http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2295-1531
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Abstract
On May 6, 2015, the Chicago City Council adopted legislation that formally sought to repair the damage wrought by a decades-long pattern of police torture. After months of careful negotiations between City Hall and the advocates for torture survivors, the council unanimously passed a package of laws providing for both financial and nonfinancial compensation, or reparations, for torture survivors and their families. While this package of laws limited financial compensation solely to the survivors of torture, it did extend nonfinancial compensation to them and their families in the form of free psychological counseling, job training, and college education, as well as inclusion of the torture cases in the public high school curriculum and a formal statement of remorse on behalf of the city. Drawing on the successful passage of this reparations legislation, this chapter identifies the intervention of the grassroots group Black People Against Police Torture (BPAPT) as pivotal in overcoming entrenched pro–law enforcement opposition to demands for accountability and redress. In particular, this article argues that the crucial contribution of BPAPT was its adoption of a strategic approach to international human rights law and institutions that prompted subsequent breakthroughs at the local, state, and federal level.
Notes
1 Adeshine Emmanuel, “Human Rights Practices Inform Chicago Ordinance in Police Torture Case,” Chicago Reporter, May 6, 2015 (in author's possession).
2 Michael Goldston, “Special Project Conclusion Report,” Office of Professional Standards, September 28, 1990, 3, in author's possession.
3 Delores McCain, “Group Continues Fight Against Torture,” Austin Weekly, March 28, 2007, in author's possession.
4 Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Reparations Now/Reparations Won (Chicago: Chicago Justice Torture Memorials, 2015), 82.
5 Aamer Madhani, “Chicago City Council Approves Reparations for Torture Victims,” USA Today, May 6, 2015.
6 Amnesty International, “Chicago City Council Passes Landmark Police Torture Reparations Ordinance,” Press Release, May 6, 2016, in author’s possession.
7 Frank Main, “Chicago Torture Reparations Recipient: ‘Some Kind of Justice was Served,’” Chicago Sun-Times, January 16, 2016.
8 Edward J. Egan and Robert D. Boyle, Report of the Special State’s Attorney (July 19, 2006), 16–36.
9 Jodi Rudoren, “Report on Chicago Police Torture is Released,” New York Times, July 19, 2006, in author's possession.
10 Vickie Casanova Willis and Standish Willis, “Black People Against Police Torture: The Importance of Building a People-Centered Human Rights Movement,” Loyola Public Interest Law Reporter 21, no. 3 (2015): 240.
11 Ibid., 240.
12 Araz Hachadourian, “Chicago Becomes to the First U.S. City to Pay Reparations to Victims of Police Torture,” Yes! Magazine, May 15, 2015. http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/chicago-is-the-first-city-to-offer-reparations-for-victims-of-police-violence-now-they-want-to-make-sure-no-one-forgets
13 For more see, Hannah Arendt, The Origin of Totalitarianism (New York: Harvest Books, 1973); Talal Asad. “What Do Human Rights Do? An Anthropological Enquiry,” Theory & Event 4, no. 4 (2000); Kamari Maxine Clarke, Fictions of Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Challenge of Legal Pluralism in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008); Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, William Hitchcock, ed., The Human Rights Revolution: An International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Barbara Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: the Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Eric Posner, The Twilight of Human Rights Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Steven Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
14 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 9.
15 Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2–6, emphasis in the original.
16 Quoted in Phillip Luke Sinitiere, ”Leadership for Democracy and Peace: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Legacy as a Pan-African Intellectual,” in ed. Baba G. Jallow, Leadership in Colonial Africa: Disruption of Traditional Frameworks and Patterns (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2014), 164.
17 John Conroy, “House of Screams,” Chicago Reader, January 25, 1990, in author's possession.
18 Chinta Strausberg, “Sleeping family startled by police search,” Chicago Defender, February 11, 1982, 4.
19 On February 17, 1982, Doctor John Raba, Medical Director of Cermak Health Services, wrote to Superintendent Brzeczek about the physical abuse of Andrew Wilson. Brzeczek forwarded this letter to OPS where agency investigators registered a formal complaint and initiated their investigation on February 25. Brzeczek also forwarded the letter to Cook County State's Attorney Richard M. Daley notifying him of Dr. Raba's allegations and requesting his direction on how to proceed with the investigation. More than three years later, OPS investigators closed the case file with a finding of "not sustained" on all allegations. In his summation, the investigator determined that Francis Nolan, chief administrator of OPS, had attempted to get a statement from Wilson through is Public Defender, but received no cooperation. Francine J. Sanders, “Special Project Investigative Summary Report,” Office of Professional Standards, October 26. 1990, 1, in author's possession.
20 Mary Powers to David Fogel, July 26, 1989 in author's possession.
21 Goldston, “Special Project Conclusion Report,” iv.
22 Bonnie Van Gilder to Chris Chandler, "Beating Justice" memorandum, February 15, 1982 in Box 20 Folder 10, Mayoral Campaign, Harold Washington Papers, Chicago Public Library.
23 In the eyes of Renault Robinson, this manhunt for the Wilson brothers was “sloppy police work, a matter of racism.” Chinta Strausberg, “Police Tactics, 'Shock' Community,” Chicago Defender, February 16, 3.
24 Ibid.; These bad faith arrests, often for the charge of disorderly conduct, would later become the subject of a class action suit against the City of Chicago, Superintendent Brzeczek, and various officers.
25 Minutes of Citizens Alert Board Meeting, March 4, 1981 in Folder 2, Box, 6, Collections of the Afro-American Patrolmen's League, Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL.
26 Chinta Strausberg, “Police, Bar Groups, Ask 'Manhunt' Probe,” Chicago Defender, February 18, 1982, 3; Chinta Strausberg, “Blame 'Ghetto Raiders' for Cop Violence,” Chicago Defender, February 24, 1982, 3.
27 See 720 ILL. Comp. Stat. 5/12-7(a)(2006).
28 As Becker points out, roughly five out of six felony court judges in Cook County were either former prosecutors, police detectives, or attorneys who had defended police officers. “When Judges Judge Themselves: The Chicago Police Torture Scandal and the Continuing Quest for Justice in the Case of People v. Keith Walker,” De Paul Journal for Social Justice, 3, no. 115 (2010), 121–22.
29 Ibid., 126.
30 Although only four still worked for the police department, three others served as investigators with the Cook County Sheriffs, another three worked for the Cook County State’s Attorney in a similar capacity, while the remainder held jobs as private investigators and similar professions. Pepe Lozano, “Chicago Torture Probe Draws Worldwide Attention,” People’s World, June 30, 2006, in author’s possession.
31 Casanova Willis and Willis, “Black People Against Police Torture,” 610–11.
32 Steve Ivey, “Human-Rights Group Asked to Aid Burge Probe,” Chicago Tribune, October 15, 2005, 9.
33 Even if the IACHR had decided to undertake an investigation, it would not have resulted in any enforceable findings. Casanova Willis and Willis, “Black People Against Police Torture,” 610.
34 Ibid., 609.
35 Center for the Study of Human Rights, 25+ Human Rights Documents (New York: Columbia University, 2006), 73.
36 See Letter to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Issues Regarding United Sates’ Second Periodic Report (September 30, 2005), in author’s possession.
37 See Phillip Alston and James Crawford, eds., The future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Anne F. Bayefsky, ed., The UN Human Rights System in the 21st Century (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000).
38 Pepe Lozano, “Chicago Torture Probe Draws Worldwide Attention,” People’s World, June 30, 2006. http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/chicago-torture-probe-draws-worldwide-attention/.
39 United Nations Committee Against Torture, “Consideration of Reports Submitted by State Parties Under Article 19 of the Convention,” ¶ 25, CAT/C/USA/CO/2 (May 19, 2006).
40 Letter to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, 9.
41 McCain, “Group Continues Fight Against Torture,” in author's possession.
42 Ibid.
43 Ben Joravsky, “Can Shame Stop the Games?” Chicago Reader, March 22, 2007, in author’s possession.
44 Local officials reportedly refused to let the USOC committee members off of their bus. McCain, “Group Continues Fight Against Torture,” in author’s possession.
45 Monroe Anderson, “Jon Burge, The Olympics and Torture in Chicago,” HuffingtonPost, September 19, 2008, in author’s possession.
46 McCain, “Group Continues Fight Against Torture,” in author’s possession.
47 Some accounts have linked the concept of reparations for torture survivors to the movement for slavery reparations that Willis had participated in as a member of the Durban 400. For instance, attorney Flint Taylor, while crediting BPAPT for identifying the broad relief needed for torture survivors as “reparations,” suggests that it sought to directly link “Chicago police torture to the brutality of slavery through the concept of reparations … was an important step in establish a true and complete narrative through which torture victims could seek acknowledgment and remedies.” See G. Flint Taylor, “The Long Path to Reparations for the Survivors of Chicago Torture,” Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy, 11, no. 3 (Spring 2016) 338; Also see, Sandhya Somashekhar, “Why Chicago Used the Word ‘Reparations,’” Washington Post, May 8, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/05/08/why-chicago-used-the-word-reparations/?utm_term=.1b4501e46195; Nickolas Kaplan, “‘Reparations NOW!’: Municipal Reparations, International Tribunals, and the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Campaign,” Loyola Public Interest Law Reporter 21, no. 3 (2015) 116–24; Joey L. Mogul, “The Struggle for Reparations in the Burge Torture Cases: The Grassroots Struggle That Could,” Loyola Public Interest Law Reporter 21, no. 3 (2015): 209–25.
48 United Nations General Assembly, “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law,” ¶ 19–23, 60/147 (December 16, 2005).
49 Casanova Willis and Willis, “Black People Against Police Torture,” 613.
50 Delores McCain, “Anti-Torture Group Hosts Awards Ceremony,” Austin Weekly News, November 28, 2007, in author’s possession.
51 Letter to the United Nations Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination, “In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse of People of Color in the United States,” Issues Regarding United Sates’ Second and Third Periodic Report (December 2007), 9.
52 Delores McCain, “Willis Reports on Race Discrimination Convention,” Austin Weekly News, March 26, 2008, in author’s possession.
53 United Nations Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination, “Consideration of Reports Submitted by State Parties Under Article 9 of the Convention,” ¶ 25, CERD/C/USA/CO/6 (May 8, 2006).
54 Steve Mills and Jeff Cohen, “Feds Catch Up with Burge,” Chicago Tribune, October 22, 2008, 1–23.
55 Jasper Krommendikj, “The Domestic Effectiveness of International Human Rights Monitoring in Established Democracies. The Case of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies,” The Review of International Organizations, 10, no. 4 (December 2015), 509.
56 Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Reparations Now/Reparations Won, 23–31.
57 Taylor, “The Long Path to Reparations for the Survivors of Chicago Torture,” 343.
58 United Nations Committee Against Torture, Concluding Observations on the Third to the Fifth Periodic Review of the United States of America, CAT/C/USA/CO/3-5 (November 20, 2014).
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Toussaint Losier
Toussaint Losier is an Assistant Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts–Amherst. He was previously a visiting scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University.