“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.”
The warehouse, known as Homan Square, has been the scene of secretive work by special police units that former detainees and their lawyers say denies access to basic constitutional rights, such as keeping arrestees out of official booking databases, beatings by police resulting in head wounds, shackling for prolonged periods, denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility, and holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15. At least one man died in the “interview room.”
One former detainee, Brian Jacob Church said, “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’s happened to you.”
The secretive detention center echoes the abuses of the U.S. in its war on terrorism, including “military style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage.”
“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,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
The Chicago Police Department denied the allegations that it was abusing detainees and said they have access to their rights. But the allegations of former detainees and lawyers don’t confirm the department’s statements.
“They just disappear,” said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”
The United States “…shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution…” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, page 451
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