Secret Police Torture and Detention Center

A secret detention center run by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) was under the spotlight at a first-of-its-kind hearing Tuesday.

While protesters demonstrating against police brutality blocked city streets, elected officials from Chicago’s Cook County held the first public hearing about Homan Square, an ‘off-the-books’ interrogation facility revealed earlier this year by The Guardian.

The investigation found that CPD denied constitutional rights to at least 7,000 victims, some of whom were tortured and sexually abused.

Detainees, activists, and legal advocates testified, while invited CPD representatives were no-shows.

The inquiry by Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin follows the firing of Chicago’s police chief Gerry McCarthy by Mayor Rahm Emanuel earlier this month.

Protesters have focused on the cover-up of damning video that shows white police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, but Homan Square is part of a broader campaign to address police tactics.

The hearing’s testimonies are now public record, which Boykin said he hoped would keep pressure on Washington to include Homan Square in the Justice Department’s investigation, as he had little faith that the mayor’s office would shut the site by itself.

Emanuel continues to face calls for his resignation.

Earlier this year, the city approved a $5.5 million reparations fund for victims of a previous torture scandal involving police commander Jon Burge and his band of rogue detectives.

In the 1970s and ’80s, they were accused of abusing mostly black suspects, employing tactics such as near-suffocation with plastic bags, cattle prod shocks, flashlight beatings, and mock ‘Russian roulette’.

Shawn Whirl spent nearly 25 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit after Burge’s detectives tortured him into confessing.

Judges threw out his conviction earlier this year and he is finally a free man.

But so is Burge after finishing in February his four-and-a-half year sentence for lying in a civil lawsuit. The statute of limitations ran out on the torture he committed and a court ruled he gets to keep his $4,000-a-month pension.

Reprinted from Russia Today.

The post Secret Police Torture and Detention Center appeared first on LewRockwell.