From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where Chelsea, I think it's a fairly reasonable
thing to say that we've both had issues with authority, both in the past, not run-ins with
them, just problems with authority.
It's a personality trait that I think we both have.
But with you not being able to take tests well because somebody's judging you, and I
just having been sold that the police are out to get me since I was like three years
old, just not trusting anything with an authority figure.
I thought you were talking about all the arrests.
Yeah, I know, I have to specify that.
Anyhow, we are your podcast host, Taylor and Chelsea, here today, kind of giving you an
idea, a sense of mass wrongdoings that the police have done in the past.
And I, police might be the wrong word for it, because we're going to talk about sheriff's
departments as well.
But this is kind of a response.
If somebody says, which I hate this response, when you're talking about them with specific
cases of malpractice by police officers, and they say, well, that's just one bad apple.
Which if you look at that entire phrase, one bad apple ruins the batch.
In fact, means that is an entirely terrible thing to have the one bad apple there.
But hey, these are going to be examples of, no, there's entirely huge problems with the
police that need to be addressed.
So we're only talking about specific cities issues.
This is a systemic issue all throughout the first world, I guess will be a proper way
to say it, or at least North America that needs to be addressed.
You wouldn't think it would just be exclusive to certain cities.
So Chelsea, strap yourself in.
We've got three cases here to look at just to give you a warning.
They're going to get worse as we go.
Okay, so you went least worst to worst.
Yeah, at least worst to worst.
Yeah.
They're not choice to make the worst one, but they're all pretty bad in their own right.
So Chelsea, I hope you're ready for this.
Did you know that if you're rich enough, you can just hire an entire police precinct?
Do what?
What would I be searching for in the court?
Party double.
We're not just talking about like if you're pulled over by the cops slipping them a 20
and going on your way.
No, we're talking an entire state's police being paid off to do particular things for
a group.
So like what would I want them to do that for?
Oh, if you didn't want them to know what's happening?
No, not necessarily that, but you're kind of on the right track to.
Now this story, Vice News did a great job on this happening.
This happened in 2021 from Motherboard, which is a subsidiary of Vice and it's specifically
about a pipeline that was being built from Canada to the US.
A Canadian oil company gave Minnesota law enforcement $2 million to fund the policing
of protests against construction of this pipeline.
Calgary based oil giant Enbridge set up a fund called the Public Safety Escrow Trust
and May of 2020 as part of its permitting process for the line three pipeline route,
which carries oil from Edmonton, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin, which is not superior
to Edmonton.
I don't think it's just the name of the city that is going to.
Nice tactic.
Yeah.
The funds in this account have been used to reimburse costs associated with maintaining
the peace around the pipeline, including for officers, wages, lodging and boom trucks,
according to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and line three permits.
On July 29th, 2021, a group of unarmed environmental activists protesting the pipeline in Thief
River Falls, Minnesota, were tear gas, shot with rubber bullets and arrested.
Quote, it was a really brutal scene.
The level of force being used partnered with the very close range that law enforcement was
facing us led to some pretty serious injuries.
It was really an extreme level of force partnered with a really punitive and oppressive style
of jailing, said Tara Houska, an Ojibwe lawyer and activist who was arrested at the protests.
The nearby Marshall County Sheriff's Department filed a reimbursement request for expenses
associated with that day's patrol.
A spokesperson for the Minnesota PUC, which we talked about earlier, confirmed to motherboard.
According to the utility regulator between June 8th and July 31st, that Sheriff's Department
was reimbursed $20,057.90 by Enbridge for personnel expenses associated with line three
at assists.
In the Marshall County Sheriff's Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Enbridge justifies the pipeline expansion as necessary to uphold high safety standards,
but community members living near it say the project exchanges environmental destruction
and sacrifices land for a polluting energy source.
The pipeline has also been tied to several instances of sex trafficking, harassment and
assault.
There's a whole other article that we're not going to get into because this is going
to be a long episode in itself of local community members.
Environmental activists many from indigenous territories through which the pipeline would
run have opposed the project for the last seven years.
Activists efforts ramped up in November 2020 when Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency
MPCA issued Enbridge water crossing permits.
Grassroots collectives like Honor the Earth, Minnesota 350 and Stop Line 3 have garnered
international support, including from the likes of Jane Fonda for direct actions held
to obstruct the HULT pipeline construction in the months since.
Many of these direct actions have been met with violence by local police.
Though the July 29th incident was not the first time activists have been met by resistance
from law enforcement, it was the first time police had used less than lethal weapons.
The Guinea Collective and Environmental Activist group led by indigenous women and two spirits
people organizing against the pipeline wrote in a Facebook post on August 1st of 2021.
Many activists were arrested and taken to Pennington County Jail, where several were
denied food and medical care for their injuries and health in solitary confinement.
Among them was Genu Collective founder Huska, who stated after being attacked and zip-tied
she was kept in solitary confinement for days, denied food that aligned with her dietary
needs and ultimately hospitalized.
Pennington County Jail Administrator Dave Casanova, the existence of the Public Safety
Escrow fund has been known for some time thanks to activists and media reports. An April report
from the Minnesota Reformer based on documents obtained through public record requests showed
that Enbridge established a financial relationship with Minnesota law enforcement in May of 2020
as part of the permits that PUC issued, creating quote, a public safety end quote reimbursement
fund for any pipeline related police action and emergency responders.
In its permitting documentation, the PUC cited increased law enforcement expenses around
pipelines in other parts of the country as reasoning for establishing the fund. The funds
live in an escrow account managed by a state appointed official to whom agencies send requests
for reimbursement of costs related to quote, coordination of public safety and emergency
responders public safety related costs for maintaining the peace in and around the construction
site or view an oversight of any private security services, end quote, and other similar costs.
It's not public safety if the oil company is paying the Jesus Christ.
The financial arrangement allows the state's police departments to get reimbursed by the
fossil fuel corporations for quote, maintaining the peace in and around the pipeline construction
site and coordinating services at kin reported that included those undertaken by a task force
of 18 sheriff's departments, the Northern Lights Task Force, which was created to deter
pipeline protests in April of 2021. Enbridge had paid law enforcement over $500,000 out
of this fund. We've also learned that figures have ballooned far from their per spokesperson
of the MPUC. The well giant has paid $1,957,011.37 in law enforcement expenses to date. That
is a really hard number. That's too many numbers. Just round it, please. How many cents? Why
are they paying cents? Round up, please. For the sake of those saying the number at least.
That's a compassion. These expenses likely helped cover what Husqa
says has been relentless surveillance by Minnesota police along the pipeline's route for the
last year. Quote, there's a law enforcement officer parked right across the dirt road
that we live on right now. Like that's the daily occurrence there 24 hours a day. End
quote says Husqa. Husqa says the financial relationship to an Enbridge and the state
regulator is an indication of its undue influence. She recalled receiving flippant comments from
arresting officers as she and fellow protesters were detained, alluding to the partnership.
Quote, the police who are standing around as we're wearing zip ties are talking about
how much fun they had and they hoped we came back real soon and that they're going to
get time and a half. We're sitting there hurt and unable to open our eyes because we've
had so much mace in them and they're just laughing at us. End quote Husqa says since
the creation in 2020, $327,000 of the Enbridge fund has gone to the Cass County Sheriff's
office located 180 miles north of Minneapolis for security patrols of pipeline property
through a former noted. This amounted to around 7% of the department's salary and overtime
budget for that year between November 28th, 2020 and February 19th, 2021 over 40 employees
dedicated more than 7,000 hours to safety patrol. And another $171,000 went to Beltrami
County Sheriff's Department for officers training as early as 2017 preparation for
the pipeline and mileage for response to line three protests. All of this was paid for by
Enbridge. Enbridge spokesperson Julie Kellner said that the company recognizes the protesters
rights to quote express their views about the energy we all use, but it does not tolerate
illegal and unsafe acts. That's the end of the quote. That's the end of the article.
That's how easy it is to just buy a police department. I feel like Enbridge doesn't
make the law to say what they can support and not and the police don't need to be paid
to uphold peace. Especially when that's what we're doing. We're supposed to be doing that.
That's the whole point of taxes. Yeah, we already pay you to not get paid by somebody
else so that you could protect them. The billionaire. So I mean, I laugh, but it's
disgusting. That's the first one. You can just buy a police department if you really
need to. You got enough money. Well, now that I know that maybe when I need them, I'll buy
a police department. Okay. And if you guys want to give us enough money to actually buy
a police department, please do so. So far you have given us zero monies to buy a police
department. So any extra help. They haven't paid us money to do shit with. I'm sorry.
It's true. No judgment here. Don't worry, guys. Next up, did you know that departments
can be full of gangs? What kind of departments in this case, it's a sheriff's department,
but I'm going to boldly go out there and say it's probably not the only one it likely
could also extend out to police departments. Okay, law enforcement. What's the difference
between a sheriff and a law enforcement? You keep sticking them. I was really trying to
figure this out. Basically, sheriffs are generally in elected position. I don't know the case
here. We're talking about the LA Sheriff's Department, which is the largest sheriff's
department in the US. Generally, sheriffs will be elected, but I don't know the case
specifically with the LA Sheriff Department. And there is also the LAPD and I don't know
the specific separation here. Generally, sheriffs will also provide, I shouldn't say policing,
but policing to courthouses and prisons, as well as they'll take care of the more state
oriented laws. Okay, that's good enough for me. That's simple enough to explain it. There's
way more to it than that. But I think that's enough to at least get us going from here.
And you said they're run by gangs? No, they're full of gangs. You're a part of the gangs.
Just read the story and you're going to learn as we go because this is this was absolutely
ridiculous when I learned this and it's a fairly recent revelation. So LA SD, Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department has over 18,000 employees and that makes the LA County Sheriff's Department
the largest in the US. But it is plagued by dozens of often violent gangs and cliques
organized by sheriff's deputies. This has been going on since at least 1973.
What? Like are we talking about like Crips and Blitz? No, that's the only gangs I know
in the area. It's entirely unique to the sheriff's department and you're going to learn about
it here. It's just ridiculous. We're going to be pulling from two sources. One is the
Civilian Oversight Commission on Sheriff's Department in LA. This is a document that
was drafted and came out as February 2023, as well as there is a pretty good NPR article
on this. So we're going to be pulling from both of these. To start off from the COC,
the Civilian Oversight Commission. We're going to start with this. Deputy gangs and deputy
cliques have existed in the LA County Sheriff's Department since at least 1973. That year,
an internal department memo dated December 5th documented the existence of a group known
as Little Devils and identified 38 members who bore sequential numbered tattoos of a
devil. What? In the Sheriff's Department? In the Sheriff's Department, yes. In 1992,
the Colts Commission report confirmed the existence of deputy gangs and deputy cliques,
including deputy gangs called the Vikings in the department. After holding evidentiary
hearings in Los Angeles in 1993 and 96, the United States Commission on Civil Rights in
1999 issued a report focusing on the violence and trauma the deputy gangs had inflicted
on communities of color and people struggling with mental illness and urged the LASD to
take decisive action to eradicate the deputy gangs from its ranks. In 2012, the Citizens
Commission on Jail Violence, CCJV, found that the deputy cliques existed in patrol and on
certain floors of men's central jails, MCJs, if that comes up again, and that they contributed
to the use of excessive force in the jails. The CCJV's report contains five pages of
recommendations to address the problem. The Loyola Law School Report documented the department's
long history of eight deputy gangs and deputy cliques in 2021, and the Rang Corporation
also confirmed the existence in its report titled Understanding Subgroups within the
LA County Sheriff's Department in 2021. All the deputy cliques share harmful characteristics,
while not all deputy cliques engage in identical, unprofessional conduct. Most share at least
some of the following characteristics, and they have done and continue to do certain acts
of unprofessional and dangerous policing. Deputy cliques run the stations or units
where they exist, as opposed to the sergeants, lieutenants, and the captains who are charged
with the duty to run the station. Exercise influence over and often decide assignments
and shifts, training and overtime. Exclude deputies from the deputy cliques, often based
on race, ethnicity, and gender. Intimidate deputies that are not part of the deputy cliques.
Give orders not to provide backup to disfavored deputies who are not members of the deputy
cliques. Order work slowdowns if management of a station attempts to rein them in. Encourage
a we-they attitude as in a separate, we are the gang and there's everybody else who's
against us, and not just between them and the public, but with other deputies within
the station. Operate in secrecy, lie in reports to protect each other, and threaten the public
with use of excessive force without justification and be little deputies unwilling to engage
in such acts. Most troubling, they create rituals that valorize violence, such as recording
all deputy-involved shootings in official books, celebrating with shooting parties, and
authorizing deputies who have shot a community member to add embellishments to their common
gang tattoos. This is literally from a civilian oversight commission. Like this is documents
that they collected on it, and we're gonna talk about people actually talk to them about
this as we get going. Typically to be invited to become a member of a deputy gang or deputy
clique, a deputy must demonstrate, quote, offness, and quote, that is frequently associated
with the use of excessive force or other forms of unconstitutional policing. Often the euphemistic
term peer leader is used to describe the members. Deputy gangs and deputy cliques also have
used and continue to use assault of behavior against fellow deputies who do not belong
to their group as a show of power and influence. Certain of these altercations have led to
public exposure in the media. The COC investigation uncovered these other incidents, including
threatened use of weapons by deputies upon other deputies. The pernicious effects of
these groups go well beyond assaulting other deputies. Recent publicly released body cam
footage of a deputy threatening to shoot a man in a parked car without any evidence of
wrongdoing illustrated in real time gang behavior characteristics of deputy gangs and deputy
cliques interacting with the public served. Not all members of deputy cliques engage
in acts of misconduct. Even those members who do not engage in misconduct, however,
contribute to the unprofessional influence of deputy cliques and their negative impact
on the department and on other deputies. Deputy cliques have and continue to do great
damage to the reputation of the department and the public hearings demonstrate that they
have unquestionably destroyed trust between the department and the public.
This is just one group of members of the jump out boys shared a common number tattoo that
depicts a red eyed skull wearing a bandana with the letter OSS and holding a revolver
next to an ace of spades and an aid of spades the so-called dead man's hand in poker. Their
creed recited that members understand quote when the line need to be crossed and crossed
back and quote that they quote sometimes need to do things that they do not want to in order
to get where they want to be and quote it also directed members to keep a quote black
book and quote that records the dates of every deputy involved shooting that records the
date of every deputy involved shooting that authorize each shooter to embellish his common
tattoo with smoke coming out of the gun. Seven jump out boys members were fired but because
there was no clear policy against joining a deputy gang at the time, the civil service
commission reinstated four of them. That was one of the recommendations I believe that
wasn't really what I was looking at at this point and like there's so much we have to
go into still with even this that it's hard to catch it all and there's another story
after this one which I think is worse. It is indisputable that for nearly 50 years deputy
gangs and deputy cliques have existed within the department and their existence and negative
impacts were known to the leadership of the department yet there was no sustained effort
during this period to eradicate deputy gangs and deputy cliques from the department. All
prior efforts were inadequate, lost continuity and failed to eliminate deputy gangs and deputy
cliques. Owing to this failure, deputy gangs and deputy cliques are embedded in the culture
of the department either tolerated or ignored. Indeed during the tenure of Sheriff Baca,
the under sheriff, Paul Tanaka was a tattooed member of the Vikings. According to the numerous
witness interviews, former sheriff Villanueva's under sheriff Tim Miracami has a caveman tattoo,
another gang. This is from the commission, I have another thing that will change this
number but there's at least a half dozen impossibly more deputy gangs and deputy cliques currently
in the department primarily at patrol stations and they include the executioners, the banditos,
the regulators, the Spartans, the gladiators, the cowboys and the reapers. And now we're
going to move to a bit from the NPR article on this. Two recent under sheriffs, the second
in command posts for the department were identified by the commission as having gang tattoos. Paul
Tanaka, the under sheriff from 2011-2013 and Tim Miracami, the under sheriff reporting to
Alex Villanueva until 2022 who we're just talking about. An extensive investigation by
nonprofit newsroom Nock LA, which if you're looking for good information on this, go read
Nock LA. That is the best location for this. Alleged dozens of gangs were associated with the
sheriff's office but also noted the county's district attorney routinely denies to charge
members. The newsroom also reported the department tends to settle excessive force cases and other
lawsuits involving alleged members before they go to trial, costing taxpayers millions. In the
years since the oversight commission conducted an exhaustive review of its own, culminating the
report published in March, the new report found evidence of gang control of at least six sheriff's
department stations. Compton station, East LA, station Lennox, Sentry station, Lancaster and
Palmdale station, as well as within Aero Buero, the department's helicopter division. The gangs
are well documented for using excessive force on civilians, harassing other deputies and using
violence on inmates inside jails. The deputy gangs have historically proved a threat to the chain of
command according to multiple reports. According to the 1992 report, deputies at the then notorious
Linwood station, quote, harass and intimidated any sergeant or lieutenant who stood in their way,
end quote. The report went on to say deputies would quote command field sergeants to leave the
scene of arrest, to slash the tires of supervisors they did not like, to disregard orders not to
roam freely outside their patrol areas in the city of LA and to smear, excrement and other noxious
substances over the engines of their supervisors cars. The intimidation tactics have continued to
this day. In 2018, alleged members of the Bandito's deputy gang brutally attacked
non-gang deputies in the East LA station. The beating hospitalized two LASD deputies who are
now involved in years long litigation against the department for harassment and discrimination.
And Chelsea, just to give you an idea, this comes right from knock LA. There are at least 24 gangs
within the LA County Sheriff's Department officials at various government agencies,
including the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles County District Attorney,
the California Senate Subcommittee on Police Officers Conduct and the United States Commission
on Civil Rights have heard testimonies on the violence inflicted on communities at the hands of
deputy gangs for decades. Deputy gangs have killed at least 40 people, all of whom were men of
color. At least 10 of them had mental illnesses. LA County keeps a list of lawsuits related to
the deputy gangs. Litigation related to these cases has cost the county at least $100 million
over 30 years. How come we don't really hear anything about this for like running rampant?
Well, part of it is it's really hard to report on police department's ends Sheriff's departments
because they have good protection within and they don't really have any oversight. And one thing
that comes with this is they are absolutely ruthless with targeting people who try to kind of
bring them out. Anybody who talked to the commission I was talking about the COC,
there was one woman I didn't write her name down. She was in the Sheriff's Department. As soon as
she started talking to him, she was demoted immediately demoted and put on graveyard gifts.
Okay. She also said that people were tailing her 24 seven. Oh my god. Other people who were
talked to the commission said that they had warrants for the search of their properties
issued multiple times throughout the investigation that they were involved in. I guess they are a gang.
Yeah. Okay. Wow. Disturbing. That is absolutely fucked up. Just something you would not expect
to hear. Even then, like when you hear that, you don't quite understand what it means because
you're like, yeah, the bloods are the crypts. No, their own unique gangs within the department.
In addition to the bloods in the crypts operating not in the police department,
they didn't have the proper law structure like the police department has with the gang. But
that is messed up. I can't believe this. For the last one here, apparently police departments can
sometimes have black sites where they torture people. This comes from the Chicago police department.
And we're just going to read this story. There's many different stories on it. There's a Wikipedia
article I decided to go with the Guardian article on it. It seems like it was fairly well covered in
it. We're just going to go through this and this is rough. Okay, shit. The Chicago police department
operates an off the books interrogation compound rendering Americans unable to be found by family
or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
Oh, God. The facility, a nondescript warehouse in Chicago's west side known as Homan Square,
has long been the scene of a secretive work by special units. Alleged police practices at Homan
Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after
its investigation into Chicago police abuse include this is what happens here, keeping arrest out of
official booking databases, beatings by police resulting in head wounds, shackling for prolonged
periods, denying attorneys access to the secure facility, holding people without legal counsel
for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15. At least one man was found unresponsive
in Homan Square's interview room and later pronounced a dad. Brian Jacob Church, a protester
known as one of the NATO three. And this is actually where it comes from, Chelsea, where we actually
learned about Homan Square being a thing. There was a NATO summit in 2012 in Chicago.
Chicago police said that they didn't arrest anybody, but there were three people missing.
And that's basically where journalists are to dig. And they discovered this. This is where it came
out. It had been going on a lot longer than 2012 and only 2012. Officers are showing church for the
better part of a day denying him access to an attorney before sending him to a nearby police
station to be booked and charged. Homan Square is definitely an unusual place. It brings to mind
the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It's a
domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what happened to you. And quote church told the
Guardian, the secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the
much criticized detention abuses of the US war on terror. While those abuses impacted people
overseas, Homan Square said to house military style vehicles, interrogation cells, and even a cage.
Trains that focus on Americans most often poor black and brown. Unlike a precinct,
no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects, or other Chicagoans who end
up inside do not appear to have a public searchable record entered into a database indicating where
they are. As happens when somebody is booked at a precinct, lawyers and relatives insist there's
no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square
are often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside. Quote, 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 here. End quote said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmas. Chicago
civil rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious
practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendment of the Constitution.
Quote, this Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practices that
date back more than 40 years of violating a suspect's or witnesses' rights to a lawyer and
not to be physically or otherwise clueless into giving a statement. End quote said Taylor.
Much remained hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department did not respond to
the Guardian's questions about the facility, but after the Guardian published the story,
the department provided a statement insisting without specifics that there's nothing untoward
taking place at what is called the quote sensitive end quote location home to undercover units.
This is their statement quote 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're allowed to speak to
and visit them. It also has the CPD's evidence recovered property section where the public
is able to claim inventory property. End quote the statement said something numerous attorneys
and one Homan Square arrestee have denied and a little bit more from it quote there are always
records of anyone who was arrested by CPD and this is not any different at Homan Square. End quote
it continued. The Chicago police department statement did not address how long into an
arrest or detentment those records are generated or their availability to the public. A department
spokesperson did not respond to a detailed request for clarification. When a guardian reporter arrived
at the warehouse on a Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not
give any answers to questions. Well, this is a secure facility. You're not even supposed to be
standing there. He said a former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired detective
both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last three years and a post police capacity said
the police department did not operate out of the warehouse until the 1990s. But in detailing episodes
involving their clients over the past several years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led
to the closed door of Homan Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was
even unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School Center on
Wrongful Convictions until the guardian informed him of the allegations of clients who vanished
into inherently coercive police custody quote they just disappear until they show up at a
district for charging or are just released back onto the street end quote said Anthony Hill,
a criminal defense attorney. This just keeps getting worse. Jacob Church learned about Homan
Square the hard way on May 16, 2012. He and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated
their protests against the NATO summit. Church says the officers cuffed him to a bench for an
estimated 17 hours intermittently interrogating him without reading him his Miranda rights to
remain silent. It would take another three hours and an unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage
before he was finally charged with terrorism related offenses at the nearby 11th district
station where he was made to sign papers fingerprinted and photographed in preparation for the NATO
protest church who is from Florida have written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on
his arm as a precautionary measure once taken to Homan Square church asked explicitly to call
his lawyer and said he was denied quote essentially I wasn't allowed to make any contact with anybody
and quote church told the Guardian in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting phone calls
and legal counsel to arrest ease purchase left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in
a windowless center block cell with his ankles cuffed together he remained in those restraints
for over 17 hours quote I had essentially figured all right well they disappeared us and were probably
never going to see the light of day and close in church though the raid attracted major media
attention a team of attorneys could not find church through 12 hours of active searching
Sarah Gelsamino church as lawyer recalled no booking record existed only after she and others
made a major stink with contacts in the offices of the corporation council and the and Mayor
Rob Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square they sent another attorney to the facility where
he ultimately gained entry and talked to church through a floor to ceiling chain link metal cage
finally hours later police took church and his two co-defendants to a nearby police station for
booking after serving two and a half years in prison church is currently on parole after he
and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism related offenses but guilty of
lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdead of quote mob action and quote the
access that nato three attorneys received to Homan Square was an exception to the rule even if Jacob
church's experience there was not three attorneys interviewed by the guardian report being personally
turned away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access to their clients
two more lawyers who hadn't been physically denied described it as a place where police
withheld information about their clients whereabouts church was the only person who had been detained
at the facility who agreed to talk with the guardian their lawyers say others fear police
retaliation one man in january of 2013 had his name changed in the chicago central booking database
and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer being kept according to Eliza
Soloway edge so Soloway edge sorry that's a hard name of chicago's first defense legal aid she found
out where he was after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury quote he said that the officer
caused his head 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 that they'd never heard of him he sent
me a phone pick of his head injuries because I had seen him in a police station right before he's
transferred to Homan Square without any end quote said Soloway edge Bartmess another Chicago attorney
said that in September of 2013 she got a call from a mother worried that her 15 year old son had been
picked up by police before dawn a sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to say her
son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a shooting and would be released
soon when hours passed Bartmess traveled to Homan Square only to be refused entry for nearly an
hour an officer told her quote 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 end quote Bartmess recalled
he'll believe she said she would return an hour if the boy was not released he was home and not
charged after quote 12 maybe 13 hours in custody end quote on February 2nd 2013 John Hubbard was
taken to Homan Square Hubbard never walked out the Chicago Tribune reported that the 44 year old
was found unresponsive inside an interview room oh my god and pronounced dead after publication
Cook County medical examiner told the Guardian that the cause of death was determined to be a heroin
intoxication Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism several special units
operating outside of it including the anti-gynatic drug forces if police quote want money guns drugs
end quote or information on the flow of any of them into Chicago streets quote they bring them
there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books end quote Hill said a former Chicago
detective and current in private investigator Bill Dorr said he had not heard of the police abuses
described by church and lawyers for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square he had been
permitted access to the facility to visit one of its main features and evidence locker for the
department transferring detainees through police custody deny them access to legal counsel would
be a career and or said dorsch quote to move just for the purpose of hiding them I can't see that
happening end quote he told the Guardian you know what that's probably enough for that part we can
skip a little bit ahead here because look at the end of the day the Chicago Police Department has
acknowledged this in response to the Guardian's article which I was reading to you the Chicago
Police Department first denied any wrongdoing but in 2015 as Chicago was experiencing activist
pressures resulting from outrage over the Homan Square reporting and the murder of Laquan McDonald
separate thing but anyways the city under Mayor Rom Emanuel announced a reparation deal for the
1970 survivors of torture and detention under former Chicago police commander John Burge the deal
included 5.5 million dollar fund for torture survivors free college tuition for survivors in
their families a memorial and inclusion of the torture cases in eighth and tenth grade history
courses in Chicago school districts a coalition of Chicago activists including project and IA and we
charged genocide were major backers of this deal so they did make some changes from what I've read
people are not happy with the amount of changes that have taken place and they are not sufficient
enough to clearly show the cpd as learned from their lessons and in fact the guy John Burge he
did serve some time in jail he kept his pension until he died so it wasn't bad enough that he had
money taken away from him this is insane I don't even want to know what to make of this one and
whether or not this is the only one or if it's just the one that can't be it seems like it's the one
that got found and really it's just the accidentally arrested somebody who had some money and a lawyer
as opposed to the poor black and brown people as they talked about yeah at the end of the day we're
never gonna know how many people were coerced into confessing to something they didn't do because
they were beaten so harshly at home in square or how many people died there we're just never gonna
know because it's a black site that has no records maintained for everybody listening we're adding this
in post-humously I guess I think the episode's dead once we've kind of recorded it right like
that's how it works yeah I don't actually know yeah yeah I don't know it's an article I forgot to
add in here this in fact has been condemned by the UN this surprise the hell out of me it's on the
UN's website it's United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner posted on June 3rd
2024 United States UN experts urge action to address lives stolen by systemic racist police
violence in Chicago UN experts today called for further action to remedy racialized police violence
and misconduct within Chicago's law enforcement and criminal justice system against people of
african and latino descent in the united states quote chicago has a long history of law enforcement
officials reportedly using torture to extract confessions to serious crimes these heinous alleged
human rights violations appear to a significant extent to be rooted in systemic racism and have
disproportionately affected people of the african and latin american descent says the UN expert the
expert stressed the devastating impact of these practices on individuals and communities quote
many people of african and latin american descent some of whom were children at the time were reportedly
arrested without reasonable cause and tortured to sign confessions to very serious crimes including
homicide these confessions as well as broader systemic racism and police misconduct in Chicago's
criminal justice system have reportedly resulted in many wrongful convictions and wrongful
incarcerations of individuals often for extremely long periods of time without adequate access to
health care including for older persons and survivors of torture lives have been stolen
with a significant ripple effect within the community and quote they said chicago was taken
steps to address the reported human rights violations including a public apology in the
establishment of the torture inquiry and relief commission to acknowledge and remedy and prevent
police torture and misconduct while welcoming these important initiatives the experts expressed
concern the efforts to address abuse have been key snail and far too slow in implementation
they expressed their concern that individuals affected remain incarcerated or unable to rebuild
their lives due to systemic barriers to prevent their access to procedures to be established with
innocence and access full redress and remedies the experts also expressed concerns that reports
indicate that such alleged human rights violations have taken place largely with impunity quote the
individuals implicated in these human rights violations have not been held accountable
of just society must address these past wrongs and put in place all measures to prevent recurrence
and quote the experts said the experts urge relevant federal state and local officials to
take immediate and comprehensive action to fully address and remedy the situation in Chicago new
and experts have been in contact with the government of the United States to address these allegations
and clarify its obligations under an international law at the end of the article i found it's so
crazy that usually when you see condemnation from the united nations it's not against a first world
country excluding the whole debacle of israel we're just going to leave them out of this with that i
don't know that i get my news from the united nations website but not only are these people
well this seems like it's not a related thought but it is not only are these people being not held
accountable but i mean this isn't just news that it's widely known it is on the united nations
website but i didn't know about it it was the news i've never even heard of it until this journey
to the fringe episode this could have been a fringy mini this week like later it happened in
june this article on the u.n website yeah i would have taken it from a few years ago too yeah i'm
no standards it's but i just wanted to add that because it's so mind-boggling like you don't think
about the u.n condemning things in north america and yet here they are like this is terrible and
needs to be addressed i do i also wonder what else are they condemning but i don't know because i'll
never visit their website i don't even know what would bring me there in the first place to be on
me sending you a website that's interesting yes anyhow back to the original episode i'm speechless
all of this and you're right it did just progressively get worse not that the first one
was good it didn't go good to worst it just went worse to worst but yeah these are systemic issues
within law enforcement departments that show that there is something rotten with the entire situation
that we have i think it's not just one-off individuals that have problems it is systemic yeah any one
of these you can point to and say that there are major issues i know people are gonna point at the
particular cities they take place in i'm going to tell you right now it's not just these ones you
will find them anywhere and hell like i remember with the new york pd they threatened the previous
mayor but with a doxing on his daughter just openly that's how it worked there's issues all over i
mean these are just three things i'm sure there's a whole lot that we could be pulling up i was not
expecting there to be gangs operating within i don't know what the technical term for it is the
police generally well yeah and you got to assume that's not the only place where something like
that's taking place even if it's not particularly named gangs that process that they talk about of
covering up for each other and having this rate of passage which is violently attacking people
no the whole thing has been a crazy ride as always i appreciate you enlightening me to this
even if you don't want it it's just how kind of it works and i never want it yeah i have been
taylor here with chelsea we are journey to the fringe thank you all for listening and we'll see
you next week okay thank you for listening to journey to the fringe if you have liked what you
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