"It has been for many years an open secret that at the police headquarters where Burge worked, a large number of African-American citizens were detained and subjected to horrific forms of abuse," said Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago and a lawyer for a man who says Burge's detectives abused him.
Few know him here, and that's how he likes it. But back in Chicago, Jon Burge is big news. He's known as the police commander who, for 20 years, tortured suspects to make them confess.The accusations are like something out of a wartime prison: electric shock and cattle prods; near suffocation with a typewriter bag; mock executions with a pistol.Four people who confessed to him were released from death row last year; they're suing him. A special prosecutor has been on his tail for two years.Fired from the Chicago Police Department, he settled into a waterfront community of brick and stucco houses on Tampa Bay 10 years ago, his police pension intact, a boat out back. He has never been charged with a crime. Now people in Chicago are trying to bring him back, back to where he made a name for himself, as hero, then villain. People back home say Jon Burge needs to be called to account. [more ]
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