen- that lasted 40 minutes of hell the cop did not want to take the report even. ... and finally the Mexicans torched my home- the fire was pretty bad. This was in 1986. I am sure things are worse. The absolute worse day of my life is when I was car jacked. (incidentally it was a white guy- tho blacks stole my car and staged car accidents which sent the fbi asking questions)

cook county bah.. If you read the report carefully- it isnt that the prisoners are denied- it is that they did not get processed in the amount of time that they figured was fair.

never again

 

[pmbug]

Penn, if you want to argue that there was a problem in Chicago that needed solving, you won't get an argument from me.

If you want to argue that black sites, intimidation, torture and suspension of Constitutional rights and due process is the appropriate solution, I'm going to disagree vehemently.

Read the articles again. Less than 1% of detainies ever got any representation. We still don't know how many of them were ever booked/charged with any crime.

 

[ancona]

I'm with 'Bug on this. Irrespective of the accused and whatever the supposed crimes, we are not in communist Russia or Nazi Germany. We have a Constitution for a reason, and this is it. Americans of every stripe have rights, and those rights must be respected.

Even a sub-human animal like Jefffery Dahmer had the right to an attorney, and I would fight to the death for his right to be represented and a fair trial by a jury of his peers. This bullshit of extraordinary rendition and "disappearing of suspects" within these black ops sites is total horse shit that should have been immediately investigated from the highest levels of the justice department. However, since this occurred within the city limits of one of Obongo's beloved minority enclaves, it will quietly disappear down the memory hole like so many other horrific crimes against humanity that occur every single day under the watchful eye of the community organizer in chief.

No matter the crime, no matter how evil the person, we have a system within which we are guaranteed certain rights, and certain protections for our person and papers. I want that if God forbid I am ever detained or arrested, for right or for wrong, that I am afforded those very protections, and not rendered to some building somewhere that no one knows about and no one can contact me, where I am beaten until I say whatever "they" want me to say to incriminate myself, all so they can reach their arrest goal for the month, or whatever sick ass goal they need to reach.

 

[Penn]

From the link- Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours,

= which means on the 13th hour or 25th hour, you did get legal council- even in traffic it can take 3 hours to get from one side of the metro to the other. So they got legal council- it just wasnt sooner then 12 hours.


Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases. ---> once you get processed you are then in the database. You have a right to a trial- but you do not have a right to a perfect trial.

Beating by police, resulting in head wounds --> when you resist- you end up injured- these guys are thugs- the dont say please and thank you- they shoot cops dead on a whim

Shackling for prolonged periods --> what is a long period of time? the police do this to violilant kids... not mom baking pie.


Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility --> a jail is locked for a reason


============================ the whole uproar isnt every day mind your own business folks being stolen out of their bedrooms. It is thugs who did not get processed in the time it takes to order a pizza.


When I was a kid- we could be held for 72 hours - and for no reason. They can hold anyone for observation.

 

[Penn]

from the link

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include: --> so who is this person? tell us a name for credibility. For all we know it is black lives matter protester, agitators, al sharpton, ms 13, or dafney duck

 

[Penn]

Chicago police “physically and psychologically abused” three wrongfully imprisoned black men at Homan Square,

These interrogation techniques included:

An officer holding a knife to Wilson’s neck, then slicing off parts of his hooded sweatshirt after he requested an attorney and refused to supply information on drug-dealing in his neighborhood, where he was picked up by officers while buying a soda.
An officer conducting full strip searches on Mann and his stepson Patrick, whose requests to contact lawyers and family were ignored.
Officers short-shackling both men to a bench and a wall “in dark, Spartan-like cells without food, water, or access to bathroom facilities”.
Another officer grabbing Mann by the collar and threatening his family – to arrest his wife’s “black ass” and ensure he would not see his young son grow up, Mann recalled in an interview – if he did not snitch on a heroin dealer.
Officers repeatedly using “a stream of insults, racial slurs, including the N-word, and threats” – including “bogus criminal offenses” – if his stepson did not provide intelligence on illegal guns. (they were expecting to go to the prom?)


were coerced into providing false information through a series of physical, verbal and psychological assaults at the facility which their attorney said “does fit into torture under the United Nations definition”.





Chicago city council voted to award a total of $5.5m to help survivors, almost all African American men, who were mistreated in a long episode of police brutality that ran throughout the 70s and 80s under Jon Burge.

The funds will be used to pay up to $100,000 per individual for living survivors with valid claims to have been tortured in police custody during Burge’s command.

The package also provides for a public memorial and access to services including counselling and free tuition in city colleges for both survivors and their immediate families.

It was passed unanimously by the city council on Wednesday.