User:El Sandifer/Burge

Chicago Police Commander Jon Graham Burge (born December 20, 1947) is a former Chicago Police Department detective and decorated United States Army soldier who has gained notoriety for allegedly torturing more than 200 criminal suspects between 1972 and 1991, in order to force confessions. He served tours in South Korea and in the Vietnam War after extensive training that began in High School Reserve Officer Training and continued as an enlisted army reserve soldier where was trained for and served in the military police. He then returned to the South Side of Chicago and began his career as a Police officer.

The controversial arrests began in February 1982 at a time when a series of shootings of Chicago law enforcement officials caused a turbulent time in the Police district that he commanded. Some of the people who confessed to murder were later granted new trials, and a few were even acquitted or pardoned. Burge was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993 and lives in Florida. In 2002, a special prosecutor was assigned to his case, but the review, which cost $17 million, revealed improprieties that resulted in no action due to the statute of limitation. Three of Burge's victims sued the city; a multi-million dollar settlement was almost reached in September 2007. Burge continues to receive a police pension.

Early life
Raised in the South Deering community area on the Southeast side of Chicago, Burge was the second eldest son of Floyd and Ethel Burge. Floyd was a blue collar worker of Norwegian descent and Ethel was an aspiring fashionista of mixed Western European descent. Burge attended Bowen High School where he showed a keen interest in the school's Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. There he was exposed to military drill, weapons, leadership and military history. He attended the University of Missouri but dropped out after one semester, which ended his draft deferment. He returned to Chicago to work at a Jewel as a stock clerk in early 1966.

In June 1966, Burge enlisted in the army reserve for six years of service, including two years of active duty. He was promised law enforcement duties and reported for basic training at Fort Campbell in Kentucky that fall. After basic training, he placed second out of 99 at a four week drill corporal school Fort McClellan in Alabama. Following this he spent eight weeks at a military police (MP) school in Georgia. He also received some training at Fort Benning where he learned interrogation techniques. He volunteered twice for duty in the Vietnam War. However, he first became a MP trainer and then served as an MP in South Korea, gathering five letters of appreciation from superiors. On June 18 1968 Burge volunteered for duty in the Vietnam War a second time, and he was assigned to the Ninth Military Police Company of the Ninth Infantry Division. He reported to division headquarters, where he provided security as a sergeant at his division base camp named Dong Tam by William Westmoreland. Burge described his military police service as "escort of convoys, security for forward support bases, supervising security for the divisional central base camp in Dong Tam, and I finished my tour as a provost marshal investigator." During his service he earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and two Army Commendation Medals for valor, for pulling wounded men to safety while under fire. Burge claimed no knowledge of or involvement in prisoner interrogation, brutality or torture. In June 1969 U.S. President Richard Nixon announced large-scale troop withdrawals from Vietnam. Ninth Infantry troops were among the first to leave and Burge was honorably discharged on August 25 1969.

He returned to his parents' home, took a job as a mechanic and gas station attendant, and watched a bitter population shift. Bowen High School, which had been 93 percent white when Burge graduated in 1965, was only 14 percent white in 1972. Burge's parents sold their home in 1973.

Police career
Burge became a police officer in March 1970 at age 22 on the South side of Chicago. In May of 1972, he was promoted to detective and assigned to Area Two Robbery. In twenty years of service where he developed a reputation for defusing volatile situations, he earned 13 police commendations and a letter of praise from the Department of Justice.

The turning point
On February 9 1982 there was an incident in which a police officer was stripped of his weapon and both he and his partner were fatally shot. This incident occurred within the jurisdiction of Burge who was then, a Lieutenant and commanding officer of Area 2. The two fatalities brought the total to five officers (including two Cook County Sheriff Officers and a rookie CTA cop in February 5) who had been shot in the 60 square mile area on the South Side within about a month.

The frenzied police effort to seek the most recent assailants in the name of justice may have gone beyond normal police procedures. Some of the initial interrogation procedures allegedly included shooting pets, handcuffing questioning subjects to stationary objects for daylong time periods, and holding guns to the head of minors. Operation PUSH spokesmen, the Chicago Defender and Jesse Jackson were outraged with techniques that were used. Jackson complained that the black community was being held under martial law. After all of the police excesses, mere coincidence enabled the capture of the suspects. The police had been led to a co-conspirator of theirs in an earlier burglary.

Torture methods
It was clear that the suspect had received sufficient injuries to be sent to the hospital with more than a dozen injuries caused while in police custody. Seven years later, one of those convicted of killing the two officers would file a civil suit that he had been beaten, suffocated with a plastic bag, burned (by cigarette and radiator), treated with electric shock, and been the victim of the pattern of a cover up. Although the suit was against four detectives, a former police superintendent and the City of Chicago, it essentially boiled down to a the plaintiff Wilson and commander Burge, who oversaw all of the alleged activity.

Burge and other Chicago Police officers allegedly used methods of torture that left few marks. They were accused of slamming telephone books on top of suspect’s heads; apparently this is quite painful but does not bruise the scalp. They would use an old-style hand cranked telephone which generated electricity, and attach wires to the suspect’s genitals or face. After a few cranks, Burge would tell the suspect he was going to make a “long-distance call.” This usually resulted in a confession. Burge and his henchmen would also engage in mock executions, in putting plastic bags over heads, cigarette burnings and severe beatings. At one point he is even alleged to have supervised the electrical shocking of a 13 year old boy, Marcus Wiggins. There were three separate electronic devices that Burge and his detectives were accused of using: a cattle prod, a hand cranked device and a violet wand. The last device was said to be regularly placed either on or up their rectum or against their exposed genitals.

Discovery
Initial reports of torture appeared in the pages of the alternative weekly the Chicago Reader in 1990. An investigation conducted by Chicago Police Department's Office of Professional Standards concluded that Police Commander Jon Burge and his detectives engaged in "methodical" and "systematic" torture, and "The type of abuse described was not limited to the usual beating, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture."

In January 281991, Amnesty International called for an investigation into police torture in Chicago. In 1993, Burge and his officers were suspended without pay for a year. The officers were reinstated and Burge was fired. A Northwestern University journalism professor and his students uncovered exonerating evidence. In 2000 Governor Ryan halted executions in Illinois after courts found 13 death row inmates had been wrongfully convicted. He then pardoned 4 inmates of the "Death Row 10" inmates.

Since being fired Burge has lived in Apollo Beach, Florida, a suburb of Tampa. In 1994, he bought his current wood-frame home for $154,000 and a 22 ft motorboat named The Vigilante.

The book Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People (2001, ISBN 0520230396) by John Conroy includes four chapters on Burge's story.

Fallout
In 2003 outgoing Republican Governor George Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners on Illinois’ death row. Ryan had lost confidence in the penal system, which led to his decision to commute the sentences. Among those pardoned were four of the ten who claimed wrongful imprisonment. In the unusual proceeding, the governor took the extraordinary step of a direct pardon release rather than a court proceeding. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, at the time the Cook County State's Attorney, has been accused by the Illinois General Assembly of failing to act on information he possessed on the conduct of Burge and others. Daley has acknowledged his responsibility to be proactive in stopping the torture, but denies any knowledge which could have made him responsible. On July 19, 2006, US Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. issued a press release calling Mayor Daley culpable, possibly even criminally culpable, for his failure to prosecute until the statute of limitations had run out. Jackson called for an investigation to determine if there was any planned delay to allow the cases to expire.

Review
In 2002, the Cook County Bar Association, the Justice Coalition of Chicago and others petitioned for a review of the allegations against Burge. Edward Egan, a former Illinois Appellate Court jurist and semiretired lawyer who lived in Florida, was hired as a special prosecutor to investigate allegations dating back to 1973. He hired an assistant, several lawyers and retired Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers. The only prior official investigation, which resulted in Burge's firing, had been by the Office of Professional Standards, which determined that "the preponderance of evidence is that abuse did occur and that it was systematic." Former prosecutor Robert D. Boyle was also appointed as a special prosecutor. Both special prosecutors are former prosecutors by profession. In 2003, former Chief of the Special Prosecution Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office Gordon B. Nash Jr. was appointed as an additional special prosecutor.

A total of 60 cases were reviewed. A special prosecutor was hired because Cook County State's Attorney, Richard Devine, had a conflict of interest stemming from his tenure at the law firm of Phelan, Pope & John, which defended Burge in two federal suits. Criminal Courts Judge Paul P. Biebel Jr. presided over the determination of the need of a review to determine the propriety of criminal charges and the appointment of the special prosecutor.

On September 1 2004, Burge was served with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury in an ongoing criminal investigation of police torture while in town for depositions on civil lawsuits at his attorney's office. Burge plead the Fifth Amendment to virtually every question during a 4 hour civil case deposition. He only answered questions about his name, his boat's name (Vigilante) and his $30,000 annual pension. The city continues to be bound by court order to pay for Burge's legal fees. The service of the subpoena was quite storied with Burge eluding servers at Midway Airport and a team placed at his lawyers office before dawn.

Three years into the investigation no criminal charges had been filed although several civil suits were filed in federal court. By that time, a total of 139 victims were involved in the case as were 19 investigators. Disappointment on the progress caused the victims to request the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights allot them an hourlong hearing at their October 2005 session.

On May 192006 an initial ruling was made to release the special report on torture accusations. On June 20 2006, the Illinois Supreme Court unblocked the release of the special report by Egan that took 4 years and cost $17 million. In the end 148 cases were evaluated. The investigation revealed that in three of the cases prosecutors could have proved beyond a reasonable doubt in court that torture by the police, involving five former officers had occurred. Half of the claims were deemed credible, but because of the statute of limitations no indictments were handed out. Mayor Daley and all law enforcement officials who had been deposed were excluded from the report. Also, the 75 credible abuse cases were overlooked with the report focusing on doubts about the actual torture of pardoned death row inmates. Among the final costs were $6.2 million for the investigation and $7 million to hire outside counsel for Burge and his cohorts. Although the statute of limitations argument was a disappointment to many, the argument was very elaborately detailed in an 18 page section of the report. Debates in the op-ed pages continued for days and Egan explained his report to the public with legal theories and federal jurisdiction issues.