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Tyler Bass
Forbidden Knowledge TV
March 24, 2015
For U.S. citizens accused of crimes, certain legal protections are supposed to be sacrosanct: the right to remain silent, access to an attorney. But over the last six months, reports by The Guardian and Firedoglake have highlighted a culture of abuse in the Chicago Police Department. In this video, The Guardian reports on a nondescript warehouse facility in the west end of the city, where detainees like anti-war protesters, ultimately acquitted of terrorism charges, said they did not enjoy legal protections that the police department’s guidelines promise. Parallel reporting by Firedoglake from months earlier suggests that similar detours from traditional standards for pre-trial confinement are arriving at U.S. shores from the legal Bermuda Triangle that is the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
After spending decades in prison for a murder he did not commit, Lathierial Boyd was exonerated two years ago. He has since filed a lawsuit against six Chicago police officers responsible for his confinement, among them Richard Zuley. According to LinkedIn, Richard Zuley is a projects administrator with the Chicago Police aviation division. At the liberal blog Firedoglake, Jeff Kaye reported Boyd’s allegations: that the officers coerced witnesses, as well as fabricated and withheld evidence.
In 2003, before joining the Chicago police department, Zuley was a Navy lieutenant commander, spearheading the use of “enhanced interrogation†methods on prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility – detainees whose legal circumstances during interrogations, like those at the Homan Square facility, have courted controversy and condemnation. Kaye’s report suggests that Zuley’s military experience groomed the officer to abuse Boyd.
The Guardian’s video shows Brian Jacob Church, who was held under suspicion of terrorism after protesting the 2012 NATO Summit. Chicago Police detained Church at Homan Square for 17 hours, during which time he was not booked, processed, allowed contact with an attorney, or allowed the right to remain silent.
Arrest records are supposed to be public. But the Homan Square facility, operated by the Chicago Police Department, housed off-the-books prisoners whom attorneys and concerned relatives could not access. In his outstanding February 2015 report for The Guardian, reporter Spencer Ackerman suggested that police are partially motivated to limit access to Homan Square due to the facility being an operational hub for undercover officers.
In September 2013, one mother, although discouraged from being at the Homan Square facility entrance, waited for almost an hour outside while her 15-year-old son was being detained. The mother’s account matched the experience of a new investigator; when The Guardian showed up at the facility and questioned a literal gatekeeper, that public servant told a reporter, “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here.â€
Eliza Solowiej, a former lawyer for one man detained in 2013, said that that Chicago Police changed her client’s name in the city central bookings list before the client was taken to Homan Square. That client, Solowiej told The Guardian, suffered head injuries from police while in custody.
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