News

**LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 91377 10-22-2012 06:54 AM

"One hundred alleged victims of abuse at the hands of Chicago police officers, have been granted hearings to describe the torture they faced. For decades, minority inmates were beaten, shocked and suffocated into confessing their crimes.

The Chicago police officers were said to be racially motivated in their actions, abusing African American men arrested on the south and west sides of Chicago for four decades, the Courthouse News reports. Some of the officers are already serving jail time for their involvement in the torture, but new hearings requested by victims Johnnie Plummer and Vincent Wade will take place for 100 additional victims of their abuse.

The police officers in question are Lt. Jon Burge, Sgt. John Byrne and those working under their command. Burge, a 64-year old Army veteran, who gained notoriety for torturing hundreds of criminals between 1972 and 1991.

The victims of abuse were “subjected to racially motivated physical abuse – including electric shock, mock execution, suffocation with a plastic bag and beating – that caused him to inculpate himself involuntarily in a crime,” the court complaint states.

Burge also burned victims with cigarettes and radiators, used a cattle prod on inmates, electrocuted men in their genitals, and used violet wands, hair dryers and stun guns to further harm men’s genital regions. The officer has also been accused of supervising the electrical shocking of a 13-year-old boy.

Plummer claims that he was forced to confess to murder when he was 15 years old. He says officers under Burge’s command threatened him, beat him with a flashlight and pulled his hair. As a result, Plummer has been in prison for 21 years without a fair hearing, the complaint states.

Wade has spent 28 years in prison after being tortured to confess to murder, home invasion and armed robbery. He says he was smacked on the nose with a flashlight, kneed in the groin, punched in the eye and beaten on his chest with a baton and phone book.

The complaint requests the court look at the “mountain of new evidence” against Burge and Byrne to find justice and give all the still-incarcerated victims of torture a full and fair hearing."

http://rt.com/usa/news/chicago-police-ab...oners-876/

**GreenAQ** · **GreenAQ** Livin' a dream User ID: 113375 10-22-2012 07:13 AM **Posts: 8,968**

Reminds me of this wonderful, heart-wrenching documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...h8WnERdvoE