It’s official: Chicago police tortured Black prisoners

As in so many other cities, police brutality is institutional in Chicago—a simple fact of life seldom acknowledged in the capitalist media.

Many people were expecting a crack in the wall of official silence when, on July 19, a 292-page report on the notorious “Beast of Area 2,” Commander Jon Burge of the Chicago Police Department, was issued by special investigators Edward Egan and Robert Boyle.

Costing $7 million over four years, the investigation was intended to close the book on a 33-year period of violent impunity by Burge and his cronies. Instead, the report has raised tempers in the African-American community to the boiling point.

It implicates everyone—from the current mayor and state’s attorney to every single CPD superintendent over the past 23 years—in a massive conspiracy to cover up the institutional nature of police torture and cop terrorism.

But the report is also an attack on the credibility of several torture survivors, including current political prisoner Aaron Patterson, Minister of Defense of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC). And it is an attack on former Gov. George Ryan, a Republican who commuted the sentences of everyone on Illinois death row in 2003. As retribution from pro-death penalty, pro-cop Cook County Democrats, Ryan was later convicted in an alleged corruption scandal.

Mayor Richard M. Daley and the CPD have attempted to avoid prosecution for this ongoing conspiracy to cover up acts of terrorism against the African-American community by dragging out the investigative process long enough to invoke statute of limitation laws.

The bulk of the report deals with the CPD’s Commander Burge and his Area 2 terror squad, in which officers John Byrne, Peter Dignan and Michael Hoke were his closest collaborators.

Torture started in Vietnam

Burge himself grew up on Chicago’s South Side and was stationed in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. Evidence suggests he learned his torture techniques there. Members of his company state that Burge used electricity from hand-cranked field phones to torture suspected Vietnamese liberation fighters—the same sort of equipment and techniques he would use later at Area 2.

Burge became a cop on his return to the U.S. in 1970 and was promoted to detective in 1972, at the age of 24. The first complaint of torture at Area 2 dates from 1973. After serving at two other locations, he returned to Area 2 in 1981 as commanding officer of the Violent Crimes Unit.

According to the report, Burge tortured Andrew Wilson in 1982 to extract a confession in the shooting deaths of two cops. A medical report authored by Dr. John Raba, medical director of Cermack Hospital, said stitches and burns on Wilson’s body were evidence of torture. Raba’s report also cited evidence of Burge’s signature, electrical torture, in the form of alligator-clip wounds. Raba sent the report to then Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek, requesting an investigation of Wilson’s allegations of torture by Burge. The report was forwarded by Brzeczek to then State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley, asking how to proceed. Daley, now the mayor, sat on the report and did nothing.

More than 50 African-American men reported being tortured by Burge or his cronies during Daley’s reign as state’s attorney, from 1981 to 1989. Daley never investigated a single one of these allegations.

Wilson was convicted of murder on the basis of his coerced testimony. In 1987, after the Illinois Supreme Court granted him a new trial, he was convicted again. In 1989, after Wilson’s lawyers filed a federal civil suit against Burge and the City of Chicago, the People’s Law Office (PLO) received anonymous letters telling of 105 cases of African-American men who had been tortured at Area 2.

The methods included electrical shock, suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers, and burns inflicted through being cuffed to radiators. The letters also described the use of Vietnam-style hand-cranked shockers, cattle prods, and a violet ray machine—also known as a shock wand.

Where they are now

Fired by the Police Board in 1993, Burge still collects a $3,403.71 per month city pension while living in comfortable retirement in Florida, despite refusing to cooperate in investigations and repeatedly refusing to answer questions on the grounds of self-incrimination. He still maintains his innocence, despite the report.

Burge continues to enjoy the full backing of the so-called “police union,” the Fraternal Order of Police. In fact, the FOP planned to honor him with a float in the 1993 South Side Irish Parade until outrage in the African-American community stopped them. Burge’s lawyer, Richard Sikes Jr., said his client was quite happy overall with the report, saying, “He’s pleased with what we thought all along—that the torture claims were unfounded.”

John Byrne, by his own admission, was Burge’s right-hand man. Byrne later became a lawyer, but was disbarred for stealing from clients, including other cops. Now a private investigator, he collects a Chicago Police Department pension. Byrne also took the Fifth Amendment under questioning about his role in the conspiracy.

Peter Dignan was mentioned in 17 of the PLO’s 105 cases, often working alongside Burge and Byrne, participating in beatings of suspects with flashlights and phone books, mock executions, suffocation and electrical torture. Even after being cited in a CPD torture probe in 1990, Dignan was promoted to lieutenant in 1998. Retired with a pension, he now works for the Cook County Sheriff’s Depart ment. Dignan also took the Fifth under questioning.

Michael Hoke’s involvement with Burge dates back to the very first cases in 1973. Hoke was an Internal Affairs commander when a database tracking cops accused of brutality was mysteriously erased. This most likely pleased the right people. Hoke was then promoted to assistant deputy superintendent. Now retired, he was granted immunity by special prosecutor Egan and took the Fifth under questioning.

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the POCC, whose father was a Black Panther Party leader killed by Chicago police, said, “The actual criminals have been rewarded, they have been elevated.”

Next: The political cover-up.