Sept. 15 march will hit police torture

Black community activists are organizing a silent march through downtown Chicago for Sept. 15. The goal is to demand accountability from the police, prosecutors and judges who conspired to torture confessions out of hundreds of Black defendants in the 1970s and 1980s.

The “silent march” tactic won the overwhelming support of activists meeting in August at the Center for Inner City Studies. “We are at war” was the common sentiment, in view of an ongoing wave of police violence. Organizers intend to convey a message of Black unity, determination, and discipline.

On Labor Day weekend, thousands of fliers for the march were distributed at the African Festival of the Arts in Washington Park. A series of teach-ins has been organized at locations on the south and west sides.

A group called Black People Against Police Torture calls for people to assemble at Federal Plaza at 11 a.m. From there, participants will march in silence to the civil courts at Daley Plaza, City Hall and the County Building—where, they believe, some of the accomplices to the torture still have their offices.

It is now conceded that Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge, as Area 2 Commander, led a team of police torturers who used U.S. military techniques such as electric shock boxes, beatings and death threats to attempt to force confessions from at least 200 Black men and women from 1972 to 1989. These confessions were used to send innocent people to prison and even to death row.

No one has ever been prosecuted for these crimes. Burge lives in retirement on his city pension in Florida, while the city pays to defend him from civil lawsuits. And no one can ever be prosecuted, accord ing to a recently released report from a team of special prosecutors, because the statute of limitations has run out.

“That’s the kind of argument you would expect from lawyers for the police, not from prosecutors,” responds attorney Standish Willis of the National Council of Black Lawyers. “This shows that their role was to exonerate the police, not to hold them accountable.”

In fact, as Willis points out, the statute of limitations can be “tolled”—suspended—if it is found that the police torturers engaged in a conspiracy to cover up their crimes, which caused the delay in bringing criminal charges against them.

Activists are going after not only the police, but also prosecutors who aided the conspiracy by using torture-based confessions against defendants, or who knew about the torture but did not prosecute the criminal police. These prosecutors include Richard M. Daley, who was state’s attorney from 1981 to 1988 and has been mayor of Chicago since 1989, and State’s Attor ney Dick Devine, who has spent years trying to keep torture victims in prison and on death row.

They also plan to campaign for a “no” vote on retention of judges who refused to hear testimony about police torture and accepted tortured confessions into evidence, or who were involved as prosecutors.

For more information on the event, or to endorse, contact BPAPT through the office of Standish Willis at 312-554-0005.