Darrell Cannon talking:
On November the 2nd, 1983, about 15 all-white detectives invaded my apartment, terrorized me, my common-law wife and my cat. And during that day, through—I was tortured in despicable ways, from them using an electric cattle prod to shock me on my genitals and in my mouth. They tried to hang me by my handcuffs, which was cuffed behind my back. And they tried to play a game of Russian roulette on me with a shotgun, and they ended up chipping my two front teeth and splitting my upper lip.
From there, by the time they finished with me that evening, I was ready to say that my mother committed a crime, if they told me that was the case. The type of things that they did to me, I have never in my life experienced, and I’ll never in my life forget. It was something that you couldn’t even conjure up in a horror movie, because you don’t think that Chicago police officers would stoop this low in trying to obtain a confession. It didn’t matter whether or not I was guilty or innocent. In their minds, any time they pick a black man up, he’s guilty.
Flint Taylor talking:
there’s a long history, of fighting against police torture in this city, starting decades ago. And there’s been tremendous movements, generational, intergenerational movements, interracial movements, that have fought, first to get Burge fired many years ago, later to get him indicted in 2008 for perjury and obstruction of justice, and to get him convicted and sent to the penitentiary, federal penitentiary. And now, this particular movement was a wonderful coming together of young people, older people, an organization called the Torture Justice Memorials and other young organizations, Black Lives Matter, We Charge Genocide, and all of that came together politically to deal with aldermen, to deal with demonstrations, to marches. There was a great up—not uprising, but an uplifting experience, that ultimately led, in the middle of what appeared to be a tough election cycle, to the mayor and his people and a majority of aldermen dealing with this issue some decades after the torture took place. And that really is the reason that we were successful in getting this unique and historic reparations package.
To answer your other question, there are about 55 living men—55 or 65, we estimate—who were tortured, who will be eligible for the reparations. We felt that, symbolically and in a real way, that $100,000 per person would be something that would be meaningful, although certainly does not fully compensate anyone for being tortured. But there was no legal recourse for these men: The statute of limitations had run out. So, the entire package, as you mentioned, not only the money, but the services—psychological counseling for family members and the men who have been tortured; the education, not only for the men, but in the public schools, to have it taught; to have a narrative, the narrative we’ve been fighting for, about police torture all these years, that was disbelieved and laughed at and denigrated in the same way Homan Square is denigrated and laughed at by the city and the police, that now the narrative has changed and will be taught in a different way.
Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge served a short prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice before his release last year. Statistics compiled by the People’s Law Office, show Chicago has paid at least $64 million in settlements and judgments in civil rights cases related to Burge’s police abuses alone. The Chicago Reader reported some of Burge’s techniques may have been learned in Vietnam, where he served as a military policeman.
if there are movements to take it to other cities, as we see there are across the country, that they can demand the same kind of things that the movement here demanded. In terms of hearings, we’re very hopeful that people who are still in prison after all these years and decades will get fair hearings. And a judge has ordered that they be appointed lawyers to look into their cases and to bring them back to court. So we are hopeful on both fronts, but the message has to get out, as you are taking it to the country for us, so that others can see the example set here and that “reparations” can be a word that is broad and accepted across this country when it comes to police violence and police brutality.
— source democracynow.org
Flint Taylor, attorney with People’s Law Office who has represented survivors of police torture in Chicago for more than 25 years.
Darrell Cannon, one of dozens of men to come forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police. Darrell says police tortured him in 1983 and forced him to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. He spent more than 20 years in prison, but after a hearing on his tortured confession, prosecutors dismissed his case in 2004. He was released three years later.