The following post is from Dancing the Dialectic, a great blog written by friend of AREA Alice Kim. You can read the original post here.
I'm supporting a petition campaign calling for a stiffer sentence for former Commander Jon Burge in his upcoming sentencing hearing on January 20. The petition reads:
The recommendation for Jon Burge's sentence by the U.S. Probation Office was only 15 to 21 months. Sign this petition to let Judge Lefkow know that Burge deserves a more severe sentence that is commensurate with the egregious nature of the underlying crimes of torture he committed.
Last summer, Jon Burge was found guilty of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury for lying about the torture he and other Chicago Police detectives committed at Chicago Police Headquarters in the 1970s and 1980s. Because the statute of limitations had expired, he couldn't be charged with the systematic torture of over 100 African American men that he and officers under his command committed in interrogation rooms on the South side of Chicago.
The acts of torture carried out by Burge and his officers were horrendous. We’re talking about electroshock to the ears, elbows, fingertips and genitals; repeated suffocation with a typewriter bag; Russian Roulette (when an officer loads his gun with one bullet and threaten a suspect); and charred skin as a result of cigarette burns and radiator burns.
When investigative reporter John Conroy first broke the story about Chicago’s torture scandal, he aptly referred to Area 2 Police Station as the House of Screams.
In that story, the torture Andrew Wilson experienced is described like this:
When they got to Area 2 headquarters, Wilson said, he was taken into a small room, thrown to the floor, and beaten; then he was kicked in the eye--the kick tore his retina, he said--and someone took a plastic bag out of the garbage can and put it over his head, causing him to suffocate until he bit a hole in the bag. That session ended, Wilson said, when Burge walked in and told the assembled cops that "he wouldn't have messed my face up, he wouldn't have messed me up"--in other words, that Wilson's assailants had screwed up, that they should not have left any marks.
Wilson testified that he was then taken to Interview Room Number 2, and that Burge said something on the order of "My reputation is at stake and you are going to make a statement." According to Wilson, Detective Yucaitis entered the room a short time later carrying a brown paper bag from which he extracted a black box. Yucaitis allegedly pulled two wires out of the box, attached them with clamps to Wilson's right ear and nostril, and then turned a crank on the side of the box. "I really can't explain it," Wilson said. "The first time he did it, it just hurt. I can't explain it. When Burge was doing it I can explain more because he did it more. . . . It hurts, but it stays in your head, OK? It stays in your head and it grinds your teeth. . . . It grinds, constantly grinds, constantly. . . . The pain just stays in your head. . . . It's just like this light here like when it flickers, it flickers . . . and your teeth constantly grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds. All my bottom teeth was loose behind that, these four or five of them, and I tried to get the doctor to pull them. He said he wouldn't pull them because they would tighten back up.
Burge was a Vietnam veteran, and he brought the torture practices that he learned overseas to interrogation rooms on the South side of Chicago. The black box that Wilson described would surface time and time again in other accounts of torture that Burge and his officer inflicted on other African American men in their custody.
Burge and his detectives cavalierly referred to these practices as “fun time.” When Burge was finally fired from the Chicago Police force in 1993, he retired to Florida and had the gall to name his fishing boat, the Vigilante.
For twenty-five years, lawyers, activists, family members and the torture survivors themselves have been engaged in a battle for justice. Burge's conviction is the first time any one has been held accountable for these acts of torture.
I'm a prison abolitionist, and generally, I'm against harsh sentences. But in this case, I believe Burge deserves more than 15-21 months. Burge was a police Commander, entrusted to "serve and protect," when he carried out these acts of torture. As one person who signed the online petition commented, he "was supposed to be a guardian of justice."
More than that, Burge has failed to admit to his crimes. He's failed to apologize for his crimes. And he's failed to take any action to reveal the truth about the torture practices he and other officers carried out or to provide relief to any of the torture survivors. His sentence should send a message that Black lives matter and torture with impunity is not acceptable.
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The deadline for signing the Illinois Coalition Against Torture's petition objecting to a light sentence for Jon Burge is January 11.
Read more about Burge from the AREA Archives.
