(This posting was first done on May 27, 2015. I am posting this once again because it points out the serious consequences that can result from police commanders using torture to extract confessions).
"On November 2, 1983, Darrell Cannon found himself in the Chicago Police Department's Area 2 headquarters with a shotgun stuck in his mouth as a white officer yelled 'Blow that nigger's head off.' The officer pulled the trigger, but no round was fired, so he pulled it again. But the shotgun wasn't loaded, it was just one of tactics that the three officers present that day would use in trying to get a murder confession out of their suspect." Another was applying repeated electric shocks to the penis and testicles until the suspect finally confessed. [1]
Darrell Cannon was one of at least 110 African American men who experienced similar forms of torture at the hands of CPD commander Jon Burge, and the detectives who reported to him. Twenty of those coerced into false confessions were still in prison as of the date of the original posting.
It wasn't until 2008 that Burge was arrested on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to one of the lawsuits filed against him. He was convicted two years later, and served four and a half years in prison before being released in 2014.
I was peripherally involved in the case of one of Burge's tortured victims, who was on Death Row at the time, as I rode on a family-chartered bus to serve as a supporting witness in an Illinois Supreme Court hearing on his case. Later, as chair of Illinois Peace Action, I spoke at a rally held for this same person. This person, whose name I don't remember, was released from Death Row into general society, because there was no evidence to tie him to the murder for which he was convicted.
Burge has proved to be an expensive hire for the city of Chicago. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has agreed to pay $5.5 million to victims of police torture under Burge, and his associate officers from charges of torturing people in their custody. $22 million is the amount of pension costs paid to Burge and his torture associates over the years. An estimated fifty to sixty-five people are eligible for reparations, including job training and tuition, for their treatment at the hands of Burge and associates.
If there is a silver lining in the immense damage caused by Jon Burge and his underlings, it is that the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance consisting of three overarching components: public recognition of the torture, including job placement, mental-health services for victims, and free tuition to city city colleges; and a $5.5 million fund for financial reparations. Chicago public schools are also required to teach the history of Burge's torture in the eighth and tenth grades.
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