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.

[…]

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The Town of Scottsboro
by Langston Hughes

Scottsboro’s just a little place:
No shame is writ across its face —
Its court, too weak to stand against a mob,
Its people’s heart, too small to hold a sob.

Last month, I presented at the American Society of Criminology’s annual conference which took place in Chicago this year. The panel was about the school-to-prison pipeline which has become a sexy topic in the past couple of years.

Today, Congress is hosting the first ever hearing about the school to prison pipeline.

I submitted testimony for this hearing and below is an excerpt:

The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Chicago

In the last 20 years, advocates, students, educators, and researchers have pointed out the existence of a school-to-prison pipeline (STPP).^[1]  The STPP describes how harsh school discipline policies and law enforcement policies intersect to feed young people into the prison system.  There has been an explosion of academic research, conferences, and media reports about this phenomenon.

The history of the current intolerance and punitive attitude existing both on the streets and in the schools can be traced back to Columbine. In the schools, the post-Columbine era saw the introduction of federal and state ordinances leading to zero tolerance policies. In the streets, the war on drugs led to more punitive criminal legal responses as a whole (three strikes, mandatory sentencing, zero tolerance). 

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From JustSeeds Artists’ Collective

Preliminary data from the Census Bureau’s annual State Government Finance Census indicate states spent $48.5 billion on corrections in 2010, about 6% less than in 2009.

By comparison, states spent $571.3 billion on education in 2010 and $462.7 billion on public welfare.

From 1999 to 2010, among 48 states, 11 states showed a linear decrease in current operations expenditures per inmate, with an average annual decline of $1,093; 5 states had a linear increase, with an average annual additional cost per inmate of $1,277.

The mean state corrections expenditure per inmate was $28,323 in 2010, although a quarter of states spent $40,175 or more.

One particular finding struck me: “Between 1982 and 2001, total state corrections expenditures increased each year, rising from $15.0 billion to $53.5 billion in real dollars.” This is really stunning.

There are some great charts and good data in this report including a state-by-state breakdown of prison medical expenditures, for example. You should read the report (PDF).

“Nothing good ever came out a prison.” — Johnny Cash

This is the first of a series of meditations about Johnny Cash. Cash became somewhat of an obsession since I first heard ‘Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison’ when I was 15 years old. I came upon the record quite by accident. I was at a friend’s apartment. Her father was an avid country music fan. He was playing the album while I happened to be visiting. It would be several years before I became an anti-prison activist. So at the time, it was the music rather than the song content or lyrics that piqued my interest.

Later when I was much older, I began to appreciate the album for its social significance. It is a statement about the marginalized in our society and fits perfectly into the protest music of its era.

According to Michael Streissguth (2004), Cash learned about Folsom Prison in 1953 by watching a film titled “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison.” The non-critically acclaimed film inspired him to write the song “Folsom Prison Blues” with the memorable line “I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.” This line and most of the song have been criticized as being plagiarized from various sources. Regardless, Cash recorded the song in 1955 and it became one of his biggest hits.

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The genius of Bob Dylan as a songwriter is unparalleled and the theme of prison features prominently in a lot of his work. Here is one of my favorite songs written by him in 1968 “I Shall Be Released” and covered perfectly by the incomparable Nina Simone.

Just a couple of days ago, I learned about two more incidents of police violence against black people. In one case, a teenage boy is said to have shot himself while handcuffed in the back of a police car; it is the second such documented incident this year. In another case, a 55 year old black man was paralyzed & claims that his injuries were sustained from a police beating. The police say that he fell.

It has long been open season on black people in this country. As the gatekeepers for the State, police officers are the enforcers of oppression. There is a sense of hopelessness among many that this extra-judicial maiming and killing of black people is inevitable & unending. For some, these incidents of police violence are part of a larger genocidal regime against black people in the U.S.

In fact, in 1951, a group of U.S. citizens filed a petition at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland charging the government with genocide against black people. William Patterson, Chairman of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), introduced the petition with these words:

Out of the inhuman black ghettos of American cities, out of the cotton plantations of the South, comes this record of mass slayings on the basis of race, of lives deliberately warped and distorted by the willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease. It is a record that calls aloud for condemnation, for an end to these terrible injustices that constitute a daily and ever-increasing violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

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To Prisoners
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I call for you cultivation of strength in the dark.
Dark gardening
in the vertigo cold.
In the hot paralysis.
Under the wolves and coyotes of particular silences.
Where it is dry.
Where it is dry.
I call for you
cultivation of victory Over
long blows that you want to give and blows you are going to get.

Over
what wants to crumble you down, to sicken
you. I call for you
cultivation of strength to heal and enhance
in the non-cheering dark,
in the many many mornings-after;
in the chalk and choke.

by Billy Dee

Since I started this blog two and a half years ago, I have received several e-mails. Most of them are inquiries, some are personal stories, and still others express anger and/or frustration. Last month, a gentleman wrote to inform me that I am obsessed with police violence and to say that “the police don’t shoot black people in cold blood anymore.” I haven’t directly responded to his email and I don’t think that I will. Instead, I offer the following reminder about the 2005 Danzinger Bridge Shootings for those who remain ignorant about the murderous capabilities of the police…

THE DANZINGER BRIDGE SHOOTINGS

WHAT HAPPENED?
On September 4, 2005 a short item appeared in the Associated Press:

“Police shot eight people carrying guns on a New Orleans bridge Sunday, killing five or six of them, a deputy chief said. Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said the shootings took place on the Danziger Bridge, which connects Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.”

A week after Hurricane Katrina, at around 9 am on September 4, 2005, a group of police officers commandeered a Budget rental truck and headed to the Danzinger Bridge after hearing a distress call from another cop who said that people were shooting at police and rescue workers.

As the truck approached the bridge, officer Michael Hunter, who was at the wheel, fired warning shots out of the window. He parked behind the Bartholomew family and as officers began exiting the truck, they immediately started shooting, killing 17 year old James Brissette and wounding four others: Jose Holmes, 19; his aunt, Susan Bartholomew, his uncle, Leonard Bartholomew III, and a teenage cousin, Lesha Bartholomew.

The family had been crossing the bridge heading from a local motel where they had been camped to the Winn Dixie supermarket to shop for food. James Brissette was killed by a shotgun blast to the back of the head and then was shot at least three more times while he lay on the ground. Susan Bartholomew’s arm was shot off. Her 19-year-old nephew Jose Holmes was shot in the arm, the jaw and the abdomen.

Police then chased down Ronald and Lance Madison, two brothers, who had been walking a ways ahead of the Bartholomew family. Hearing the gunfire, the Madisons began to run. Ronald Madison, a 40-year old man who had the mental capacity of a 6 year old, was injured. Eventually, another officer, later identified as Robert Faulcon, killed him with a shotgun blast to the back as he tried to run away.

After his brother was killed, Lance Madison, who was unhurt, was surrounded by police officers and accused of firing a weapon at police. He was arrested and booked that day with eight counts of attempted murder.

In all, four people were wounded and two died that day. The police contended that they were being shot at on the Bridge and took appropriate action to neutralize the threat.
Over a year later in December 2006, after a Grand Jury had heard details of the case, seven New Orleans police officers were indicted for their roles in the Danzinger Bridge shootings. Four police officers — Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius, officer Anthony Villavaso and officer Robert Faulcon — were charged with the first-degree murder of James Brissette. Faulcon was also charged with the first-degree murder of Ronald Madison. Three more officers faced attempted-murder charges. These officers became known in the press as the “Danzinger 7.”

The story of the Danzinger Bridge incident is a case study in police abuse of power and lawlessness. It is also the story of a massive cover-up.

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From the Chicago Reporter, an infographic that provides a primer on how youth are handled in the Illinois juvenile justice system.