I wrote a post last year around this time about the Burge police torture cases in the context of discussing the increased militarization of law enforcement in the U.S.

Today, I want to share more specific information about the Burge torture cases. For this, I will rely on excerpts from an article (PDF) that Flint Taylor wrote and generously gave me permission to reproduce.

In the early morning hours of May 29, 1973, Anthony Holmes was taken to Area 2 detective headquarters where he was tortured by recently promoted Chicago police detective Jon Burge and several other detectives who worked with Burge on the Area’s midnight shift. The torture included repeated shockings from an electrical device housed in a box, and suffocation with a bag placed over Holmes’ head. Holmes passed out from the pain, felt that he was dying, and, as a result, gave a detailed stationhouse confession to an assistant Cook County state’s attorney implicating himself in a murder that he has later insisted he did not commit.

And so began one of the most far-reaching and long-lasting scandals in the annals of Chicago police history — a scandal that featured two decades of brutal and systemic violence perpetrated on more than 110 African American suspects, implicated at least two Chicago mayors, numerous officials at the highest levels of the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and members of the Cook County judiciary, and continues to this day.

[…]

Police Torture: The Early Years

Throughout the 1970s, Burge spearheaded a torture ring at Area 2 that featured the repeated use of electric shock, a tactic he most likely learned while serving as a military police sergeant in a prisoner of war camp in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. On one occasion, a black Area 2 detective walked in on a Burge torture scene, but when he reported it to a supervisor, he was told to mind his own business and was quickly transferred out of Area 2.  Another black detective saw what appeared to be the torture box, which Burge sometimes referred to as the “nigger box,” sitting on a table near the sergeant’s desk at Area 2.

Neither of these detectives, nor any other Area 2 officer, exposed Area 2’s “dirty little secret.” Torture by the midnight shift continued unabated, and assistant state’s attorneys participated in the interrogations, took the tortured confessions, and used the confessions to prosecute and convict. Thanks to Burge and his fellow detectives, Area 2 could boast of outstanding arrest and conviction rates, and Burge, who was fast becoming a rising star in the department, was promoted to sergeant.

The Andrew Wilson Case

In the early 1980s, Burge was again promoted, this time to lieutenant, and placed in charge of a newly created Violent Crimes Unit at Area 2. At about the same time, Richard M. Daley was elected state’s attorney of Cook County. In February 1982, after two white Chicago gang-crimes officers were shot and killed on the South Side, Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek and Mayor Jane Byrne instituted the largest manhunt in the history of the City, and Burge was placed in charge of the search.

Police kicked down doors and brutalized scores of citizens in what African American leaders condemned as “martial law” that “smack[ed] of Nazi Germany.” Suspected witnesses were tortured with bags and bolt cutters, and Burge and his detectives took several young men — whom they wrongly suspected to be the killers — to police headquarters, where they tortured them.

The Torture of Andrew Wilson

Five days after the murders, Burge and his men arrested two brothers, Andrew and Jackie Wilson, for the crime. Burge and his longtime associate, John Yucaitis, subjected Andrew, who was identified as the shooter, to a regimen of torture that included bagging him, beating him, and burning him with a cigarette lighter.They handcuffed him across a ribbed steam radiator and shocked him on the nose, ears, lips and genitals with Burge’s shock box, jolting him against the radiator and leaving serious burns on his face, chest, and leg.

Wilson’s injuries were so pronounced that the police lockup keeper refused to accept him into lockup, and they were documented by medical personnel and his appointed lawyer, whose investigators took graphic pictures. The director of medical services, Dr. John Raba, examined Wilson, heard his description of his torture, and wrote a letter to Police Superintendent Brzeczek describing Wilson’s injuries and demanding a full investigation.

Wilson was brought to court, and the sensationalized coverage of the murders and manhunt by the mainstream media, for a short interval, included Wilson’s ghastly appearance. In contrast, the Chicago Defender, the City’s venerable African American newspaper, gave full coverage to the systemic brutality visited upon Chicago’s African American community. Several local African American groups collected approximately 200 police misconduct complaints and conducted a community hearing, but the police department’s own disciplinary agency managed to “lose” the vast majority of the complaints made.

Brzeczek — who would admit, decades later, that he excoriated several high level deputies for permitting Wilson to be tortured — delivered Dr. Raba’s letter directly to State’s Attorney Daley, with a pronouncement that he would not investigate Wilson’s alleged torture unless Daley directed him to do so. After consulting with his first assistant, Richard Devine, Daley decided not to investigate; instead, he and Brzeczek both publicly commended Burge. Consequently, Burge and his Area 2 cohorts were left to continue their systemic torture.

Read the entire article (PDF).

I have written in the past about a great initiative that I am proud to be associated with titled the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project. Below is a terrific video depicting the current exhibition of the memorial proposals that have been submitted so far.