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 UN Committee Against Torture Hears Report on How Police Tortured Over 135 African-American Men Inside Chicago Jails

Extraordinary rendition. Overseas prisons. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Practices and places that have become synonymous with the abuse of detainees in US custody are getting renewed attention at the United Nations this week, where the UN Committee Against Torture is holding hearings on U.S. compliance with its international obligations. But there is one name expected to arise this week that few people in this country will have heard about – and it’s the one that’s closest to home.

It’s called Area 2. And for nearly two decades beginning in 1971, it was the epicenter for what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of African-American males by Chicago police officers. In total, more than 135 people say they were subjected to abuse including having guns forced into their mouths, bags places over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. Four men have been released from death row after government investigators concluded torture led to their wrongful convictions.

Yet the case around Area 2 is nowhere near a resolution -- to date, not one Chicago police officer has been charged with any crime.

The most prominent officer, former police commander Jon Burge, was dismissed in the early 1990s. He retired to Florida where he continues to collect a pension. Today, a special prosecutor is now in the fourth year of an investigation. Just last week, a group of Chicago police officers won a court ruling to delay the release of the prosecutor’s preliminary report.

• David Bates, one of dozens of men to come forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police.
• Flint Taylor, an attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago, which he helped found in the late 1960s. He has represented many of the torture victims and was directly involved in spearheading the special prosecutor’s investigation.
• John Conroy a journalist and author who has covered the case for over a decade. He has written several articles for the Chicago Reader, and is the author of the book "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture."

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Chicago, where we're joined by three guests: David Bates, Flint Taylor and John Conroy. David Bates is one of dozens of men to come forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police. Flint Taylor is an attorney with the People's Law Office in Chicago, which he helped found in the late 1960s. He has represented many of the torture victims and was directly involved in spearheading the special prosecutor's investigation. And John Conroy is a journalist and author who's covered the case for over a decade. He’s written several articles for the Chicago Reader and is the author of the book, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Flint Taylor for an overview. You have been working on this case for years. You have represented people who said they were tortured. Give us the scope of this story.

FLINT TAYLOR: Well, the scope started out with one man who was tortured by electric shock and having a plastic bag put over his head and being beaten by Jon Burge and others at the Area 2 police station. He, on his own, brought a lawsuit in the mid-‘80s. That lawsuit, we got involved in, and over the years we were able to uncover, with the help of journalists such as John Conroy, others such as David Bates, who had also been tortured and had told their stories in various courts, but no one had put all this evidence together.

e were able to assimilate, over many years, over 60 cases of torture, and when I say “torture,” I mean electric shock, I mean suffocation with bags, I mean mock executions, I mean racial attacks, that kind of thing. And they were all coming out of the same station, and they were all headed up by this man, Jon Burge, who came out of Vietnam, started out as a detective and quickly rose in the ranks through sergeant, lieutenant and commander. This went on -- the actual documentation now shows that this went on for over 20 years, from 1972 to 1992, when in fact Burge was finally, after community outrage, suspended and fired from his job.

As you said, he has never been prosecuted. The State's Attorney of Cook County at the time this evidence first came to light in the mid-‘80s was none other than the now major Richard Daley. The Superintendent of Police at that time contacted him with the evidence of torture and said, “Are you going to prosecute this?” Daley did not intervene or prosecute at that time. Later on, his first assistant, Richard Devine, became State’s Attorney of Cook County. Remarkably, Devine, while he was in private practice, had been Burge’s lawyer, defending many of these civil cases. He then became prosecutor in 1997. Of course, he did nothing either, because his clients were the ones that needed to be investigated. So for 20, 25, 30 years, no one in the prosecutor's office, the current mayor or the current state's attorney, no one else did any investigation.

Finally, the community outrage was so strong with regard to all of that that a special prosecutor was appointed. That was four years ago, as you said. Four years of investigation has led to his publicly saying that he now has 192 cases of torture and abuse at Area 2 and later at the Area 3 station, where Burge was transferred to later on. He now is talking about releasing a report. He still is not talking about indicting anybody. The rumor has it that, because it is so long, that we're going to have a catch-22 situation, and we're going to have the statute of limitations invoked by the special prosecutor, who's going to release a report but say it's too late to indict anybody.

Of course, we all say that that's ridiculous, that there are ongoing conspiracy allegations and evidence that there's an obstruction of justice going on in the various courts. There's perjury going on. So, no one's going to be satisfied if, in fact, all that happens is a report, no matter how damning the report may be. So the struggle here in Chicago continues and will continue, as long as people are still in jail because of the confessions that were tortured from them, and as long as Burge and others sit in Florida and other places and collect hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in police pensions, rather than to face criminal charges, whether they be state charges, federal charges or charges before the International Court of Justice.

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by David Bates. Can you tell us what happened to you? When did it happen? Tell us the whole course of events.

DAVID BATES: Well, I believe it was October the 28th or 29th of 1983, when a few officers knocked on my mom's door and announced that they were police officers and let my mom know that I’ll be taken away and that I’ll be coming home shortly. There were supposed to be some questions regarding a case. Of course, I got to the police station. I was questioned. I let the officers or detectives know that I had nothing to do with the case. I knew nothing. This went on for two days.

At that time, it was five sessions of torture, starting with two with slaps and kicks and threats. It was two particular sessions of torture that was very devastating, in which a plastic bag was placed over my head. I was punched and kicked. And I’ll tell you, when you talk about torture, you're talking about individuals who, most part, were young, had a few brushes with the law, but never in a million years thought that they would have a plastic bag placed over their head.

More importantly, the torture has never been resolved. No one has ever owned up to the torture. So we have hundreds of individuals who have psychologically been warped, been destroyed. There's never been any clinical resolution to the torture. No one has owned up to it.

And I tell you, the fact that this attorney and this journalist have spent years trying to uncover the truth and community organizations and individuals -- we're talking about a city. We're talking about a state. We're talking about legislators, who have not looked into the issue of torture, and I say it's a shame. And I would like to commend these gentlemen for working hard to bring the issue of torture out. But I say it's time for the legislators and mayor and individuals who had firsthand knowledge of it to come clean with it and bring these individuals to justice.