JON BURGE
Jon Burge and several Chicago police officers under his command tortured dozens of suspects, all african-american, between 1973 and 1993. Their tools of torture included a hand cranked electrical device, a cattle prod, and a violet ray machine (also known as a shock wand).
The torture investigation was released in July 2006, with the following statement"
"It is our judgment that the evidence in those cases would be sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Regrettably, we have concluded that the statute of limitations would bar any prosecution of any offenses our investigation has disclosed."
In September 2007, however, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald indicated that he might still prosecute the perpetrators—not for the torture but for denying it under oath in civil suits filed more recently by five alleged victims. In order to mount such a prosecution, Fitzgerald would have to prove that torture took place, and no case offers better medical evidence than Andrew Wilson’s. He was tortured without finesse. Marks were left all over his body.
The report exposed the decades-long institutionalized abuse that occurred in the Chicago Police Department, and the systematic complicity of the judicial system. Studied in the report were some 148 allegations of torture committed by former Chicago police commander Jon Burge and the officers who reported to him.
The special prosecutors’ report also demonstrates that there was a high-level governmental cover-up of Andrew Wilson’s torture. In 1982, an internal investigation revealed that Wilson was tortured, but no one was ever indicted. Wilson, whose abuse allegations led to Burge’s firing, was convicted of killing two police officers in 1982.
Burge, a south-side native, may have learned to torture in Vietnam, where he served in 1968 and ’69. Veterans of his company have reported that they participated in the electrical torture of Vietcong suspects, shocking them using hand-cranked field telephones. A similar device was used to shock suspects at Area Two. The first publicly known complaint of electric shock interrogation at Area Two dates from 1973. In the years that followed Burge was promoted and served in other locations, then returned to Area Two in 1981 as commanding officer of the Violent Crimes unit.
Burge’s slow undoing can be traced to the 1982 arrest of Andrew Wilson for the shooting deaths of two police officers. Wilson’s account of electric shock, some of it aimed at his genitals, didn’t provoke a response from the Cook County state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley (“Deaf to the Screams,” August 1, 2003), but in 1987 the Illinois Supreme Court, suspicious of Wilson’s many injuries, granted him a new trial. He was convicted a second time without the use of his confession and sentenced to natural life. (See “House of Screams,” January 26, 1990, and “The Shocking Truth,” January 10, 1997.)
Attorneys at the People’s Law Office compiled a list of 105 African-American men who told not only of being shocked but of suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers and other forms of torture and abuse inflicted by Burge and detectives under him at Areas Two and Three. Instruments they described included a handcranked electrical device, a cattle prod, and a violet ray machine (also known as a shock wand), a medical instrument now sold as a sex toy. (See “Tools of Torture” and “The Mysterious Third Device,” February 4, 2005.)
Dismissed from the police force in 1993 but never charged with any crime, Burge lives in Florida, collecting a police pension.
Jon Burge May Still be Prosecuted
Jon Burge Arrested for Contempt
October 22, 2008
Burge Bonds Out, Puts House up as Bail
A former high-ranking Chicago cop, arrested Tuesday on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, posted $250,000 bail in a Florida courtroom.
Former police Cmdr. Jon Burge, 60, was charged in connection with his previous testimony that neither he nor homicide detectives under his command tortured any murder suspects 20-some years ago, the U.S. Attorney's office announced.
On Tuesday afternoon, Burge surrendered his house, along with five firearms and his passport. The Florida judge who heard his case declined the prosecution's request that Burge be put on home monitoring.
The judge orderd him to attend pre-trial services twice a week in Florida and limited his travel to the area surrounding his Florida home and northern Illinois. He is expected to appear before Federal Judge Joan Lefkow in Chicago on Monday.
"According to these charges, Jon Burge shamed his uniform, and he shamed his badge," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said at a news conference Tuesday morning.
A federal indictment alleges that Burge lied in a deposition claiming he hadn't participated in the "bagging" of a suspect -- covering his head with a typewriter cover until he couldn't breathe -- in January 1987.
Burge, fired by the Police Department in the early 1990s, has long been the focus of allegations by civil rights attorneys that he and his detectives used beatings, electric shocks and death threats against homicide suspects to obtain confessions decades ago.
The arrest capped a long-running controversy about whether Burge and his subordinates could be held accountable for alleged torture using cattle prods, bags over suspects' heads and a "black box" that administered electric shocks.
"There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station," Fitzgerald said in a statement issued after the arrest. "There is no place for perjury and false statements in federal lawsuits. No person is above the law and no person -- even a suspected murderer -- is beneath its protection."
But Burge's arrest doesn't mark the end of the investigation. Federal authorities are still looking into the torture allegations and whether anyone else lied to investigators, Fitzgerald said.
Burge was arrested before dawn at his home in Apollo Beach, Fla., after federal prosecutors in Chicago obtained a sealed indictment charging him over statements he made in a civil lawsuit.
According to the indictment, Burge was asked whether he had been involved in the torture of homicide suspect Madison Hobley and said: "I have not observed nor do I have knowledge of any other examples of physical abuse and/or torture on the part of Chicago police officers at Area 2."
He repeatedly answered similar questions with flat denials. However, Hobley claims he was tortured into confessing.
At a separate event on Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley faced reporters interested in his reaction to Burge's arrest. Daley was Cook County State's Attorney for part of the Burge era.
"You can't hold me responsible," the mayor said.
The Chicago Police Department issued a statement Tuesday afternoon saying the incidents of 20 years ago should not tarnish the dedicated men and women currently serving on the police force.