Two Decades of Police Torture in Chicago: For Labor Defense of the Black, Brown and Immigrant Communities

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Two Decades of Police Torture in Chicago:
For Labor Defense of the Black, Brown and Immigrant Communities Against Racist Police Terror!

Mother of Torture Victim demands justice
Mother of Torture Victim demands justice

On April 1, 2013, a three judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 54 month prison sentence for the perjury and obstruction of justice conviction of notorious former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Burge has now been linked to at least 120 documented cases of torture of African American suspects over a 20 year period.  Burge was the commanding officer of the violent crimes section of the Area 2 precinct of the Chicago Police Department located on the South Side.  His career was marked by accusations from over one hundred individuals who claimed that he and officers in the violent crimes section tortured suspects in order to obtain confessions throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Introducing the 23 page decision, Judge Ann Williams, the only African American judge in the history of the Seventh Circuit wrote:

 “Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge presided over an interrogation regime where suspects were suffocated with plastic bags, electrocuted until they lost consciousness, held down against radiators, and had loaded guns pointed at their heads during rounds of Russian roulette.  The use of this kind of torture was designed to inflict pain and instill fear while leaving minimal marks. When Burge was asked about these practices in civil interrogatories served on him years later, he lied and denied any knowledge of, or participation in, torture of suspects in police custody. But the jury heard overwhelming evidence to contradict that assertion and convicted Burge for obstruction of justice and perjury.”

Burge’s crimes are further summarized by the The Peoples Law Offices of Chicago:

“…witnesses at trial detailed a record of decades of abuse that is unquestionably horrific. The witnesses described how they were suffocated with plastic bags, electrocuted with homemade devices attached to their genitals, beaten, and had guns forced into their mouths during questioning. Burge denied all allegations of abuse, but other witnesses stated that he bragged in the 1980s about how suspects were beaten in order to extract confessions. Another witness testified that Burge told her that he did not care if those tortured were innocent or guilty, because as he saw it, every suspect had surely committed some other offense anyway.”

 This is not justice. Burge was never charged with police brutality.  Fired in 1993 over the allegations, the Office of Professional Standards never brought charges, he was never prosecuted and the Superior court  allowed the statute of limitations to expire.  It was only through a series of civil lawsuits by the victims that this torture ever came to light, and that Burge was eventually convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in sworn testimony.  There is no justice in the capitalist system of injustice for the oppressed!

Only the most flagrant abuses of police brutality and terror come to light, while the Black, Brown and immigrant communities face daily harassment, beatings and murder at the hands of the racist cops.  Rodney King, Oscar Grant, John Deng, Alan Blueford, Richard Rodriguez, Kenneth Harding Jr., Mario Romero, Jared Huey, Jeremiah Moore, Anton Barrett, Ernesto Duenas, Guy Jarreau, Kimani Gray…the list goes far back and it continues to go on and on.  Recent studies by the Malcolm X Grassroots movement revels a black or brown man is killed by the cops every 36 hours.

The state is the enforcement mechanism of the capitalist class. The racist police violence is not some mistake, or bad policy or the actions of a few “bad apple” cops.  Stop and Frisk is the institutionalization of racist police terror, harassment and brutality! This is the method the capitalists use to keep the oppressed down.  Racism against the Black, Brown and immigrant communities serves the ruling class by creating divisions among the multi-racial working class. The same cops that terrorize the oppressed also can and will be used to break labor struggles.  Just ask ILWU (Longshoremen) Local 21 in Longview, WA how they were hounded and harassed by the police in their struggle for a fair contract.  The police are not workers!  They are the armed fist of the capitalist state!  They are the enemies of the labor movement, the working class and the oppressed!

The answer is not impotent police review boards or police monitoring (Copwatch),  although certainly police crimes should be exposed to the public to the fullest extent possible.  What is needed is to link the defense of the Black, Brown and immigrant communities to the social power of the organized labor movement.  ILWU Local 10 in the Bay Area engaged in a one day action to shut down the port in protest against the police murder of Oscar Grant.

Black and Brown self defense is put on the agenda by the increasing brutality that follows from the deepening austerity.  We must learn from the brutal bi-partisan repression and murder of our brothers and sisters from the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets and American Indian Movements in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  The oppressed communities must not be allowed to stand alone, labor must step up to the plate.  To defeat racist cop terror multi-racial labor based self defense needs to be organized out of every union hall and working class church and community organization.

Labor, Black and Brown activists in the Bay Area mobilize for labor defense of the oppressed, calling for self-defense guards against racist police violence and for multi-racial workers tribunals to bring  criminal cops to justice.  We  join their call for labor political strikes against cop terror under the slogan, “They shoot us down! We shut them down!”  Recently Labor, Black, and Brown activists garnered the support of ILWU Local 10 and the Black Riders of Oakland to shutdown the Vallejo City Council in protest of the murder of Mario Romero.  Transitional organizations uniting the multi-racial working class in self defensive struggle need to be built everywhere, linking the social power of organized labor to the oppressed communities in common struggle, as part of the fight against the brutal system of capitalist exploitation and racist oppression.

NO STOP AND FRISK! DEFEAT RACIAL PROFILING!

COPS OUT OF SCHOOLS! COPS OFF PUBLIC TRANSIT!

Organize Political Strikes Against Racist Cop & Vigilante Killings!

Organize Multiracial Labor/Community Self Defense Guards!

For Mutiracial Labor Tribunals to Bring Police Killers/Torturers to Justice!

Sources:

http://peopleslawoffice.com/jon-burge-conviction-upheld-by-federal-appeals-court/

http://cwgusa.wordpress.com/category/racist-cop-terror/

Statement of the Communist Workers Group  April 7, 2013           www.cwgusa.worpress.com cwgclasswar@gmail.com

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