Hypocrisy to the Extreme: Chicago Allegedly 'Disappeared' Thousands at 'Gitmo' for African Americans
One would think that the president's home-city would live true to the black lives matter philosophy.
10.21.2015
News
Tiffany Gabbay
VIDEO...
The president’s adopted hometown, run by his former chief of staff in a blue city in a blue state, ruled by the party that is loudest and first to scream “black lives matter,” is allegedly running its own Guantanamo Bay, where the civil liberties and legal rights of thousands of African Americans have literally been stripped away. Those apprehended simply “disappear” for periods of time.
Practically no attorneys are allowed inside, no formal booking takes place, no record keeping is maintained, and no due process exists at all for the more than 7,000 Chicago residents reportedly taken to the “interrogation warehouse” dubbed Homan Square.
It is something that reads more like a work of fiction -- one that would ostensibly paint those running the “private Gitmo” as white, racist conservatives gunning for poor, African Americans. Yet the atrocities at the unmarked interrogation warehouse are reportedly occurring right in President Obama’s home-city run by his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
An ongoing investigative report and civil lawsuit filed by the British outlet
The Guardian, reveals that Chicago police “disappeared” thousands of the city’s black residents in a clearly unlawful fashion. The reports document in detail the extent of the human rights abuses allegedly taking place at Homan Square – a place attorneys call “something out of a Bond movie.”
One attorney told the Guardian that those living in Chicago's most crime-addled neighborhood where Homan Square is situated know the true purpose of this "near-paramilitary wing of the government," equipped with "floodlights, cameras, razor-wire." The Guardian expands:
Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as
previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.
From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show.
The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about
Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”.
The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.
“The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.”
What's more, most of the Homan Square arrests have taken place in the five years since Rahm Emanuel took office as the city's mayor:
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Hypocrisy to the Extreme: Chicago Allegedly 'Disappeared' Thousands at 'Gitmo' for African Americans
