From Vietnam to Chicago to Gitmo

What happened at Gitmo wasn’t torture.  Why, it was no worse than serious BDSM/ Special Forces training /frat hazing/ what the Chicago Police Department does on a daily basis.

These allegations recall Chicago twenty-five years ago. In 1990, after multiple allegations of torture, the CPD Office of Professional Standards conducted an investigation in Area 2 that identified fifty cases of torture by over thirty officers. Subsequent investigations led to the uncovering of over 100 victims, going back to 1968. Tactics included shocking, bagging [the head] and suffocating, suspension, whipping, burning, and beating. Most incidents were connected to Jon Burge and his “Asskickers.” Jon Burge brought many of the tactics he learned in Vietnam to interrogations of criminals of Chicago. Although Burge eventually lost his job,[4] other than two associated officers, no other officers were disciplined. Many remained and were promoted.[5] Even if the problem was a “bad apple,” it may very well have spoiled the bunch. Investigations identified over fifty officers over close to three decades. Not only that, but approximately one third of Cook County criminal court judges were attorneys or detectives involved in the torture cases.[6] So the fact that the allegations that began to surface about nefarious practices at Homan in the mid-2000s has gone mostly unnoticed is not all that surprising. When asked about why the Chicago media hasn’t broken the story, Tracy Siska, the executive director of the Chicago Justice Project, replied that many “reporters agree with the police perspective.”