UPDATE (1/5/16) Government Agrees to Pay Reparations to Some of the Victims
The government has formally “apologized” to the victims and now it has agreed to throw some money at them — a mere $100k.
The Free Thought Project reports as follows:
Last spring, the City Council agreed to make Chicago the nation’s first major city to pay reparations 44 years after the first known instance of torture committed by Burge and his men. After Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the creation of a $5.5 million city fund for Burge’s victims, the former police commander condemned the decision by stating, “I find it hard to believe that the city’s political leadership could even contemplate giving `Reparations’ to human vermin.”
On Monday, 57 of Burge’s torture victims each received $100,000 from the city of Chicago. Since a few victims had already received previous settlements, those amounts were deducted from their shares. Family members of deceased Burge victims were ineligible for financial reparations but were still eligible for non-financial reparations, including prioritized access to senior care services, health services, job training, small business assistance, and specialized counseling services.
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Besides formally apologizing and paying the reparations, the city has also agreed to begin teaching students about Burge’s legacy of corruption in Chicago’s public schools. Beginning this school year, eighth- and tenth-grade students will examine Burge’s crimes in U.S. History in regards to police brutality and the violation of constitutional rights.
CHICAGO — A now-former Chicago police officer will be rewarded with a $4000/month pension despite the fact that he was found responsible for the false imprisonment and torture of as many as 200 citizens, mostly African American males.
Officer Jon Burge was a police commander for over a decade in Chicago.
During his time as a commander, he oversaw a literal torture ring for innocent black people that his officers scooped up from the streets and framed.
The torture used on these victims included electrical shocks, genital torture, suffocation, bludgeoning, and isolation, to name but a few techniques. Some of the techniques are so heinous we cannot repeat them here.
Officer Burge was eventually sent to prison, but spent less than four years.
Pictures of him walking out of the court house victoriously after being released and rewarded with a $4000-per-month pension have outraged the victims, who still bear the emotional and physical scars of what Burge did to them.
Many of the victims are now reliving their nightmares as Burge was transferred to a comfortable halfway house in Florida.
The terrorism and torture that he waged on Chicago’s southside spanned from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Because of the statute of limitations, Burge was not fully punished for his actions, but only received four years for a charge of perjury, having lied about the torture he managed.
Many of the victims have started to speak out on this travesty.
You’d think that with all the attention the mainstream media is giving to police brutality lately, that they would be broadcasting this story every day and night.
Instead it was briefly reported and then allowed to sink quickly down the memory hole.
One of the victims who spoke out recounted how police under Burge’s command kidnapped him and took him to a police station where his family and friends could not be reached.
Once in the police station, the officers tied a bag over his head.
They then hooked up electrical devices to his body that would shock him.
They began shocking him over and over again, suffocating him until he “confessed” to a murder he had never committed.
Since police could not solve the case, they chose a random black person from the streets and tortured that person into confessing so that it would look like they solved it.
The victim recounts how Burge screamed “don’t bite [n-word]!” as he was suffocating inside the bag.
Burge also oversaw the electrocution of the victim’s penis repeatedly.
“I need some help,” Holmes told a crowd of reporters at city hall yesterday, according to the Tribune. “I try to hold my emotions back because I don’t want people to see me like that. … My family has been through a lot.”
>After gaining the fake “confession” from him, Officer Burge saw to it that Holmes would spend the next 30 years of his life locked away in prison, torn from his loved ones.
Since Burge’s capture and release, Mayor Rahm Emanuel officially apologized on behalf of Chicago.
He called Burge’s torture ring a “dark chapter in the history of the city of Chicago.”
“All of us,” he said, are “sorry for what happened.”
And there you have it. Officer Burge gets rewarded with monthly cashflow, while the victims receive an “apology.”
Watch the video below: