Episode 4: Rahmtanamo Bay

What if I told you - that the police aren’t really here to protect and serve, that the constitution is just a piece of paper, that sometimes, the greatest abuses go unpunished and that unchecked authority, almost always outruns the truth.

What if I told you, that there’s a building inside which you could just disappear, that once you went in, you’d receive no legal counsel, that you could be shackled like an animal in a cage – for days – right here in America.

What if I told you that Guantanamo Bay had come home – and that it was in Chicago - right now?

Hello and welcome back to Everyone is Wrong But Me. Originally it had been my intention to sleep off a bad head-cold and get back to you next week as usual. Over the past few days however, extremely disturbing news has quietly broken across the internets – so quietly, that if you live in America, you may not have even fucking heard about it.

While we were all watching goddamn Llamas, drinking Comcast’s salty tears and arguing about a fucking ugly dress - the Guardian, a British national newspaper, published multiple, in-depth exposees of shocking human rights abuses by American officials. The key twist this time however, is that these abuses aren’t taking place on foreign shores, or even some backwoods, rural shitpile in the American south – this time, the war on everyone who gets in our way has come to the Windy City, the Heart of America – Chi-town. 

The Guardian has revealed that the Chicago Police department is running a secret and almost certainly illegal, detainment and interrogation compound out of a warehouse complex on the city’s west side.  It’s located in a drab-looking building known as Homan Square and what goes on inside is every bit as horrifying, immoral and inhuman as the abuses at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. 

This is a shadow site, in an American city, expressly reserved to confine, interrogate and torture American citizens for the purposes of extracting illegal confessions from them. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the war on terrorism but rather the laughably ineffective war on drugs, the fight to deny freedom of assembly for the purposes of legitimate protest and the Chicago Police Department’s ongoing war on black people. 

The abuses included but are not limited to:

• Assault and police brutality.
• Shackling, in some cases completely immobilizing, prisoners for hours, even whole days.
• Failing to provide prisoners with food and a bathroom for unreasonably long periods.
• Failing to provide proper medical attention for at least one prisoner who literally died in a Homan Square interrogation room.
• Keeping prisoners out of official booking databases
• Preventing lawyers from entering Homan Square or meeting their clients being held inside.
• Refusing to acknowledge that Homan Square is an interrogation site and restricting access to it by claiming it houses undercover units.
• Holding arrestees without legal counsel for up to three *days* - including at least one prisoner who was only 15.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Tell that to protestor Brian Church, who was chained to a fucking bench there with his legs shackled for 17 hours - without being booked or being allowed to see his lawyer.

Perhaps you’d like to share that theory with Vic Suter, another protestor arrested in Chicago and taken to Homan Square - where *she* was shackled to a bench for 18 hours while being interrogated without the presence of a lawyer. Oh her way to the facility, a cop gleefully informed her that she was “going to get a tour of hell in Homan.”

Still not convinced? Ask Brock Terry about his experience at Homan Square. He told the Guardian: ““I was kept there. I didn’t speak to a lawyer or anything. I didn’t interact with nobody for three days. And then when I do see the light of day, I go straight to another police station, go straight there to county and be processed.” He too was cuffed to a bench and interrogated the entire mutherfucking time. As terrifying as Terry’s experience was however, you get the sense that he feels he escaped the full horrors of Homan Square. Although he never saw another prisoner while inside, he described hearing people yelling out “no, no, no” and “stop.” He remembered seeing chain-link “cages” and told the paper that “they got kennels – like, for people. I didn’t really want to believe that, but it is the truth.”

Oh hell no kids, we aren’t done yet. Why don’t you ask Deandre Hutcherson and David Smith; who were handcuffed by both wrists with their arms spread after being taken to Homan Square. Hutcherson was punched in the face while in this position, before an officer stepped on his groin “like he was putting a cigarette out”. Smith reports being moved to “a big cage” where his wrists were bound “to a steel post on a bench.”

Don’t trust “defendants”? Okay, you could ask the numerous Lawyers in Chicago who’ve come forward with stories of being unable to speak to, or even *find* clients who’d been remanded to Homan Square for entire days while their constitutional rights have been violated.

Ask Eliza Solowiej, who says her client’s name was changed in central booking before he was moved to the facility and immediately fucking disappeared. She finally found the guy when he was taken to the hospital with a serious head injury. “He said that the officers caused his injuries in an interrogation room at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,” she said.  “He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan Square without any.”

Ask Julia Bartmes, a Chicago lawyer who says “It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there.” Her 15 year old client was held for 12 or 13 hours in custody without ever being charged in 2013. When she attempted to visit, after finally locating him, she was denied entry into Homan Square for more than an hour. An officer told her, “Well, you can’t just stand here taking notes, this is a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you’re making people very nervous.”

Finally, I’d suggest you ask John Hubbard - but you can’t, because he’s fucking dead. He was found unresponsive in a Homan Square interview room and died before he ever left the facility.

Whomever you do decided to ask however, please *don’t* ask the fucking Chicago police department who in a released statement said the “CPD abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility. If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them. It also houses CPD’s Evidence Recovered Property Section, where the public is able to claim inventoried property. There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square.” 

This of course begs the mutherfucking question, why all the fucking secrecy then?

When a reporter from the Guardian tried to visit the warehouse recently, a man guarding the gate wouldn’t allow the newspaper inside and declined to answer questions.  “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” he said, and then refused to give his name. 

When another reporter and a cameraman where waiting outside Homan Square to meet the county commissioner, a man, in a jumpsuit and a ski mask, pulled out of the Homan Square parking lot in an SUV and made multiple circles before stopping. He joked - “you can take a picture. We are all CIA here right?”

When attorney Cliff Nellis arrived at Homan Square to find a client, he asked a woman wearing a police uniform what the building was. She said “Oh, I don’t know what this is,” and walked off. Undeterred, Nellis flagged down officers in the Homan Square docking bay and identified himself as a lawyer seeking to meet with his client. They told him: “This isn’t a police station, we don’t hold people here.”

 

Does that sound like “any other facility” or does the Chicago Police Department have absolutely no fucking respect for your intelligence whatsoever? Don’t answer that one folks, because I’ll answer it for you:

The Chicago Police Department as a whole is one of the most violent, racist and authoritarian police forces in US history. From the era of rum-running gangsters, to this very day the list of abuses by the CPD is both long and horrifying. If you don’t believe me, check out the department’s Wikipedia page under the heading Controversies and Abuse – it’s roughly four, large screens long and is by far the largest section in the entire document.

Furthermore, I encourage you to check out some of the links to other stories I’ve provided in the comments section below.

You can read about the time Chicago police shot three black men inside of three weeks during the height of the #BlackLivesMatter protests – causing a speaker at a rally to declare that “the worst gang in Chicago is the police department.”

You can learn about Reginald Edward:, a disabled man confined to a wheelchair, who CPD officers struck in the face while arresting and then, when he refused to clean up the blood to conceal these actions from their supervisor, shook him so violently that he was thrown from his wheelchair – ripping out his goddamn catheter and causing injuries that required immediate medical attention.

You can read about the numerous, successful lawsuits launched against the Chicago Police Department - including that of Ronald Kitchen and Marvin Reeves, who spent 21 years in prison for the murder of two women and three young children – before being exonerated and released in 2009 because they were fucking tortured into giving false confessions.

Perhaps instead, you can read about the report of widespread human rights abuses by the CPD delivered to the United Nations in late 2014 by the We Charge Genocide Coalition. It’s not every American city that draws the UN’s attention towards violence perpetrated by its own police force – that takes a  special kind of fucking flagrant disregard for the rights of your citizens

Or maybe you’d prefer to read about Glenn Evans, the Chicago police commander relieved of duty in 2014 after he was charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct for sticking his fucking gun into the mouth of a suspect. 

If you’re feeling really brave, check out Jon Burg - a former police commander who was accused of helping to torture 120 men between 1973 and 1991. Burge and the other detectives were accused by victims of forcing confessions from black suspects with electric shocks, having their heads covered with plastic typewriter covers, and mock executions. Naturally Burge is a fucking white dude and was never charged with any crimes – but you didn’t need me to tell you that did you?  He was however convicted of lying under oath during civil suits brought by his victims in 2010 – a crime for which this fucking animal got a well deserved 4 1/2 years in prison. 

Mostly though, you’ll read about a long line of police chiefs, officials and Mayors of the city who have continually denied allegations of abuse, actively worked to protect violent cops and largely ignored the fact that the CPD is a dangerous, racist, paramilitary organization operating with virtual impunity on American soil. That line will include President Obama during his time as an Illinois State Senator and for the moment, it culminates in his former White House Chief of Staff and current Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel. 

Frankly, Emmanuel is a special kind of motherfucker all unto himself but detailing his many failings would make this video even longer than it already is. From his time on President Bill Clinton’s staff, to his service at Freddie Mac, 3 terms in the House of Representatives, his time in the White House and now as mayor of one of America’s largest and most important cities – Emmanuel has always been where the action is and it’s not unfair to suggest he’s one of the most powerful goddamn men in America.

He’s also one of the most stubborn - consistently refusing to acknowledge, prosecute or compensate victims for the numerous human rights abuses perpetrated by the CPD. His unwavering insistence that the city fight hopeless fucking lawsuits in defense of clearly guilty police officers, has already cost Chicago tens of millions of dollars. 

Now, his miserable, bloody record on police violence is threatening his very political survival. He’s facing down Chicago’s first-ever mayoral election run-off and a serious challenger in Jesus Garcia - who’s assembled a massive grassroots coalition of support to topple a Mayor who many see as being corrupt and elitist. This, is despite the support of President Obama and his natural status as the frontrunning candidate in a Democratic stronghold - as one pundit put it, “Rahm is so disgusting he can't buy an election, as an incumbent, *in Chicago*.”

One thing you cannot read in the links I’ve provided however; is Rahm Emmanuel’s thoughts on the horrific human rights abuses occurring at Homan Square - his office has refused multiple requests for comment and instead referred reporters to the CPD statement we talked about earlier.

He’s probably just too busy trying to save his own ass to care about a little illegal detention, flagrant violations of the Constitution and numerous cases of violence against Chicagans by the CPD. Frankly, why should he care? Ignoring and even supporting Gestapo pig police has never hurt a politician in the state of Illinois before, right?

Here’s to hoping that Garcia makes that decision hurt really fucking bad this time, bad enough to topple the Commissar of Chicago and all of his fascist cop friends.

You’ve been reading Everyone is Wrong But Me and while this is the part where I’d normally beg for your subscription, I’m not going to this time. Someone I admired a great deal died today and in his honor I’d like to simply say to you:

Live long and prosper, my friends.

Goodnight.