Chicago agrees to pay $5.5m to victims of police torture in 1970s and 80s

British media often does a more thorough job of reporting on important U.S. news than U.S. media does.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/chicago-police-torture-victims-deal

Zach Stafford in Chicago, Spencer Ackerman and Joanna Walters
Wednesday 6 May 2015

Chicago approved an unprecedented deal on Wednesday to compensate victims tortured in police custody in the 1970s and 80s under the regime of a notorious former police commander, in an attempt to close a dark chapter in the city’s history.

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Chicago city council voted to award a total of $5.5m to help survivors, almost all African American men, who were mistreated in a long episode of police brutality that ran throughout the 70s and 80s under Jon Burge.

The funds will be used to pay up to $100,000 per individual for living survivors with valid claims to have been tortured in police custody during Burge’s command.

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From 1972 through 1991, Burge and officers under his command tortured more than 100 African Americans, largely in impoverished sections of Chicago’s South Side, in a systematic regime of violence and intimidation.

Men in custody were subjected to electric shocks, burns and mock executions, among other brutal acts, predominantly in order to extract confessions.

Burge ran a group of rogue detectives known as the Midnight Crew who led the violence.

There are allegations that officers used suffocation on those in their custody and forced men to play “Russian roulette”.

Burge was fired in 1993 but was never charged with crimes directly stemming from the violence before the statute of limitations ran out. He was convicted in 2010 of obstruction of justice and perjury, in relation to a civil lawsuit alleging that he tortured citizens. He subsequently served four and a half years in prison before being released in 2014, and continues to draw a police pension.

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