The special prosecutor’s report on the Chicago police torture scandal is expected to be issued shortly, perhaps in a matter of days. Special prosecutor Edward Egan has uncovered 192 victims (there may well be more) claiming to have been abused by Jon Burge and detectives serving under him from the 1970s into the 1990s, scores of them not identified in any published list. The scale of criminality is immense: hundreds of assaults (most victims were subjected to more than one attack), hundreds of acts of misconduct qualifying as felonies. Some detectives, called to testify in various proceedings, may have committed perjury on five or more occasions in a single case.
The Reader has reported at length on various aspects of this scandal since 1990, when we were the first to disclose that a torture gang had been operating at the south side’s Area Two headquarters. Here, in an attempt to provide some context in advance of the report’s publication, is a breakdown of officers and officials who have some role in the scandal.
Burge’s slow undoing can be traced to the 1982 arrest of Andrew Wilson for the shooting deaths of two police officers. Wilson’s account of electric shock, some of it aimed at his genitals, didn’t provoke a response from the Cook County state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley (“Deaf to the Screams,” August 1, 2003), but in 1987 the Illinois Supreme Court, suspicious of Wilson’s many injuries, granted him a new trial. He was convicted a second time without the use of his confession and sentenced to natural life. (See “House of Screams,” January 26, 1990, and “The Shocking Truth,” January 10, 1997.)
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OTHER ACCUSED OFFICERS
Michael Hoke
As police superintendent in 1984 received report from the Office of Professional Standards (OPS) on allegations of electrical torture made within the previous 12 months. The document, compiled by OPS supervisors, mentioned Burge and three incidents from Area Two–not including the Andrew Wilson case and others that occurred earlier–in addition to allegations of electric shock in Districts 1, 9, 11, 14, 19, and 20. Subsequently gave Burge a double promotion–from lieutenant, skipping the rank of captain–to deputy commander. In 1992 testified as character witness for Burge at Police Board hearings, saying he had no regrets about the promotion.
