Burge Pleads The Fifth in Chicago Police Torture Lawsuits

• Alleged that Burge or people working for him tortured 108 Black and Latino suspects
  

After allegedly eluding authorities for more than a day, former Area 2 Police Cmdr. Jon Burge was slapped Wednesday with a subpoena ordering him to testify before a grand jury in an ongoing criminal investigation of police torture. Burge, who now lives in Florida, allegedly had evaded prosecutors since arriving in Chicago on Tuesday but was served with the subpoena while at his attorney's downtown office for depositions in civil lawsuits. He spent about four hours refusing to answer questions in those suits. They allege Burge and detectives routinely tortured suspected criminals while prosecutors and the city let it go on. Burge invoked the Fifth Amendment to nearly every question except to give his own name and that of his boat and to say that he still receives about $30,000 annually.[more ] and [more ] Pictured above: Protesters came out in full force to confront a former Chicago police commander accused of torturing suspects. [more ]


Torture allegations Dog ex-police officer

• "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. [more ]