Last Friday Chicago community activists testified before a three-member panel of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that Chicago has a long history of police brutality against black people that has been covered up by authorities. They said that history should be investigated and put in the world’s spotlight.
The Chicago Sun Times says that attorneys for victims pleaded for an onsite investigation, including interviews of Mayor Daley, to get to the bottom of what they said was the city's record of systematic abuse of blacks at the hands of the police.
Bernardine Dohrn, a law professor at Northwestern University and spokeswoman for the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, said that during a 19-year period ending in 1991, Chicago Police displayed "extreme discrimination and racism" in torturing 135 blacks, and no officers were ever charged or tried.
''We have officials in Chicago who could deal with it, but they don't want to deal with it," said David Bates, who said he was tortured by police more than two decades ago at age 18. "It's a shame we have to come to Washington, D.C., to get people from different countries to deal with it."
Flint Taylor, a lawyer for The People's Law Office, said Daley was Cook County state's attorney for eight years when 55 of the torture cases occurred. "He was aware of torture from the beginning and he did nothing about it," Taylor said before the hearing began. Taylor told the commission while the extreme forms of brutality "more or less" ended with the firing of by Chicago Police Lieut. Jon Burge in the early 1990s, the cover-up of the abuses has extended for 30 years.
No city officials appeared before the panel.
Two lawyers for the U.S. State Department sat in as observers but had no comment.
According to the CBC, Commission Chairman Clare Roberts, a lawyer from Antigua and Barbuda, suggested the Chicago activists consider bringing a formal case before the panel.
A formal case could produce public findings by the commission that could prove embarrassing to Chicago officials but it would not require the city to become involved in an international court proceeding. The United States is not a signatory to the international agreement that provides for court solutions in such cases.
A special prosecutor has been looking into the allegations for more than three years and has said he hopes to finish his investigation by the end of this year.
Don't hold your breath. Sources: CBS2 (Chicago), Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, Chicago Sun Times, CBC, Quad City Times
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