Ex-Chicago policeman guilty of lying about torture/Vote for Community Mediation Maryland

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Ex-Chicago policeman guilty of lying about torture

Mon, Jun 28 2010

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65R61720100628

 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A retired Chicago police commander suspected of using electric shocks, suffocation and mock executions to force suspects to confess was found guilty on Monday of lying about the brutality.

 

Jon Burge, 62, was tried on perjury and obstruction of justice charges because the alleged torture occurred too long ago for him to be directly accused of those crimes.

 

The guilty verdict on all three counts in a federal indictment means he could face up to 45 years in prison.

 

Burge, who was dismissed from the police department in 1993 after a decorated two-decade career, was accused of perjuring himself during civil lawsuits brought by some of his victims.

 

Testifying for two days during the five-week trial in U.S. District Court, the white-haired Burge repeated denials that he and other Chicago detectives under his command physically abused suspects.

 

Five of the dozens of African-American inmates who alleged they were tortured by Burge or his men testified they were subjected to being "bagged" with plastic typewriter covers placed over their faces, had guns stuck in their mouths, were held against hot radiators, or were given painful shocks from a homemade device.

 

Attorneys for Burge, who lives on his police pension in Florida and once owned a boat he named "Vigilante," argued that the suspects concocted the torture allegations while in jail together to help their cases and to help win money settlements from the city.

(Reporting by Andrew Stern)

 

© Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved.

 

Dear Friends,

 

Your regular vote during the month of June could bring in $50,000 for Community Mediation Maryland to support Violence Prevention and Conflict Resolution For and By Youth in Maryland.  With these funds, CMM will train more teens to serve as mediators in centers throughout Maryland, train more teens in basic conflict management skills, and conduct a comprehensive outreach campaign to encourage youth to use mediation.

 

Here’s what we need you to do. 

1)      Go to www.refresheverything.com/mediate or go to www.refresheverything.com and search for “mediation”.

2)      Click on “Join Refresh Everything” (on the lower left hand side). Create an account.

3)      Vote for CMM’s Youth Conflict Resolution Project.

4)      Click on the Facebook and Twitter links so everyone you know can be reminded to vote.

5)      Add a tag at the end of all of your e-mails which says: “I voted for youth violence prevention at www.refresheverything.com/mediate.  You can too.  Do it today! And again tomorrow, and every day in June!”

6)      Forward this e-mail to everyone you know.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lorig Charkoudian, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Community Mediation Maryland
cell: 410-227-4941; office: 410-553-0206; fax: 410-553-0207

 

I voted for youth violence prevention at www.refresheverything.com/mediate.  You can too.  Do it today! And again tomorrow, and every day in June!

 

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs