On Black Power: death of torturer marks a hopeful end to era of racial police violence

[Trotsky]

I meant to make this topic last week when this odious toad punched his ticket to hell, but got delayed with all the news and frantic goings on.

In 1969, civil rights icon and Black Panther prodigy Fred Hampton was executed, unarmed, sleeping in his bed by members of the Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police after a confidential informant drugged him with sedatives. The extrajudicial execution of such a prominent and beloved African American figure - and a man who expressly denounced reciprocal racial violence and sought racial and economic solidarity between minority political groups - sparked outrage, as subsequent investigations into his death showed the cold and calculated circumstances of his death.

The assassination of Hampton, and the subsequent outrage, was hoped to mark a turning point in the brutal law enforcement history of Chicago, Illinois.

It was no such turning point.

Jon Burge was promoted to detective three years later in 1972. Under the supervision of detective (and later commander) Burge, Chicago police carried out a rampant campaign of extrajudicial coercion and torture. Burge himself would become tied to more than 100 accusations of torture of African American citizens in South Side Chicago.

Beyond the then-expected brutality of law enforcement, the exploitative rot in the system spread much further outward to the FBI (who had provided logistical support for Hampton's assassination) and upward to the federal and state judiciaries, where established judges regularly refused to admit evidence of coerced confessions and unconstitutional searches and seizures. Over the course of Burge's tenure, no less than ten suspects would be sent to death row despite credible allegations of constitutional violations.

In 2011, Jon Burge was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice related to civil suits relating to involvement in Chicago law enforcement's horrific crimes against the citizens they had sworn to protect. However, nearly all of those before him, under him, and after him have never faced justice.

 

[Trotsky]

Former Chicago police commander and torturer Jon Burge is dead. For over two decades, Burge operated a chamber of horrors with a ring of veteran detectives on Chicago’s south side, railroading a dozen mostly African-American men to death row and hundreds more to long prison sentences on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Rising through the ranks —from detective to sergeant to commander — Burge relentlessly pursued confessions from people so horrified and dazed that they would have said anything to stop the torture.

One of Burge’s victims, Darrell Cannon, said in court in 2015 that Burge and other officers seemed to enjoy torturing people. Here was a man who so undervalued black lives that the words “it’s fun time” would spew from his sneering lips before he chained people to steaming hot radiators, attached charged wire electrodes to sensitive body parts, played Russian roulette with a loaded gun, suffocated men with typewriter covers, and beat others senseless.

The scars of his crimes run deep. Consider the pain of Ronald Kitchen, whose mother, Llouva Ball, a fearless champion in his fight for freedom, was so sick at the end of her life that she could no longer recognize her son after a DNA test finally freed him from death row. Burge should be remembered for these stolen lives and the deep emotional pain he inflicted on so many mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, and brothers. As the coordinator of a campaign led by prisoners and activists on the outside, I had the opportunity to work first-hand with these family members and share in both their legal setbacks and political victories.

Aside from being remembered as a poster boy for police brutality, Burge will go down in history as an exemplar of the lengths state officials will go to sacrifice justice in the interest of protecting their own.

Burge’s torture ring operated as an open secret among the offices of the states attorney and mayor’s office from the early 1970s until 1991, when Burge was put on leave. Former mayor Richard M. Daley was states attorney and former states attorney Dick Devine was assistant states attorney during much of Burge’s reign. It was their job to meet with the defendants to sign off on confessions at the precincts. Both of them heard countless complaints of torture. Some judges were complicit in the torture ring too. These so-called “heater” judges, well known for being favorable to the prosecution, repeatedly denied defendants’ requests to drop the coerced confessions.

Even after Flint Taylor of the People’s Law Office blew the lid off of the torture conspiracy, Daley and his underlings protected Burge. It took protests at City Hall and in Daley’s neighborhood, as well as highly publicized hearings organized by the People’s Law Office, to force Burge’s resignation in 1993.

And still there was little accountability: although Taylor had proven a pattern and practice of police misconduct and a conspiracy to cover up torture, there were no indictments, none of the other detectives were fired, all of the victims remained in prison, and Burge retired to a waterfront home in Apollo Beach, Florida with a $4,000-a-month police pension.

Some years later, after a group of men calling themselves the Death Row 10 reached out to the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, some cracks in the system finally began to form. Through a series of protest rallies and press conferences targeting Daley and Devine — and Live from Death Row events that featured call-ins from members of the Death Row 10 — we became the fuel for a growing movement around wrongful convictions that exposed the racist underpinnings of Illinois’ criminal justice system.

Cracks In the System
On January 9, 2003, in a press conference televised around the world, Illinois governor George Ryan detailed the horrors that Burge had inflicted, before pardoning four of the Death Row 10. Ryan
spoke about Madison Hobley, who falsely confessed after the police “wrapped a plastic bag over his head, struck his chest, kicked his shins, and pushed their thumbs against his throat” so he could not breathe. He told the story of Leroy Orange, who falsely confessed after the police “electro-shocked him, squeezed his scrotum, and put an airtight bag over his head.” He mentioned Aaron Patterson, who wrote on the underside of a table in the interrogation room: “4/30 I lie about murders. Police threaten me with violence. Slapped and suffocated me with plastic. No lawyer or dad. No phone. Signed false statement to murders.” He talked about Stanley Howard, who falsely confessed after the police kicked him, punched him, held him incommunicado in an interrogation room for forty-three hours, and put a plastic typewriter cover over his head.

Finally, the world knew what had happened at the hands of Jon Burge and his veteran detectives.

The next day, moments before his historic move to commute all of Illinois’ death sentences to life without parole, Ryan again mentioned the Death Row 10 and other wrongful conviction cases, decried the system as racist, and asked, “How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that the system is broken?”

After the pardons, a coalition of organizations kept up the pressure and eventually won a civil judgment that forced the City of Chicago to pay out $5.5 million in reparations to fifty-seven people tortured by Chicago police. In total, the city shelled out over $120 million in lawsuit settlements, legal fees, and reparations.

With pressure mounting, Burge was finally brought back to Chicago to face his accusers. In 2010, he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence by United States district judge Joan Lefkow, who cited his “unwillingness to acknowledge the truth in the face of all the evidence.” Although the sentence was as much of a farce as Al Capone going to prison for tax evasion, it was a moment of disgrace for Burge. He told the judge, “While I try to keep a proud face, in reality I am a broken man.”

But to be clear, he was not broken like Saint Augustine, lying prostrate in full confession mode. He remained to his dying breath the same racist he was when in full command. In 2015, released from prison and finishing out his sentence under home confinement, Burge told an interviewer that lawyers for the pardoned inmates acted as “vultures” and said how hard he found it “to believe that the city’s political leadership could even contemplate giving ‘reparations’ to human vermin.”

Those in Burge’s corner have remained behind him. Last Wednesday, upon hearing of Burge’s death, the Fraternal Order of Police posted this statement on its Facebook page:

The Fraternal Order of Police does not believe the full story about the Burge cases has ever been told, particularly the case that led to his sole conviction, the exoneration of Madison Hobley for an arson that killed seven people. Hopefully, that story will be told in the coming years. We offer our condolences to the Burge family.

Madison Hobley, it should be noted, was the golden guy of the Death Row 10 campaign. With no prior convictions and not a speck of evidence connecting him to the crime, his innocence claim spoke volumes as we marched his poster out in front of our rallies.

If any of Burge’s other cronies are shedding tears right now, it’s more likely tears of joy that they didn’t end up like Burge. I doubt any one of them — not Daley, not Devine, not his murderous detectives — will come out from the shadows to offer up a eulogy.

How to Remember Burge
The same racist attitudes that allowed a torture ring to operate for two decades remain a vile part not just of Chicago’s criminal justice system but a larger carceral state that has locked up millions (particularly black and brown people) and led to the police killings of thousands more. Young men like
Laquan McDonald would be alive today if not for the deep-seated racism of police who put no more value on black life than Burge did when he first cranked the “Black Box” Tucker telephone, a communication device used to torture captives during his enlistment in Vietnam, and attached electrodes to men’s testicles and ear lobes — sending hundred of volts of electricity into his handcuffed hostages.

Burge could operate with impunity because he chose victims who already had records, many plucked from neighborhoods that were under virtual police occupation. These men were so thoroughly demonized as second-class citizens that Burge could do virtually anything he wanted to them.

With Burge now gone, some may want to spit on his grave rather than dance on it. He lived a horrific life. He was a sadistic police commander who destroyed lives and was backed up by political cronies who sacrificed justice to protect him. Many of his victims still languish in prison.

At the same time, Burge’s victims turned into his worst nightmare. The Death Row 10 stood up against the most vicious kind of police repression, and their family members marched day after day. They inspired a movement that would ultimately topple Illinois’ death penalty and allow death row prisoners to walk out of the prison gates, free at last.

Burge’s personal legacy is undoubtedly an atrocious one. But it is also about a group of activists, both inside and outside the prison walls, who struggled and won a clear victory against one of the most horrific representatives of America’s racist criminal justice system.


https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/jon-burge-chicago-police-torture-obituary

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

That murder was about 50 years ago. Not that long for this type of behavior and thinking to die out.

 

[deadshot138]

Far too long didn’t read

 

[King in the North]

Really good read. The criminal justice system is the great civil rights battle of our time.

 

[Trotsky]

Far too long didn’t read

Police torture black mans. Torture bad. Police bad.

 

[xcvbn]

I much prefer the 1960s movement to today's. They called it what it was- A movement about social classes, not strictly color-based injustices.

The majority of everyday Americans are the getting the shaft, not just a few minority groups.

 

[Trotsky]

I much prefer the 1960s movement to today's. They called it what it was- A movement about social classes, not strictly color-based injustices.

The majority of everyday Americans are the getting the shaft, not just a few minority groups.

People tend to sterilize the Civil Rights Movement in a way that draws false distinctions between it and movements for social, racial, and economic justice today. Hampton and MLK's inclusive economic rhetoric still rings today in the rhetoric of persons like Cornel West as well as black activists on the ground. Likewise, the more violent and less cooperative rhetoric of today (which is, frankly, pretty marginal) traces back to a more robust call for violent resistance in the Civil Rights era.

 

[Ultra O’Dia]

Some great quotes from that man. Thanks, Trotsky, good to .... well, shitty to read things like this, but good to have the info.

 

[bushman505]

Police torture black mans. Torture bad. Police bad.

All police or just the ones who do fucked up stuff???

 

[Madmick]

LOL, so you just learned about Fred Hampton.

Good for you.

 

[KnightTemplar]

Police torture black mans. Torture bad. Police bad.

 

[Trotsky]

LOL, so you just learned about Fred Hampton.

Good for you.

LOL, I have a portrait of him in my office.

Also, productive contribution as always.

All police or just the ones who do fucked up stuff???

The ones who do fucked up stuff (and the ones who cover for them).

 

[Madmick]

LOL, I have a portrait of him in my office.

That you bought six days ago.

 

[gassius_clay]

Police torture black mans. Torture bad. Police bad.

therefore police bad

 

[Islam Imamate]

That you bought six days ago.

Anything actually substantive to say in response to the OP?

 

[Trotsky]

That you bought six days ago.

So, no other thoughts? You're just shit posting in a thread because it's about events that offend your worldview, but about which you can't muster any actual commentary?

 

[Islam Imamate]

So, no other thoughts? You're just shit posting in a thread because it's about events that offend your worldview, but about which you can't muster any actual commentary?

Of course, like the Fraternal Order of the Police he can't help but get defensive when he sees a story that portrays cops in a negative light. He could've easily condemned Burge and made some argument that, though a tragic miscarriage of justice, such a system is behind us and that modern policing does not resemble anything like it(a point which could then be debated).

But bootlicking habits die hard I suppose.

 

[jamel]

That you bought six days ago.

Arent you the same mother fucker that will write 6 paragraphs for 28 post begging people to think objectively when discussing the cops?

Thought something that outlines the steps towards positive social construction would be up your alley.

So you mean to tell me you expect people to have the attention span for your 10 pagers but you cant sit still for a 2 pager?

How the hell do you have selective A.D.D?

 

[Madmick]

So, no other thoughts? You're just shit posting in a thread because it's about events that offend your worldview, but about which you can't muster any actual commentary?

I'm teasing you, and it should be obvious why. You came in and constructed this large OP with the opening comment about "last week" as if immediacy was significant to this story. I like that you are rooting this in the death of the police officer who played a role, but this is one of the most significant stories in American history, and the apparent sense of urgency just tickled me. This namesake crime is decades old, and the criminal is dead. I don't see what difference a week makes.

Despite that I would agree with any conscientious American that this was tragic, do you know what I like most about your post? For years now I have cast the allegation that #BLM is little more than a thinly veiled pretense to push for socialism under the pretense of correcting our system of justice. It's a lie. This is what inflamed me, more than even how it racialized a problem that is far greater than one race, and explains why I have rejected the movement so stridently. I came to this realization when #BLM finally drew up its list of demands under a coalition of official chapters. My original criticism of the movement stemmed from its focus on one race, which supporters justified by arguing, "If only one house is on fire you don't hose them all" logic, ignoring that Native Americans continue to suffer even more harsh treatment by virtually every metric they cited. Yet, more centrally, my irritation resulted from its shapeless rabble-rousing. "What are their proposed solutions? What do they want?"

So when they finally did offer that list of demands I was dizzied by how few of them had anything to do with policing. This is the refined policy demands two years later, and it hasn't gotten better:
https://policy.m4bl.org/
I immediately realized this had nothing to do with policing, and everything to do with radical proposals for naive cultural upheaval, and redistribution of wealth. I have argued that since. I have argued that it was the renewal of the extreme Islamic movement in this country as it was headed by Louis Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad back in the 70's and 80's. Our resident liberals have scoffed at this. They insisted, "No, it's about unarmed black men!"

Lie! Such a lie-- but one many believe. No, unarmed black men getting killed is what libertarians like @Cubo de Sangre care about. They cared about it before Trayvon Martin. They were talking about COINTELPRO before Trayvon Martin. He and the rest of the more devoted libertarians were bitching about the rise of the police state, authority overreach, and a lack of accountability among our government years before Trayvon got shot, in this very forum, when it became a convenient pet cause for Communists like yourself to gaslight minorities/liberals. These libertarians are mostly white males.

So I'm glad to teach our residents this history, but not for the same reason as you. I want everyone to see why dishonest movements fail. It's impossible to separate the preoccupation with a single race from the preoccupation with Marxism-Leninism when you marry the death of Laquan McDonald to the Black Panthers: a race-focused socialist political organization. You've condensed everything I seek to convey in a jpeg:

I wonder if his son understood that Korean shopkeepers were to be included in these "masses" when he firebombed their innocent businesses in the wake of the Rodney King beating:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton_Jr.

1993 conviction
In 1993, he was convicted of aggravated arson. The case involved the firebombing of a Korean grocery store in the aftermath of the 1992 nationwide protests after the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police Department officers who beat Rodney King. Hampton was sentenced to eighteen years in prison, and was paroled on September 14, 2001.

That's who carries the torch.

I understand the rage that comes from reading about Fred Sr. I feel it, too. I desperately want to prevent that sort of crime and injustice from happening. That doesn't mean I share his ideas on how to do it, and I certainly don't share #BLM's, either: a rose by any other name.