Highest officials tied to prisoner torture

Flint Taylor, lawyer of cop torture survivor Darrell Cannon, announced on Feb. 14 the addition of Mayor Richard M. Daley, former Mayor Jane Byrne and State’s Attorney Richard “Dick” Devine as defendants in a lawsuit that up until now only included former police Commander Jon Burge. At the press conference where the announcement was made, Taylor said, “The mayor has done nothing about a pattern of torture—a shameful episode in the history of this city.”(AP, Feb. 14) Taylor also represented Leroy Orange, another survivor of Burge’s Area 2 Violent Crimes Division torture squad.

Cannon was taken by the cops to the far South Side, where they “put a shotgun in his mouth and shocked him with an electric cattle prod” in order to obtain a confession, according to an AP report. (Feb. 14) Cannon’s suit is one of five pending suits in U.S. District Court dealing with the conspiracy of silence at Area 2.

Burge used torture techniques ranging from beatings with telephone books to suffocation with typewriter covers, handcuffing arrestees to radiators, electric shock and mock executions. He was responsible, according to an official report released last summer, for the torture of more than 100 African-American men throughout his 33-year career. (Workers World, Aug. 14, 2006)

Burge was finally fired in 1993 for the torture of Andrew Wilson, which ended his 3-decade-long reign of terror against the African-American community. Then-police Superintendent Leroy Martin initially refused to take action against Burge, but relented after being subjected to pressure by forces in the African-American community. Burge now lives in comfortable retirement in Florida and receives a $3,403.71 per month Chicago Police Department (CPD) pension, paid for by Cook County taxpayers.

During Daley’s 1981 through 1989 tenure as state’s attorney alone, more than 50 African-American men came forward and reported being tortured by Burge or one of his cronies. Daley never investigated a single one of these serious allegations. Richard Brzeczek, who was CPD superintendent at the time, presented Daley with a medical report authored by Dr. John Raba that documented the wounds sustained by Wilson under Burge’s torture. He still refused to order an investigation.

Taylor’s complaint on behalf of Cannon says that Daley, Byrne (who was mayor at the time) and Devine knew about Burge and “the pattern and practice of torture and abuse at Area 2, the cover-up of that abuse and the wrongful prosecutions and convictions which resulted there from.” The newly named defendants “failed to intervene to stop defendant Burge and his Area 2 coconspirators from continuing their coercive interrogations and torture tactics.” (AP, Feb. 14)

Dick Devine was assistant state’s attorney during Daley’s reign as state’s attorney, and represented Burge in Wilson’s 1989 federal civil suit. Since becoming SA in 1996, Devine has used his office to aggressively fight torture survivors’ appeals. According to a study recently released by Developing Government Accountability to the People, between 2001 and 2005 the city of Chicago paid out $100 million to settle 864 civil suits, which accused the cops of improper searches, false arrest and excessive force. Many complaints focused on paramilitary special units like the Special Operations Unit, which exists to instill terror in police-occupied working class African-American and Latin@ neighborhoods.

Although 10,150 complaints had been filed regarding illegal arrests and searches, excessive force and racial and sexual abuse from 2002 to 2004, only 18 cops received suspensions of more than a week as a result of disciplinary action. The report concludes: “Chicago has no effective system for police accountability. Its failure in this regard can not be understated, and the city and the CPD seem to have little interest in any real change.” (http://www.dgapchicago.org/)

Mass, militant action by the African-American community and their allies can force these criminals in blue to be brought to revolutionary justice.