{"id":12053,"date":"2015-02-24T19:56:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T19:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=12053"},"modified":"2015-02-24T19:56:27","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T19:56:27","slug":"police-dept-exposed-domestic-black-site-operating-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=12053","title":{"rendered":"POLICE DEPT EXPOSED: &#8216;DOMESTIC BLACK SITE&#8217; OPERATING IN CHICAGO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/c397df69-67a3-42f5-a154-4d01dc16d394-2060x1236.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11020\" src=\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/c397df69-67a3-42f5-a154-4d01dc16d394-2060x1236.jpeg\" alt=\"c397df69-67a3-42f5-a154-4d01dc16d394-2060x1236\" width=\"750\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"content__headline js-score\">The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden &#8216;black site&#8217;<\/h1>\n<p>The Guardian<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> Secret interrogation facility reveals aspects of war on terror in US<\/li>\n<li>\u2018They disappeared us\u2019: protester details 17-hour shackling without basic rights<\/li>\n<li>Accounts describe police brutality, missing 15-year-old and one man\u2019s death<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/embed.theguardian.com\/embed\/video\/us-news\/video\/2015\/feb\/24\/homan-square-chicago-black-site-video\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>While US military and intelligence interrogation impacted people overseas, Homan Square \u2013 said to house military-style vehicles and even a cage \u2013 focuses on American citizens, most often poor, black and brown. \u2018When you go in,\u2019 Brian Jacob Church told the Guardian, \u2018nobody knows what happened to you.\u2019 Video: Phil Batta for the Guardian; editing: Mae Ryan<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/chicago\" data-link-name=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Chicago<\/a> police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.<\/p>\n<p>The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago\u2019s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/24\/chicago-homan-square-black-site\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">Alleged police practices at Homan Square<\/a>, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/19\/evidence-chicago-detective-richard-zuley\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">its investigation into Chicago police abuse<\/a>, include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.<\/li>\n<li>Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.<\/li>\n<li>Shackling for prolonged periods.<\/li>\n<li>Denying attorneys access to the \u201csecure\u201d facility.<\/li>\n<li>Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square \u201cinterview room\u201d and later pronounced dead.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the \u201cNato Three\u201d, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-rich-link element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded\" data-component=\"rich-link\" data-link-name=\"rich-link-1 | 1\">\n<div class=\"flyer tone-news--item \">\n<div class=\"flyer__container\">\n<div class=\"flyer__image-container u-responsive-ratio js-image-upgrade\" data-src=\"\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/static\/w-{width}\/h--\/q-95\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2015\/2\/24\/1424787155602\/2c3fb8ad-fcf1-433a-ab46-7d8c6c4ce514-620x372.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-img\" src=\"http:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/static\/w-220\/h--\/q-95\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2015\/2\/24\/1424787155602\/2c3fb8ad-fcf1-433a-ab46-7d8c6c4ce514-620x372.jpeg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Chicago\u2019s Homan Square &#8216;black site&#8217;: <\/em><br \/>\n<em>surveillance, military-style vehicles <\/em><br \/>\n<em>and a metal cage<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cHoman Square is definitely an unusual place,\u201d Church told the Guardian on Friday. \u201cIt brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It\u2019s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what\u2019s happened to you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square \u2013 said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage \u2013 trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place \u2013 if you can\u2019t find a client in the system, odds are they\u2019re there,\u201d said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,\u201d Taylor said, \u201cof violating a suspect or witness\u2019 rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department has not responded to any of the Guardian\u2019s recent questions \u2013 neither about any aspect of operations at Homan Square, nor about <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/18\/guantanamo-torture-chicago-police-brutality\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">the Guardian\u2019s investigation of Richard Zuley<\/a>, <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/19\/chicago-police-richard-zuley-abuse-innocent-man\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">the retired Chicago detective<\/a> turned <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/18\/american-police-brutality-chicago-guantanamo\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">Guant\u00e1namo Bay torturer<\/a>. (On Monday evening, it instead provided <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\/citations-the-february-23-2015-trms\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">a statement to MSNBC<\/a> regarding the Guardian\u2019s Zuley investigation: \u201cThe vast majority of our officers serve the public with honor and integrity,\u201d said the statement, adding that the department \u201chas zero tolerance for misconduct, and has instituted a series of internal initiatives and reforms, to ensure past incidents of police misconduct are not repeated\u201d. Without providing any specifics, it claimed \u201cthe allegations in this instance are not supported by the facts.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. \u201cThis is a secure facility. You\u2019re not even supposed to be standing here,\u201d said the man, who refused to give his name.<\/p>\n<p>A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out of the warehouse until the late 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of Homan Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School\u2019s Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey just disappear,\u201d said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, \u201cuntil they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>\u2018Never going to see the light of day\u2019: the search for the Nato Three, the head wound, the worried mom and the dead man<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_11012\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/b01c8034-fa4f-4c84-a85b-639d4ba981b9-1020x612.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11012\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11012\" src=\"http:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/b01c8034-fa4f-4c84-a85b-639d4ba981b9-1020x612.jpeg\" alt=\" \u2018They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be permitted in this country \u2013 anywhere \u2013 but particularly given the strong constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with crimes,\u201d said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church. Photograph: Phil Batta\/Guardian\" width=\"640\" height=\"384\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11012\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u2018They were held incommunicado for much longer than I think should be permitted in this country \u2013 anywhere \u2013 but particularly given the strong constitutional rights afforded to people who are being charged with crimes,\u201d said Sarah Gelsomino, the lawyer for Brian Jacob Church. Photograph: Phil Batta\/Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the \u201cNato Three\u201d, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.<br \/>\nChicago\u2019s Homan Square &#8216;black site&#8217;: surveillance, military-style vehicles and a metal cage<br \/>\nRead more<br \/>\n\u201cHoman Square is definitely an unusual place,\u201d Church told the Guardian on Friday. \u201cIt brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It\u2019s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what\u2019s happened to you.<\/p>\n<p>The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square \u2013 said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage \u2013 trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place \u2013 if you can\u2019t find a client in the system, odds are they\u2019re there,\u201d said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,\u201d Taylor said, \u201cof violating a suspect or witness\u2019 rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department has not responded to any of the Guardian\u2019s recent questions \u2013 neither about any aspect of operations at Homan Square, nor about the Guardian\u2019s investigation of Richard Zuley, the retired Chicago detective turned Guant\u00e1namo Bay torturer. (On Monday evening, it instead provided a statement to MSNBC regarding the Guardian\u2019s Zuley investigation: \u201cThe vast majority of our officers serve the public with honor and integrity,\u201d said the statement, adding that the department \u201chas zero tolerance for misconduct, and has instituted a series of internal initiatives and reforms, to ensure past incidents of police misconduct are not repeated\u201d. Without providing any specifics, it claimed \u201cthe allegations in this instance are not supported by the facts.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. \u201cThis is a secure facility. You\u2019re not even supposed to be standing here,\u201d said the man, who refused to give his name.<\/p>\n<p>A former Chicago police superintendent and a more recently retired detective, both of whom have been inside Homan Square in the last few years in a post-police capacity, said the police department did not operate out of the warehouse until the late 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>But in detailing episodes involving their clients over the past several years, lawyers described mad scrambles that led to the closed doors of Homan Square, a place most had never heard of previously. The facility was even unknown to Rob Warden, the founder of Northwestern University Law School\u2019s Center on Wrongful Convictions, until the Guardian informed him of the allegations of clients who vanish into inherently coercive police custody.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey just disappear,\u201d said Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, \u201cuntil they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Never going to see the light of day\u2019: the search for the Nato Three, the head wound, the worried mom and the dead man<\/p>\n<p>Jacob Church learned about Homan Square the hard way. On <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/terror-indictments-for-chicago-nato-protesters-brian-church-jared-chase-brent-vincent-betterly\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">May 16 2012<\/a>, he and 11 others were taken there after police infiltrated their protest against the Nato summit. Church says officers cuffed him to a bench for an estimated 17 hours, intermittently interrogating him without reading his Miranda rights to remain silent. It would take another three hours \u2013 and an unusual lawyer visit through a wire cage \u2013 before he was finally charged with terrorism-related offenses at the nearby 11th district station, where he was made to sign papers, fingerprinted and photographed.<\/p>\n<p>In preparation for the Nato protest, Church, who is from Florida, had written a phone number for the National Lawyers Guild on his arm as a precautionary measure. Once taken to Homan Square, Church asked explicitly to call his lawyers, and said he was denied.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEssentially, I wasn\u2019t allowed to make any contact with anybody,\u201d Church told the Guardian, in contradiction of a police guidance on permitting phone calls and legal counsel to arrestees.<\/p>\n<p>Church\u2019s left wrist was cuffed to a bar behind a bench in windowless cinderblock cell, with his ankles cuffed together. He remained in those restraints for about 17 hours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had essentially figured, \u2018All right, well, they disappeared us and so we\u2019re probably never going to see the light of day again,\u2019\u201d Church said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"element element-image element--supporting img img--extended img--landscape fig--border\" data-media-id=\"157dd2589b875251d899e97665c14e68c873ab5f\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"gu-image\" src=\"http:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/media\/w-620\/h--\/q-95\/157dd2589b875251d899e97665c14e68c873ab5f\/0_0_620_349\/500.jpg\" alt=\"Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly, known as the \u2018Nato Three\u2019\" width=\"500\" \/><figcaption class=\" caption caption--img\"><span class=\"element-image__caption\">Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly, known as the \u2018Nato Three\u2019.<\/span> <span class=\"element-image__credit\">Photograph: AP\/Cook County sheriff&#8217;s office<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of \u201cactive searching\u201d, Sarah Gelsomino, Church\u2019s lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and others made a \u201cmajor stink\u201d with contacts in the offices of the corporation counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.<\/p>\n<p>They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to a nearby police station for booking.<\/p>\n<p>After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole after he and his co-defendants were found <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/articles.chicagotribune.com\/2014-04-25\/news\/chi-sentencing-today-for-nato-3-prosecutors-seeking-14year-terms-20140425_1_nato-3-prison-terms-judge-thaddeus-wilson\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses<\/a> but guilty of lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of \u201cmob action\u201d.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-pullquote\">\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s almost like they throw a black bag over your head and make you disappear for a day or two<\/p>\n<footer><cite>Brian Jacob Church<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The access that Nato Three attorneys received to Homan Square was an exception to the rule, even if Jacob Church\u2019s experience there was not.<\/p>\n<p>Three attorneys interviewed by the Guardian report being personally turned away from Homan Square between 2009 and 2013 without being allowed access to their clients. Two more lawyers who hadn\u2019t been physically denied described it as a place where police withheld information about their clients\u2019 whereabouts. Church was the only person who had been detained at the facility who agreed to talk with the Guardian: their lawyers say others fear police retaliation.<\/p>\n<p>One man in January 2013 had his name changed in the Chicago central bookings database and then taken to Homan Square without a record of his transfer being kept, according to Eliza Solowiej of Chicago\u2019s First Defense Legal Aid. (The man, the Guardian understands, wishes to be anonymous; his current attorney declined to confirm Solowiej\u2019s account.) She found out where he was after he was taken to the hospital with a head injury.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation room at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,\u201d Solowiej said. \u201cHe sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan Square without any.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bartmes, another Chicago attorney, said that in September 2013 she got a call from a mother worried that her 15-year-old son had been picked up by police before dawn. A sympathetic sergeant followed up with the mother to say her son was being questioned at Homan Square in connection to a shooting and would be released soon. When hours passed, Bartmes traveled to Homan Square, only to be refused entry for nearly an hour.<\/p>\n<p>An officer told her, \u201cWell, you can\u2019t just stand here taking notes, this is a secure facility, there are undercover officers, and you\u2019re making people very nervous,\u201d Bartmes recalled. Told to leave, she said she would return in an hour if the boy was not released. He was home, and not charged, after \u201c12, maybe 13\u201d hours in custody.<\/p>\n<p>On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found \u201c<a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/articles.chicagotribune.com\/2013-02-04\/news\/chi-man-in-custody-found-unresponsive-dies-20130202_1_bronzeville-neighborhood-police-custody-homan-square-neighborhood\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">unresponsive inside an interview room<\/a>\u201d, and pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner\u2019s office could not locate any record for the Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard\u2019s death. It remains unclear why Hubbard was ever in police custody.<\/p>\n<p>Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several special units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces. If police \u201cwant money, guns, drugs\u201d, or information on the flow of any of them onto Chicago\u2019s streets, \u201cthey bring them there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018That scares the hell out of me\u2019: a throwback to Chicago police abuse with a post-9\/11 feel<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"img-2\" class=\"element element-image element--showcase img img--extended img--landscape fig--border fig--narrow-caption fig--has-shares\" data-media-id=\"c4a4c1d81769bda23d59a3fbe2de5819522b9bff\">\n<div class=\"js-image-upgrade\" data-src=\"\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/static\/w-{width}\/h--\/q-95\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2015\/2\/24\/1424786793340\/193b7250-ee7a-4a91-895e-01e10745d751-1020x612.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"gu-image responsive-img\" src=\"http:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/static\/w-860\/h--\/q-95\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2015\/2\/24\/1424786793340\/193b7250-ee7a-4a91-895e-01e10745d751-1020x612.jpeg\" alt=\"Homan Square\" width=\"620\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"block-share block-share--article hide-on-mobile\" data-link-name=\"block share\"><\/div><figcaption class=\" caption caption--img\"><span class=\"element-image__caption\">\u2018The real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,\u2019 criminologist Tracy Siska told the Guardian.<\/span> <span class=\"element-image__credit\">Photograph: Chandler West\/Guardian<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A former Chicago detective and current private investigator, Bill Dorsch, said he had not heard of the police abuses described by Church and lawyers for other suspects who had been taken to Homan Square. He has been permitted access to the facility to visit one of its main features, an evidence locker for the police department. (\u201cI just showed my retirement star and passed through,\u201d Dorsch said.)<\/p>\n<p>Transferring detainees through police custody to deny them access to legal counsel, would be \u201ca career-ender,\u201d Dorsch said. \u201cTo move just for the purpose of hiding them, I can\u2019t see that happening,\u201d he told the Guardian.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Brzeczek, Chicago\u2019s police superintendent from 1980 to 1983, who also said he had no first-hand knowledge of abuses at Homan Square, said it was \u201cnever justified\u201d to deny access to attorneys.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHoman Square should be on the same list as every other facility where you can call central booking and say: \u2018Can you tell me if this person is in custody and where,\u2019\u201d Brzeczek said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re going to be doing this, then you have to include Homan Square on the list of facilities that prisoners are taken into and a record made. It can\u2019t be an exempt facility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Chicago police guidelines appear to ban the sorts of practices Church and the lawyers said occur at Homan Square.<\/p>\n<p>A directive titled \u201c<a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"about:blank\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">Processing Persons Under Department Control<\/a>\u201d instructs that \u201cinvestigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not delay the booking process,\u201d and arrestees must be allowed \u201ca reasonable number of telephone calls\u201d to attorneys swiftly \u201cafter their arrival at the first place of custody.\u201d Another directive, \u201c<a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/directives.chicagopolice.org\/lt2014\/data\/a7a56e4b-12ccbe26-df812-ccbf-527447d507470630.html\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">Arrestee and In-Custody Communications<\/a>,\u201d says police supervisors must \u201callow visitation by attorneys.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Attorney Scott Finger said that the Chicago police tightened the latter directive in 2012 after quiet complaints from lawyers about their lack of access to Homan Square. Without those changes, Church\u2019s attorneys might not have gained entry at all. But that tightening \u2013 about a week before Church\u2019s arrest \u2013 did not prevent Church\u2019s prolonged detention without a lawyer, nor the later cases where lawyers were unable to enter.<\/p>\n<p>The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9\/11 feel to it.<\/p>\n<p>On a smaller scale, Homan Square is \u201canalogous to the CIA\u2019s black sites,\u201d said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, she said, \u201cpolice used the term \u2018shadow site\u2019\u201d to refer to the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-pullquote\">\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019ve never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and hold somebody before booking for hours and hours<\/p>\n<footer><cite>James Trainum, former detective, Washington DC<\/cite><\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cBack when I first started working on torture cases and started representing criminal defendants in the early 1970s, my clients often told me they\u2019d been taken from one police station to another before ending up at Area 2 where they were tortured,\u201d said Taylor, the civil-rights lawyer most associated with pursuing the notoriously abusive Area 2 police commander Jon Burge. \u201cAnd in that way the police prevent their family and lawyers from seeing them until they could coerce, through torture or other means, confessions from them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Police often have off-site facilities to have private conversations with their informants. But a retired Washington DC homicide detective, James Trainum, could not think of another circumstance nationwide where police held people incommunicado for extended periods.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never known any kind of organized, secret place where they go and just hold somebody before booking for hours and hours and hours. That scares the hell out of me that that even exists or might exist,\u201d said Trainum, who now studies national policing issues, to include interrogations, for the Innocence Project and the Constitution Project.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at Chicago\u2019s secretive interrogation and holding facility: \u201cIt\u2019s very, very rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police custody, and even more so at Homan Square,\u201d Solowiej said.<\/p>\n<p>Church said that one of his more striking memories of Homan Square was the \u201cbig, big vehicles\u201d police had inside the complex that \u201clook like very large MRAPs that they use in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cook County, home of Chicago, has received some 1,700 pieces of military equipment from a much-criticized Pentagon program transferring military gear to local police. It includes a Humvee, according to a <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/abc7chicago.com\/news\/widespread-militarization-of-illinois-police-forces-uncovered-by-i-team\/259740\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">local ABC News report<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/18\/guantanamo-torture-chicago-police-brutality\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guant\u00e1namo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley<\/a>, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe real danger in allowing practices like Guant\u00e1namo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,\u201d Siska said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That\u2019s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\nvar abgp={el:document.getElementById('abgc'),ael:document.getElementById('abgs'),iel:document.getElementById('abgb'),hw:15,sw:75,hh:15,sh:15,himg:'http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com'+'\/pagead\/images\/adchoices\/icon.png',simg:'http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/images\/adchoices\/en.png',alt:'AdChoices',t:'AdChoices',tw:53,t2:'',t2w:0,tbo:0,att:'adchoices',ff:'',halign:'right',fe:false,fnb:false,iba:false,uic:false,icd:undefined};\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"&quot;http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/r20150219\/r20110914\/abg.js&quot;\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden &#8216;black site&#8217; The Guardian Exclusive: Secret interrogation facility reveals aspects of war on terror in US \u2018They disappeared us\u2019: protester details 17-hour shackling without basic rights Accounts describe police brutality, missing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=12053\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}