The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'

[Brian4Liberty]

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'
By Spencer Ackerman

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

- Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
- Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
- Shackling for prolonged periods.
- Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
- Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.
...
Chicago’s Homan Square 'black site': surveillance, military-style vehicles and a metal cage

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
...
Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
...
“They just disappear,” said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”
...
Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations.

“The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,” Siska said.

“They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That’s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.”
...
Much more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...ans-black-site

[phill4paul]

There was once a time in this country when the building would have rested in ashes by the end of the day.

[presence]

There was once a time in this country when the building would have rested in ashes by the end of the day.

...personally looking forward to the next day of mutiny in the newz. Where's a good dornerfrein when you need them?

[morfeeis]

Just got done reading the full article and came here to post it; this type of $#@! makes me sick to my stomach.

[Cleaner44]

I wonder if it is here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8681...3i0gITRAlg!2e0

[KCIndy]

There was once a time in this country when the building would have rested in ashes by the end of the day.

The French had a similar problem in 1789....

[Anti Federalist]

The heroes are OK, though, right?

[Thor]

I wonder if it is here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8681...3i0gITRAlg!2e0

You were a block off...

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8681...u9xxra1Ntg!2e0

Now back to your regularly funded programming...

[Thor]

Just got done reading the full article and came here to post it; this type of $#@! makes me sick to my stomach.

me too...

[randomname]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...ans-black-site

Located in a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side is where, according to the Guardian, one can find the domestic equivalent of a CIA "black site" - an illegal, off-the-books interrogation compound used by Chicago special police units, one which renders "Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside"; a place whose former occupants say is where you end up when you are "disappeared"; a place which confirms that when it comes to the eternal "who is better - us or them" debate, there really is no difference: "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.” It's a Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib rolled into one. In short: it is a place where the US constitution and basic human rights have absolutely no access.

And it may be located in a building just down your street.

According to an exclusive piece by the Guardian that is sure to send not only shivers down the spine of those who are still paying attention, but ripples across the "land of the free", not least because if there is one dark site on US soil, there are countless more - places where every single constitutional right of US citizens is trampled on - the secretive warehouse known as Homan Square is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. However, there is one huge difference: while those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

Every former communist block country had them: hidden, dark places where the secret police could have their way with you, and even kill you if it so desired, and nobody would have any clue or recourse of action; something for which the "evil empire" was mocked by the "free western world." As it turns out, the "evil empire" can now be found in at least one of the most populated American cities:

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

What exactly takes place at Homan square? Well, if it prohibited by the constitution, changes are you can find it in this red-bricked warehouse in west Chicago. Among the alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
Shackling for prolonged periods.
Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

The place had been largely shrouded in secrecy until the Guardian managed to find some people who were willing to talk:

It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution. “This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

Actually, based on the revelations about how the open and democratic US state deals with opposing voices, the practice continues to this date and at a level that would make George Orwell blush. it is, however, hidden for the most part, and usually takes place in the shadows, although increasingly those among the population who are not too stoned, too transfixed by their iApps and sitcoms, or too depressed to care, are starting to notice. That is not to say that the superstate won't deny it is, at times, the moral and ethical equivalent of the basest of middle-eastern "barbarians" it is waging an ideological war against (if only on behalf of the military-industrial complex).

Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the facility. But after the Guardian published this story, the department provided a statement insisting, without specifics, that there is nothing untoward taking place at what it called the “sensitive” location, home to undercover units.

“CPD [Chicago police department] abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility. If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them. It also houses CPD’s Evidence Recovered Property Section, where the public is able to claim inventoried property,” the statement said, something numerous attorneys and one Homan Square arrestee have denied.

And yet, when a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” said the man, who refused to give his name. A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out of the warehouse until the late 1990s.

So it's a "new thing" - but don't worry, it's all about being "patriotic." Like the NSA, or the Department of Homeland Security. Because one never knows just which US mall the next "terrorist" will blow up.

Which is probably why in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of Homan Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.

“They just disappear,” said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”

And while the ubiquitous "terrorism" excuse for any and every extra-constitutional action could apply here as well, the reality is that Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several special units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces. If police “want money, guns, drugs”, or information on the flow of any of them onto Chicago’s streets, “they bring them there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books,” Hill said.

Guantanamo In West Chicago

While America was distracted, focusing its attention on the water cooler scandal of the day, America raised at least one and likely countless more "Guantanamo centers", places where the detained have absolutely no human rights. Only it wasn't in Cuba: it was among America's own suburbia.

On a smaller scale, Homan Square is “analogous to the CIA’s black sites,” said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, she said, “police used the term ‘shadow site’” to refer to the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.

“Back when I first started working on torture cases and started representing criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they’d been taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where they were tortured,” said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge. “And in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions from them.”

Stalin, or any other banana republic dictator would be proud.

Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police held people incommunicado for extended periods. “I’ve never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and just hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the hell out of me that that even exists or might exist,” said Trainum, who now studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.



Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at Chicago’s secretive interrogation and holding facility: “It’s very, very rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police custody, and even more so at Homan Square,” Solowiej said.



Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the “big, big vehicles” police had inside the complex that “look like very large MRAPs that they use in the Middle East.”

And as if by seamless transition, all of the above ties in to another very critical topic in recent years - the SWATiziation of America's police forces:

Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military gear to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a local ABC News report.

Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations.

“The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,” Siska said. “They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That’s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.”

[fatjohn]

The ministry of Love

[cindy25]

this could hurt Hillary. Rahm was in the Clinton White House

[ghengis86]

If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. And besides, enhanced interrogation is not torture and what's the difference if you get a lawyer after 20 minutes or 20 hours or 20 days? Not like anybody died due to police misconduct. Geez...you people get so wound up over insignificant things. First you tin foilers say we shouldn't have black sites and torture in other countries. Now you say we shouldn't even do it in the land of the free! Bottom line, don't be a criminal. Or black. Or a little brown either.

Oh, and another thing. Screw The Guardian!! What business do they have report on stuff that happens in Chicago?! Worry about your own backyard! I'm sure if this story had real legs, the Chocago Tribune would have reported on it.

[Suzanimal]

[jmdrake]

Notice that this was covered in the British press. MSNBC and CNN won't cover it because Chicago is a democratic stronghold. Fox won't cover it because abuse of civil rights is what Fox supports generally. This country is so screwed. Hey Glenn Beck! There's the freaking FEMA camp you believe doesn't exist! ($#@!)

[ZENemy]

Just gotta get the right guy into office.

[ZENemy]

this could hurt Hillary. Rahm was in the Clinton White House

Nothing can hurt her, she has already been selected to be president and it will be so.

By the time 2016 is cracking, Hilary will have a new look, new hair cut and be dressed different. She will be more casual and have the appearance of a "career driven women" set out to fix the problems men have created.

By 2016 Hilary will be single handled responsible for killing Osama, saving orphans, saving whales, a champion for wage equality and besides its "just her time" after all..."she has earned it"

I'm ready for Hilary.

Don't forget, if you do not vote for her or you disagree with anything she says, you are a sexist.

[fatjohn]

this could hurt Hillary. Rahm was in the Clinton White House

Lol, sure. Because the masses and their media follow logic. I posted this on my facebook account. 0 likes, 0 comments. 90 percent went or goes to university.

We're screwed. Live with it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAH AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! !!!! !!!!!!!! ! !!!! !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! ! !

[Ronin Truth]

Maybe they've managed to capture a black hole.

[pcosmar]

Maybe they've managed to capture a black hole.

^^
racist and sexist

[jmdrake]

Just got done reading the full article and came here to post it; this type of $#@! makes me sick to my stomach.

Well we knew it was coming. I don't know if I should be happy to know that TPTB are so arrogant that they let stuff like this seep out while we still have a semi-free Internet and can talk about it or sad cause they most likely will get away with it.

[idiom]

Stay and fight, or emigrate. But staying and tippy tappying away at your computer is consent.

[osan]

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'
By Spencer Ackerman

Well, isn't that special... and yet, people will label me as "extreme" or "unreasonable" when I dare suggest armed and unequivocal action against Theire agents.

I am old enough and close enough to the era when such things happened only in bastions of open tyranny like the Soviet Union. My parent's spent time in the HQ of the Hungarian secret police. My father got to hear as they beat a naked priest to the point he defecated on the floor. He heard as they made him eat his own feces and then escorted him out a window that was not on the ground floor. He later read in the daily paper how the guilt-ridden priest had committed suicide for the shame he felt at being part of the old order that suppressed the workers.

And now it is beginning to repeat itself in America. If what the cited article claims is true, then we are no longer speaking of cops simply running amok. This is something very different, very dangerous, and will not be stopped with reason, logic, pleading, or strongly worded demands and letters.

Folks need to un$#@! themselves, even here. Most of you know nothing of this first hand. I, OTOH, do. I spent summers in a land where people were afraid to speak freely and where my "loose" American tongue had to be reeled in. I was chided with looks of grave concern from my grandma, great aunt, and cousins more than once for saying what for me were innocent things, but which for them could have meant prison, or worse. When you see the face of this monster, you recognize it immediately. I am here to tell you that it is right here in America, right now, and if it not stopped... need I say the rest?

Call this exaggeration if you want, but do so at your own peril. I've looked in its eyes and this story paints the self-same picture as that which I so vividly remember.

Heaven help us.

[osan]

I'm ready for Hilary.

Unless you have a tungsten carbide sphincter, you are most decidedly not ready for Hillary.

[oyarde]

Chicago has been a complete , total , corrupt , $#@!hole my entire life , and before .

[Mani]

...But...It keeps us safe...

[charrob]

A Black Site in Chicago? Police Accused of Running Secret Compound for Detentions & Interrogations

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to bring into the conversation Victoria Suter, who traveled to Chicago on May 12, 2012, to attend the NATO protest. Four days later, she and 11 others were taken to Homan Square in Chicago after police raided the apartment where they were staying. Suter spent 18 hours in solitary confinement before being allowed to speak to a lawyer. She joins us now from Charlotte. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Victoria.

VICTORIA SUTER: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you got in touch with us after we reported on the piece yesterday, and said, "Wait a second, I am one of those people who was held at Homan Square." Talk about your experience.

VICTORIA SUTER: In Homan Square itself, from the raid in the Bridgeport neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, I was put in an unmarked vehicle. It was the standard undercover cop car, you know, a silver Crown Vic. And not being from Chicago, I tried to keep track of what turns they were making where, at first, but after a certain point I couldn’t keep up with it. I was already asking to see a lawyer. And I kept asking, "Where are you taking me? Where are you taking me?" And the only response that I got was: "We’re going to give you a tour of hell on Homan." And—

AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second. What did they say?

VICTORIA SUTER: I had no idea what that meant. And—

AMY GOODMAN: "We’re going to give you"—what did they say? "We’re going to give you a tour"—

VICTORIA SUTER: They said, "of hell on Homan." And when we arrived there, it was dark. I couldn’t see the outside of the building. But we went in through a garage. There were really large, like military vehicles. They were black, just absolutely massive. There was—one of the other people arrested in that raid with me, they took him in first and left me outside with another officer, and then they took me inside. I was taken to a room, not particularly big, no windows. They put ankle shackles on me at that point and cuffed my right arm to a bar that ran behind the bench, where I stayed for 18 hours prior to being able to see an attorney. There was only one small window and a door that had—

AMY GOODMAN: Did you ask to speak to an attorney before that 18-hour period?

VICTORIA SUTER: Yes, I had been asking since the time of my arrest and the entire transport between Bridgeport and Homan.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And did you ever come to learn, Victoria, why the police had raided the apartment you were staying in and why you were detained for as long as you were and under the conditions you were?

VICTORIA SUTER: At that point in time, I had no idea what was going on. I was laying down to go to sleep when the raid occurred. And so, you know, you’re going down to—laying down to go to sleep, and then, all of a sudden, the doors are kicked in, and there’s guns on you, and you’re being taken away in handcuffs in an unmarked car to this place that you have no idea where you are. No one’s telling you anything. No one’s telling you what charges are possibly being filed against you. And it was all very chaotic and disorienting. And then, as we continued asking, while in Homan, "What are the charges? What are the charges? Where are we? Why are we here?" we got absolutely no answers the entire time I was there.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, ultimately, after 18 hours, what were you charged with?

VICTORIA SUTER: I was not charged with anything. After 18 hours, I was transferred into the Cook County Jail at 26th and California on the West Side, and I was released several hours after my transfer in with no charges. I was told—they knew that I was there to protest NATO. And upon my release, I was told, you know, "If we see you out there this weekend, we’re going to pull you back in and charge you with these guys." But we still had no idea what those charges were at that point in time.

[Suzanimal]

Activist Groups To Rally Against Chicago’s Reported Interrogation Headquarters

Chicago, IL- As news has spread exposing an alleged interrogation facility in Chicago known as “Homan Square” where suspects are reportedly detained, abused and denied Constitutional rights, several activist groups have come together to increase awareness of the facility and the due process violations occurring there.

...

Groups including PANDAA, Cop Block, The Anti Media, Police the Police, Anonymous and The Free Thought Project are organizing calls to action online and in Chicago to push for the reported interrogations at the warehouse to end. A “Twitter Storm” instructing people to send tweets using the hashtag #Gitmo2Chicago has been announced and is set to begin on Friday night at 7 p.m. Central. There has also been a protest scheduled for Saturday, February 28th at 3 p.m. Central to take place at 3379 Fillmore St in Chicago.

Benswann.com will be keeping a close eye on developments regarding Homan Square and other “black sites”.

http://benswann.com/activist-groups-...-headquarters/

[osan]

I wonder how badass those punk cops would feel were someone to lob an RPG through one of their windows.

[donnay]