Police Torture in America

[Judi Lynn]

June 9, 2006

The Chicago Files
Police Torture in America
By ERIC RUDER

During the last four years, a court-appointed special prosecutor has spent more than $5 million investigating a police torture ring that terrorized nearly 200 Black men on Chicago's South Side during the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

But the report has still not seen the light of day--kept under wraps by the efforts of some of the city's most powerful politicians.

Edward Egan, a former Illinois appellate judge, issued subpoenas, reviewed records of all sorts, heard testimony and finally wrote a report documenting the findings of his investigation into the torture of African American suspects in custody at Area 2 and Area 3 police headquarters.

Judge Paul Biebel, who appointed Egan, ruled that the report should be released, calling the torture allegations an "open sore on the civic body of the city of Chicago which has festered for many years." Biebel wrote that the "interests of justice require the full publishing of the special prosecutor's report." But the police under investigation and their allies in the city's political machine have so far kept the findings under wraps.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/ruder06092006.html

[AX10]

1. k&r

[reichstag911]

2. I've had a couple LTTEs published...

...on Devine, Daley, et al.:

Chicago Sun-Times, 3/1/06:

Despite Richard Devine's lofty assertions about the sterling characters of his prosecutorial staff , "his" ambitious lawyers are no different, certainly no better and arguably worse, than others across the country.

While many of the unjust convictions, frequently on coerced testimony and/or plea deals, originated under previous holders of his office (think Richie Daley here), it boggles the mind for him to deny that his office has a default policy of resisting appellate attempts to get unlawful (and lawful, no doubt) convictions overturned. Truth be damned, lock 'em all up . . . and keep 'em locked up! Were his office's prosecutors blind to the obvious signs of beatings administered by Jon Burge and his ilk to defendants to get confessions? And what about their backroom deals with jailhouse snitches? The coercive, "presumed guilty" approach to the prosecutorial "profession" is firmly entrenched here, as elsewhere, and Devine is delusional or a liar to deny that.

Ron Barth Jr., O'Hare

Chicago Tribune, 1/3/03

I cannot understand why you would publish the self-aggrandizing rationalizations issued by Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine on such a regular basis.

In his most recent press release ("Cook prosecutors have been candid about errors," Voice of the people, Dec. 17), he congratulates himself and his assistants for their conduct in the Corethian Bell matter, and for how once they received exculpatory DNA evidence, they took steps to secure his release after about 17 months.

What he neglects to mention is that the confession on which they were relying up to that point was elicited after 50 hours in custody and the attendant deprivations that some members of the Chicago police use to further weaken their targeted "suspects." The end result of their coerced confession: The truly guilty party, as indicated by DNA evidence, was allowed to rape and kill another woman several months later, while Bell sat in Cook County Jail.

Chicago Sun-Times, 5/3/05

How refreshing to see our industrious federal agents targeting the organized criminals who besmirch the good names of law-abiding Italians everywhere. One wonders, though, when they will focus so intently on the Irish "mafia" that's been running this corrupt city government for the better part of 50 years now, notwithstanding the last couple weeks' seeming canonization of the Daley clan.

Ron Barth Jr.

[Spoonerian]

3. From the Counterpunch article:

"Grayland Johnson was one of the victims of this "planned torture." Police handcuffed him to a metal ring in a wall and beat him with a telephone book. They placed the book on his head and hit it with a long flashlight, which produces an excruciating crushing sensation. Next, they put a plastic typewriter cover over Grayland's head until he nearly suffocated.

"Because Grayland still refused to confess and kept asking for a lawyer, the cops hung him out a bathroom window, threatening to drop him and make it look like he died during an escape attempt. When they brought him back inside, they forced his head into a toilet that an officer had just urinated in.

"They continued with the typewriter cover, and Grayland could hear people laughing as he was gagging for air. "Guess who, nigger?" said the detective who took the bag off his head.

"Grayland ended up on death row. Prosecutors went so far as to use someone else's medical records to cover up the abuse inflicted on Grayland."

[Spoonerian]

4. More:

"Like many victims of torture, Grayland, who is still behind bars, carries a sense of shame about what happened. "No, I don't like remembering what they did, nor the fact that I was scared to tell the doctor all they had done, because the police were there, and I feared they would take me back and finish," said Grayland. "I don't like to remember because I was such a coward not to make them kill me right there."

In all likelihood, Burge learned about electroshock while torturing Vietnamese prisoners before he was honorably discharged from the military in 1969--and brought the method back to Chicago's South Side."

My comments:

I disagree with this. Its a common misconsception to assume that the atrocities commited by "our boys" in foreign imperial adventures are newly minted, tested, and perfected in these far off lands before they are "imported" back into the good old USA.

I myself have often warned Democratic Undergrounders of the dangers that lie ahead should Democrats re-acquire power and "re-deploy" these mass murderers and torturers back to places such as the Mexican border and US cities such as Chicago.

But in fact, these sick techniques of government control are developed and perfected in the US, and then later are exported to places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reason we hear a lot more about this kind of brutality when its carried out in far off lands is because the US murderers and torturers actually encounter some resistence when they attempt to market these "products" in these places. (Note: I use the terms "import," "export," "market," and "products" metaphorically. Real products are marketed, exported, and imported voluntarily and don't involve murder and torture.)

If there is any hope on planet earth for bringing the US torture state to justice, it lies with the people of these far off lands--who have not yet been programmed by 25 years of C.O.P.S. TV shows and retain a spirit of resistence to the illegal and unconstitutional US standing armies.