February 17, 2022 • 43 mins
The gang takes on two stories from dark history of the Chicago police department: the Burge torture ring and the police's murder of Laquan McDonald and Rahm Emanuel's subsequent coverup.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
What's incapable of being racist? People joking about Canadians can't
do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada or
the FSCs. It could happen here the French. We can
be racist against the French. It's true. Yeah, speaking of
speaking that makes Quebec angrier. But like speaking of racism, Chris,
(00:27):
what's our topic today? Yeah, today's episode is about why
I hate the cops. Hell Yeah. Specifically it is about
is about Chicago police departments and the many, many, many,
many many crimes they have committed. Uh, we're gonna talk
about well, okay, So to lead us in to explain
what we're doing here today, I'm going to read a
(00:48):
quote from from the late anthropologist David Grabery from this
book The Democracy Project. For my own part, I find
what I call the rape torture and Murder test very useful.
It's quite simple when presented with the political entity of
some kind or another, whether a government, a social movement,
a guerilla army, or really any other organized group, and
trying to decide whether they deserve condemnation or support, first
(01:10):
ask do they commit or do they order others to commit?
Acts of rape torture? Or murder. It seems a self
evident question. But again, it's surprising how rarely, or better,
how selectively it is applied. Or perhaps it might seem
surprising until one starts applying it and discovers conventional wisdom
when many will political issues instantly turned upside down. In
(01:31):
two thousand six, for example, most people in the United
States read about the Mexican governments sending federal troops to
quell a popular revolt initiated by a teachers union against
notoriously corrupt governor in the southern state of Wahaka. In
the US media, this was universally presented as a good thing,
a restoration of order. The rebels, after all, we're violent,
having thrown rocks and molotov cocktails, even if they only
(01:51):
threw them at heavily armed police, causing no serious injuries.
No one, to my knowledge has ever suggested that the
rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither has anyone on
who knows anything about the events and questions seriously contested
the fact that forces loyal to the Mexican government had raped, tortured,
and murdered quite a number of people in suppressing the rebellion.
Yet somehow such acts, unlike the rebels stone throwing, cannot
(02:12):
be described as violent at all, let alone as rape,
torture and murder, but only appear, if at all, as
accusations of human rights violations or in some similarly bloodless
legalistic language. Yeah, and that that's the framework that I
want to take the Chicago Police Department, so people can
understand why and how and just just sort of get
(02:37):
people can get a taste of the sheer horror that
anti police organizers and just like regular people in Chicago
are fighting every day because the Chicago Police Department fails
the rape torture murder test again and again and again
and again. And so we are going to tell four
stories of torture, rape, and murder by the Chicago Police
Department that SEMs fun. It's can be great. Happy pants
(03:01):
on kids, go for a cruise, you know, take the
top down. Um, it's it's time for a good old fest.
So our our first story of torture, rape and murder
by the CPD is the story of Chicago's infamous torture ring,
led by a man named John Burge. Yeah. Now, John
(03:24):
Birge had been a military police sergeant working at a
POW camp in Vietnam. So so immediately you have a
guy who's not only a troop cop, but he's he's
he's a troop cop while he was a troop and
then he becomes a cop and you know, nothing, nothing
good can possibly come from that. And the other thing
and nothing good can possibly come from is the fact
(03:46):
that while Burge was in Vietnam, the US was doing
some just really six ships to Vietnamese prisoners, including rape,
gang rape, rape with hard objects, and rape followed by murder. Uh.
The electric shock called the bell telephone hour rendered by
attaching wire it to the genitals and keep your keep
that one in mind. We have not seen the last
of that uh and rape using eels and snakes, as
(04:06):
we have talked about on bastards of it before. Um,
they're also like they're also a huge water boarding fans.
So this, this is this is the environment that Burge
is sort of you know, being trained as a copy
in right, he's he's one of those these these PW
camps and he gets the purple Heart for his service.
Now when when it comes back to the US and
he becomes a cop and within about three years Burge
(04:30):
and his white cock buddy start just absolutely beating the
crap out of black suspects. Um. One of these prisoners,
a man named Anthony Holmes, was repeatedly tortured with electric
shocks and almost suffocated a death of a bag put
over his head. Holmes was tortured so badly he literally
thought he was going to die, so he confessed to
a crime he didn't commit and spent thirty years in prison. Yeah.
(04:51):
I actually interviewed one of the people tortured by Burge
who was had his testicles electrocuted. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna
get into that. Yeah. It's it's it's horrible. It's it's
pretty mud of the worst things I've ever read. Uh. Yeah.
And Holmes this case is particularly grim because so he
tells his lawyers that he's been tortured, and his lawyers
(05:14):
don't believe him, and so you know, he yeah, he
he he went to spending thirty years in prison that
he didn't do um those shocks. Yeah yeah. So okay,
So that they have this box, right, it's his box
as a handcrate generator. Burge calls at the n word box. Uh,
(05:37):
and he just attaches people's like it's just attaches it
to people. I wonder when Oh, yeah, no, it's he's
all of these people are so indescribably racist. It's like, yeah,
he he just like he keeps this box like on
his desk at at the Chicago Police Department. Like it's
(05:57):
just on his desk at work. Um. You know. The
other thing is notable about this is that he, he
and the people around him would call just electrocuting people
by touching alligator lamps of them and putting nine thousand,
two hundred vaults into them. They called it the Vietnamese
treatment because I guess what he learned this in Vietnam. Um. Now,
Burge is so called Midnight Crew had had an incredibly
high rate of solving crimes. And he has an incredibly
(06:17):
high rate of quote unquote solving crimes because he's just
torturing random black people until they confess. Um. And you know,
it's it's not like people don't know he's doing this.
There's there's a detective in the seventies who like walks
in on Burde torturing a guy, and he goes through
superiors and it's like Burgess, Burgess torturing these people and
that detective gets reprimanded and were reprimanded for like reporting
(06:39):
the torture and transferred another area. So Burge gets promoted
to sergeant in nineteen seventy seven and then again to
lieutenant in nineteen eighty, and he gets he gets put
in charge of the newly formed violent crimes unit, and
from from from this position, his rate of terror intensifies.
And so so in nineteen eight two, someone shoots two
(06:59):
white cops. And you know, this is one of one
of the sort of classic police things. Anytime a cop
dies the the the police department just goes fucking ballistic.
Yeah yeah, And and in this case with with with
virgin charge, he basically turns the entire South Side into
what can only be described as a fascist police state. Um,
(07:21):
here's this is. This is from the Chicago police torture scandal,
illegal and political history. In in Cuoney's Law review, police
kicked down doors and terrorized scores of African Americans. And
what Jesse Jackson of Operation Push Push and Raynald Robinson
if the Afro American police lead condemned as quote martial
law that smacked of Nazi Germany. Thirteen witnesses were smothered
(07:43):
with bags and threatened with bolt cutters and ursion as
detectives took several young men who they were only suspected
to be the killers to police headqure horders and tortured them.
And I mean they're just like you know that they're
buzzing down people's doors or dragging people away out in
the middle of the night. They do this for about
five days before they arrest two brothers and who again
had nothing to do with this. They just decided that
(08:03):
these two were the guys and tortured just the absolute
shit out of him. Um one of the brothers, Andre Wilson.
But before Birds even gets there, because this is the
everything about Birds. It's not just birds, right like everyone
he's like around him, he's also a torturer. It's just
birds sort of, you know, but Bird is the guy
like directing a lot of it. So even before he
(08:24):
gets there, Yeah, like Wilson gets like he's burned with
a cigarette lighter, he gets strangled with the bag over
his head again, and they just like beat him a
bunch of times, and then it gets even worse. Um
Burgs Like you know, but Birds, that's the thing where
he likes he straps him to the to the electric box, right,
but he also straps him against the radiator. And you
(08:45):
know these are like old Chicago steam radiators. Right. If
you touch, if you like touch them even briefly, you
get burned. And so yeah, he straps into a radiator
and every time he like gets shocked, he jerks back
into the radiator, it gets burned. Yeah. I have a
friend who get a second degree burn and just from
like briefly touching one of those things. Yeah, yeah, I
mean it's basically it's basically tying someone to an oven.
(09:06):
It's turns. Yeah, it's it is breasttaking in humanity on
a scale that is yeah, pop esque. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's it's it's real. It's real cops shit. Um, it's
for sure real cop shit. Yeah. So here here here's
(09:27):
an interview, uh with Wilson. There's an excerpt of one
from from the book Writing from the World of Policing.
Wilson said that Berg cranked the generator, sending nine thousand,
two hundred volts of electricity into his body. He put
it on my fingers, Wilson explained, one of the clamps
and one finger and one of the other finger, and
then he kept cranking it and cranking it, and I
was hollering and screaming. I was calling for help. My
(09:49):
teeth was grinding, flickering in my head. Pain, it hurts,
Wilson continued, But it stays in your head. Okay, it
stays in your head, and it grinds your teeth. It
grinds constantly, grinds constantly. The pain just stays in your
head and your teeth cut constantly, grinds and grinds and
grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds. Now, Wilson. They
(10:12):
do this to Wilson for like a day, and he
doesn't confess. He he refuses to confess because he didn't
do it, and so he goes to like they bring
him in front of a family prosecutor and Wilson tells
the prosecutor that he's being tortured, and you know, it's
incredibly obvious he's being tortured, like there's just there's marks
all over's body, like his his face is destroyed. And
(10:32):
the prosecutor sends him back to Burge, who tortures him more.
And but by the time Burge is done with him,
Wilson is so visibly fucked up that the police lock
up keeper like takes a look at it, like takes
one look at him and goes, I'm not going to
be a part of this and refuses to put him
in lock up Cook County Jails. Like Director of Medical
(10:53):
Services um sends a letter going like, this man was
tortured to the police. Here we found a human being. Yeah, yeah,
well you know, and it's like every one once every like,
i don't know, maybe like a hundred pages of reading
about this, you find one person who is a normal
human being. Unfortunately, the state's attorney, instead of prosecuting Burge
for again attaching attaching a man's balls to a hand
(11:16):
create generator and then electrocuting him, uh, the state prosecutor
and the police superintendent both publicly congratulate Burde for his work. Yeah,
Andrew Wilson, mean while died in prison in two thousand seven,
because this world is just the worst. Yeah. Now, you
(11:39):
might be asking yourself, how does he get away with this?
And the answer is that the CPD is complicit in
burdges torture at literally every level. Every attempt to stop
Burge is derailed directly by the departments. And not only
is he not stopped, he's repeatedly praised and promoted for
his actions. And yeah, that's how it goes. Yep, it's
(12:01):
it's great. It's it's it's an institutionalized system of torture,
rape and murder. That. Yeah, it's like that. We have
us a little ABU grade home. But yeah, I don't worry,
we will well, I guess we won't actually get tob
with grades specifically, but I can, I can do, I
can I can do an UPI grave tie in at
the end of this part. So, the CPD has something
(12:25):
they call the Code of Silence, And we'll talk about
this more later, but basically, the core of the Code
of Silence is that just no matter what crimes, what atrocities,
what just inhuman pig horrors you see cops committing you,
stay silent. Now. This code, you know, it's it's it's
a code that everyone sort of knows right in the police,
but it's also directly enforced um and and it's enforced
(12:47):
by the stuff Burdge would do, like just to other cops,
Like he would do things like if there was a
cop who was like unhappy with him. He would like
walk up behind them when they're opening a file cabinet
and point a gun at their head and then go
like bang and then do this like a thing that
I can really only describe as a supervillain monologue about
how like the projects are a dangerous place, maybe you're
gonna turn up dead. It's he also he has these
(13:11):
street files that he keeps on like other cops families,
so that if if another cop like goes after him,
he can have their family arrested and then plant evidence
on them. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, it's it's like,
you know, like in a certain like he's doing this
to other cops, and it's like, well, okay, like you
know what, like what what possible? Like system of of
(13:34):
of accountability quote on court or police reform is like
ever going to do anything to a guy who will
just do this two cops like and you know, with
the CPD actively backing him there, there's there's nothing that
can stop Burge. And I should mention here that there's
persistent rumors that Burge as a klansmen um I I
couldn't find like firm confirmation of it. He's he's certainly
(13:56):
racist enough, but but I think, yeah, but like why
would he why would he spend like that's that feels
like almost he would be like why would I waste
my time doing that, like talking about being racist when
I can go out and torture people because I'm a
racist every day, Like the clan already got it going on. Yeah,
and I think it's sometimes like, yeah, the question is immaterial.
He is a member of the Chicago Police Department, an
(14:18):
organization is systematic racial terror, the likes of which the
modern Clan can only dream of. Yeah, that's whatever. Yeah, Yeah,
it's like who cares he's he's he's jumper. Honestly, if
he were spending time at clan matings, at least he
wouldn't be torturing people during the time. Yeah, it's yeah,
love love, love your police. When if he was a
(14:40):
klansman that might have been slightly better. I mean that's
the big thing with like this type of like liberal
response to the type of extremism. It's like they only
view it as a problem if you're like explicitly part
of this, you know, like it's like very obvious to
everyone white nationalist group, right, they can watch a cop
do all these horrible things that's fine, that's just a cop.
(15:01):
But if he's a clan member, then that's a problem.
Like they can excuse all this horrible torture and not
really be concerned about it. But if but if he
had a robots closet, then it's suddenly this big issue.
It's like no, like the issue is that he was
doing all this torture anyway, and he doesn't like this.
You don't need to focus on like just the like
(15:23):
just that identity, like that weird identity aspect of it. Yeah,
the the clan is old enough and where's a uniform
that is distinct enough that everybody recognizes is it as racist?
Even though the Chicago Police Department is actually much more
of a threat in terms of racism than the clan today,
(15:43):
uh and was at that point in time. But you know,
they're the cops, and if you're a suburban white liberal,
they're there too, you know, help help keep your lawn
safe or whatever. Um, So you don't you don't see
them as the same inherently racial organization exactly, even though
they are. Yeah, and even though I mean they're dragging
people out of their homes and like just electrocuting them,
(16:04):
like this is you know, this is this something also
that I was very annoyed about when I was reading
this was like you read a lot of this stuff
and then and you'll you'll get descriptions of it that
are like, ah, this is something that only happens in
the pressure regimes like Kazakhstan. It's like, have you read
anything of the US like this is like yeah, like
we have the officers over to other countries that often
(16:26):
teach their police how to do ship like this that happens.
But when you were describing a whole bunch of stuff
in the past, like you know, twenty minutes, I was
thinking in my head and like, oh, yeah, this is
just like stormtrooper ship. But the thing is it isn't
like this just is cop shit. And like, like the
thing like the fact of like elevating it in my
(16:46):
brain to it being like something other than cops is incorrect.
You know, like this just is police stuff. It's not
it's not necessarily stormtroopers ship. It's just is police ship.
And the fact that those things are so synonymous that
should be the part that's actually like upsetting is that yeah,
it's actually there is really no difference, and you shouldn't
necessarily resort to calling its stormtrooper stuff, because it is
(17:08):
just what the police do all the time. There's this
whole model you see people talking about it where they
talk about like like the police are using unnecessary force,
and like they're there there there's like a certain threshold
(17:29):
where if you go past it, like you know, sort
of like like even you know, like I'm gonna I'm
gonna read like that. The birch has a lot of
like when when he winds up in court, like the
judges look at this and they're like, oh my god,
this is unacceptable. How could this have happened? And you know,
you get some good descriptions of it. I'm gonna this
is a district judge court describing what bird is doing.
In the early eighties, there existed in two in the
(17:51):
City of Chicago, at factual policy practice and or a
custom of Chicago police officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment
against persons who they alleged had killed her injured a
fellow officer. This revenge and punishment included beating, kicking, torturing, shooting,
and or executing such a person for the purpose of
inflicting pain to injury and punishment on that person and
(18:11):
also for the purpose of forcing that person to make it.
Coupled tory statements. Exculpatory, yeah, sculptor yeah, inculpatory yeah yeah yeah.
You know, and you get stuff like there's there's there's
an FBI report than from the chocolate tripe you're I'm
going to read because it's he left one bullet in
(18:32):
the center and the cylinder and spun it. A report
quoted the inmate is saying about Burge in the nine incident.
He then said, you talk, will blow your black EXPELTI
presumably the N word brains out. Burge then got up
from his desk, walked over to the inmate, put the
muzzle of the revolver against the center of the inmate's
forehead and pulled the trigger. He spun the cylinder and
(18:55):
placed it back against his forehead and pulled the trigger again. So, yeah,
he's just playing Russian Roulette with people, like he's playing it.
I don't. I don't think. Yeah, well he's pulling up
one in the sixth chance of murdering them. They are
in terror. Uh. There's also a lot of like he
(19:19):
does like you sexually abuses people he like he going
after testicles. Yeah he he like he electrocuted like well,
I mean he's also like is like like basically like
raping people. Um, he like electrocutes a thirteen year old child.
And you know this is like it's it's it's just
(19:41):
so bleak that like, I mean, there's so there's a
very famous article about this by Chicago journalists called the
House of Screams. But you know, like like Burge isn't
the only guy doing this, Like one of his loyalists
is lieutenant like is a guy named Byron. He's like
in charge of the midnight shift at that the Aera
Tree Violent Crimes. And they become known internally as burgess
(20:02):
ask kickers at the A Team because this is just
who these people are culturally, and yeah sure sure, but yeah,
um these guys start uh like putting like guns and
prisoners mouths. But they have one thing where they stick
a shotgun in a guy's mouth and they pull the
trigger and it's not loaded, but they's like they keep
(20:23):
doing this thing. Yeah, it's it's that is by the way,
illegal in international law, like internationally, that is a war
crime if you're military to specifically fake executions are a
type of torture and a a war crime under international
law based on treaties the United States has signed. Yeah,
and and Byron also, so if he does that a lot.
(20:46):
And then that same guy, the same guy put the
shotgun thing too. He apparently didn't have the box, so
he stripped the dude and shocked his balls with a
cattle prod. And this is the guy who Lord Lightfoot
sent her number two lawyer to defend in court and
by arguing the torture it never happens. Yeah, that's that's
that's that's ability. Yep, that's the mayor of my city.
(21:07):
Now Life Life Foot. Light Foot is on the record
as saying that birds tortured over a hundred people. But
once it came to, you know, actually putting up or
shutting up, she just goes to back for the cops.
And and this happens in Chicago just so many times
with people who used to be like who you know
who who in the moment I'm like, oh, bird did torture.
We need to reform the police. And it's you know,
(21:28):
the women, they get into power, they do this stuff.
I mean, there there's there's much of like incredibly weird
stuff that happens here, Like so that the Seventh Circuit
Core of Appeals at one point, so saul A like
they saw a case over whether a one thousand dollars
settlement with a torture victim was fair, and yeah, in court,
(21:51):
it's like you read the transcas of it and it's
like it's it's the most brutal demolishing of like a
state's argument I've ever seen. Like they're they're they're just
like in court asking them like okay, like we're we're
we're this person's judge is supposed to have like known
in court that he was also torturing other people. And
they're like it's you know, the courts just like you know,
(22:13):
they're turning him apart. And then when it comes time
to decide the case, uh, the court tosses the case
out inside with the state. Wow. Yeah, I don't know
what's going on there. It's awful. Yep. This I mean
that that is the thing about the way the whole
(22:33):
system works, which is that you know, the police do
horrific things. In Chicago, they torture. In Los Angeles, they
have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of different
horrible ship the police do, and then at some point
the FBI and the Justice Department come in and they
provide incredibly They send in very talented investigators who produce
incredibly detailed lists of all of the things that are
(22:55):
being done. And then the court says, well, but nobody's
gonna get punished, or maybe this one I will get punished,
and then we'll go on back to doing things, and
that the system is supposed to work, although we're we're
going to read a story about the FBI not doing
that in the next episode. So yeah, I mean they
don't know. We don't always get a report. Yeah, I
just I have become increased, Like it's very frustrating because
(23:18):
having these FBI reports on police abuses um is useful
again for talking to liberals because they tend to trust
the FBI, But it's also like, boy, I've read a
lot of detailed FBI reports about how bad police departments are,
and it seems like nothing ever gets done. Like it
seems like they just write a thing saying yeah, it's bad,
and then everything continues forever and it's you know this
(23:40):
this case, Like so the reason we even know any
of this is through what I like what I will say,
like the a genuinely heroic, decades long campaign run by
the People's Law Office on behalf of Birdge victims and
these people, like they say people's lives like that there
are people who Birdge tortured, who ended up on death
row for it. And you know, like this stuff is
(24:02):
so bad that when it comes out, the Supreme Court
does a ruling on it and it like establishes new
precedents for like how people can prove they've been tortured.
Like you know, it's so bad that like Illinois stops
running the death pet like we had the death penalty
and like we still tend to get ethic have it,
but like we just stopped doing it, like we stopped
we stopped executing people because like a Republican governor like
(24:24):
on air, gave a giant thing about how this system
was broken and like this is this is John Ryan, right,
like this is a man who like he he is
like this is a man who was corrupted by the
standards of of of an Illinois politician. And even he
like on the air, is like, yeah, this is like
you know that this is this is broken. He he
(24:45):
pardons the Burge victims and in nine three, faced with
just irrefutable evidence of torture and ruling multiple higher ports,
higher courts, the Police board finally released a report, although
the report also doesn't call it torture and is a
disaster that they finally have Burge fired and some of
his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended for
(25:06):
fifteen months. But Burge isn't prosecuted for, you know, the
crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing until
two after the victims literally go to the United Nations
with a campaign and go in front of the United
Nations and talk about how they are being systemically tortured
by the Chicogo Police Department. But of course by two
the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out,
(25:28):
so uh, he winds up going to jail for three
statue of limitations on torture. Yeah, that's definitely one of
the ones we should have a cap on. Yeah, definitely,
it's great. It's it's it's a great system. Um. I'm
going to read something from the Chogol Tribune that was
a description of of this uh quote. While the jury
was out, Burge, still unrepentant, allegedly asked the courtroom reserve
or whether he thought the jury would quote believe a
(25:50):
bunch of n words. Wow, awesome, Yeah, it's great bridge.
Bridge tortured at least a hundred and twenty five people.
That's almost certainly an under account. Under twenty five is
the number of people who we have who have come forward.
A lot of those people probably have, like people he tortured,
have probably died by now. Um, yeah, I mean yeah,
(26:11):
you'll never will never get an accurate account of all
the people who were Yeah, and and Burge died of
freeman and has never served a day for his actual crimes. Now, now,
burg and his crew are the most famous of the
(26:32):
eighties and seventies and eighties torturers, but they're by no
means the earth the only one. And we're gonna talk
about one more in this torture section. Uh if you
do you know Richard Zuli? Mm hmm okay, so yeah,
Zuli's Zulie is the one that people tend not to know. Um.
Zuli was also a Vietnam War vet, and he becomes
a detective in nineteen Um, what's interesting about him? Zuli
(26:54):
is never part of burgess cadre. Right, Burgess Cadres working
out very at they're on the south side. They're in
an over black part of the outside. Zuli works in
areas three and six on the north side. You know
what what what I what need to mention off the
bat is that Zuli is no less racist than Burge is.
He wants to rest in a black dude for just
like having a car and wearing a watch and like
(27:15):
like those are both felonies in the City of Chicago. Right, Well,
if you famously never know what time it is because
you're a law abiding citizen, Yeah, well it law abiding
cit isn't And also don't be black while doing this
because yeah, he throws him in a cell. Yeah, well
it gets it gets you, Zuli screaming no end word
(27:36):
is supposed to live like this? Oh boy, oh boy,
it's you know we we people like talk about cops
doing stuff for that reason, but it's it's, you know,
they're so racist. Just get a direct quote. Yeah, like
I can't emphasize it, Like they're just they're so racist.
(27:57):
It's like ingrained into the like the cop d NA. Yeah,
they're just saying the loud part loud. Yeah, Like they're
just scrimmy like that we're gonna do with one of
the things the next episode is the cops will just
drive around like blasting the end, we're out of their
out of their like cops stereos. Because yeah, now, Zuli
in a lot of ways, is a more modern torture
(28:18):
than burdges. You know, Birch is very big on your
like overt physical violence, right, you're beating your execution and suffocation.
The problem with these techniques from a torture of perspective
that they leave incredibly obvious marks. And you know, this
is how birde goes down, right, It's it's too obvious
what he's doing. There are people who can just like
show up to a court and be like, hey, look
at my neck, like here all these burns. Zuli is
(28:39):
much smarter about it. Um, you know she. I mean,
she does some beatings because cops are literally animals and
are incapable of resisting the urge to beat the living
share of anyone who falls into their grasp. But you know,
mostly what he does is he does things like he'll
just shackle someone to a wall for twenty four hours,
and you know, and he'll be like, okay, like I'm
gonna shock you to this wall and until you sign
this confession, I won't let you leave. And also you
(29:00):
can't talk to anyone. You can't talk to a layer,
you can't talk to uh, like you can't talk to
your family. And in the next episode we see this.
This is how modern CPD torture works, except zuli Is
doing this in like the eighties. Now. Zuli Is is
a naval intelligence officer who's so he's still technically in
the reserves, which he joins the cops. And that meant
when the CIA's torture is like Autnomo bas stalled out,
(29:22):
they needed a hero and that hero was zuli Um.
Zuli Is was the most active. Like that the thing
is the most active in is the torture of Mohammadu
Old Sali, who is famously known as the most tortured
manic guatanamo. Um he's yeah, at least he gotten a guinness.
Yeah he yeah. They do sleep deprivation. I mean they
(29:47):
so some of it's like the standards sort of like
get most stuff, which is like they don't let you sleep.
They blast like sounds until your cell all the time.
They like beat you. There's molestations and but there's also
stuff that's like like you know, the tharnt of attack
my dogs, but like the whole do things like like
he'll like soap people, like get soaked in ice water,
(30:09):
or like they stuffed him in this like straight jacket
thing that didn't let him breathe properly and then stuffed
it full of ice. And then Zuli also, yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's bad. And he also like threatens to
kidnap his mother and have resent to Guantanamo to be
raped because these people are again jazz monsters. And yeah,
Zuli is still alive today and romes the street as
(30:31):
a freeman, having received literally no consequences whatsoever for being
a torturer. So good in the CPD that the CIA
was like, we're gonna bring this guy into the torture.
That's great, it's great. It's ye yep. And and that
that that brings us to our first interlude, which is
(30:52):
every year Chicago police officers go to the grave of
the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton,
who they assassinated in a police rate after drugging him
ninety nine um. They go to his grave to shoot
his fucking tombstone. They do this literally every year, their families.
They keep getting your tombstones. They shoot them every they
shoot them every year. It just doesn't matter. Uh, the
CPD just keeps shooting it. And there's a quote from
(31:14):
the Great Tree to Daddy and marchis historian C. L. R. James,
and I think about a lot that goes when history
is written as it ought to be written. It is
the moderation and long patients of the masses at which
people will will wonder, not their ferocity. Yep. I really
hope there's a moment of people doing things to cops
that makes generations in the future marvel at their ferocity. Yeah.
(31:37):
I think I can say that without it legally being incitement. Yes.
I'll make one other fun note, which is that five
Chicago police officers died last year from COVID. So that's good. Yeah,
let's make it fifty Officer Dowd. Look, they're working on it.
They don't they won't wear masks. Vacinated critical support to
the Chicago police who don't wear masks. Ye, they're they're they're,
(31:58):
they're they're they're they're having their Lease Academy exams in person. Now,
oh that's good, that's fine, you know, critical support. Yeah,
it's spent more time indoors together without masks. Guys, avoid
those vaxes. Yeah yeah, great, will happen. Okay, So story two,
(32:20):
which is a shorter one, but no less bleak, I think.
On October fourteen, officer Jason van Dyke fired sixteen shots
at Lakwen McDonald, who had turned around and was walking
away from him. Here's from the people of the state
of Illinois. Walking away aggressively, Chris, Yeah, oh boy, violently exiting. Yeah,
(32:44):
I walking away while black, which I guess in the
minds of like half of the United States, is someone
a court defended legal right to shoot people in the
back who are trying to its Yeah, yeah, great country,
We're nailing it. From from the Chicago Tribune and analysis
of the video and this is this is from the
(33:06):
court case, but in thee an analysis of the video
establishes that fourteen to fifteen seconds passed from the time
the defendants Van Dyke fired his first shot to clear
visual confirmation of the final shot. For approximately thirteen of
those seconds, McDonald is lying on the ground, so he
he fires literally every bullet in he's gone at a
(33:27):
man who is, by those like second shots lying dead,
like well he's not quite dead yet, but like lying
on the ground. It's just Yeah, from the cops perspective,
like why not like that? That's like, that's like like
they have the ability to do that if they get
the chance, Oh I get to kill a black person
and it doesn't matter, then why, like you know, that's
(33:48):
like if you if you you have to you have
to think through like what they're actually processing this as.
And they don't see them as like a they don't
see them as like an equivalent human life. So it
doesn't like it's it's they don't. It doesn't you can't
like apply the same rules of civility that like we
should all kind of agree upon because cops have such
(34:12):
a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at the top,
that they can never actually exist within any kind of
humane society. That's why again unspeakable ferocity of the masses
fingers crossed one day. Yeah, yeah, well you know, and
I think the thing, you know, Okay, so look, if
(34:34):
this is the price of liberal democracy, right, if if
you're going to if you're going to live in a
society that has like you know that that where laws
are enforced by the police, the police are going to
murder people. Like that's that that that's what you're signing
on for. And I think that I think that's an
absolutely unacceptable price. And but we shouldn't do this. Um now.
The other aspect of this is because you have to
(34:56):
keep all of these just absolutely like just bloodthirsty burderers
on the leash. And because also all the people who
are actually in the governments are just genuinely the asplicable
human beings. Uh, immediately after I mean like really before
the shots have stopped firing, like there's a cover up
that stretches from like includes everyone from the officers on
(35:18):
the scene all the way up to may Ram Emmanuel.
So for example, mysteriously none of the multiple dashboard cameras
on the scene we're recording audio for reasons only the
discerning listener can guess at yep, like everyone across the
entire chain of command again going right up to the
Mayor's office immediately goes we we cannot let this video
get out because it's it's so bad that even the
(35:40):
CPD is like, this is gonna look bad for us,
because the thing gets out, then people will want to
do bad things to cops and they can't have that.
And you know, so this this, this, this, this tape
is concealed for over a year until the journalist Brandon
Smith like literally gets a like sues them and literally
(36:03):
gets the judge to like order the state to release it.
And while this is going on that the cops are
doing this massive pr blitz featuring this just like incredible
pack of racist lies, including that McDonald had lunge forage
yet Van Dyke with a knife. No, he didn't, he
was literally walking away from them. That McDonald had a gun,
which is inititing one because not only like they didn't
even have time to like plant like they killed him
(36:24):
so fast, they didn't have time to plant a gun
on him, like there's no gun. But the multiple officers
will are are like you can you can find news
things of them talking about how this guy, oh, he
had a gun. It's like there's no gun. Um. Yeah.
The classic one is that like Van Dyke feared for
his life and uh no he didn't. He probably should now,
but he does not. Yeah, he should never. He should
(36:45):
never live awaking or sleeping moments where he's not in
constant fear of someone cutting his head off, just as
like in terms of the hoard or that should be
imbued inside people who do these things, they should never
like they shouldn't be able to like sit down and
be comfort bowl. The closest we've ever gotten into justice
for one of these guys is when that mobs surrounded uh,
(37:07):
Derek Chauvin's house and it would have been actual justice
if they had gotten through the door. Yep, yeah, it's yeah,
so you know all and the ever like so there's
there's there's this huge coterie of cops. We're all just
lying about this. They're lying in the press. They're lying
just there lying. They they start they lie like on
the stand um and you know, the strategy works for
(37:30):
a while because his country is just the racistellhole until
the court forces him to release the video. And when
it becomes clear of the video is going to come out,
the state immediately charges him like they charged him and
then later that day they released a video. Now, now
keep this in mind, they had this video for a
fucking year. What it's all, it's all fake and you know, yeah,
and they only charged him with the alternative was literally
(37:51):
being run into the Sea by an entire mob of
the literally the entire population of Chicago. Um so van
Dyke suspended without pay, right, but he immediately gets hired
by the by the police union. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
makes sense. Yeah, and and Van Dyke Van Dyke. Eventually,
I mean, he goes down. Eventually he gets convicted of
you know, second green murder and sixteen counts of amated battery.
(38:13):
But you know, there's a there's a later report that
describes the involvement of sixteen other officers in the cover up.
U Four officers were eventually fired for lying about the case,
three were tried for the cover up and acquitted, and
four officers were given a one week suspension for the
mysterious lack of camera audio. Honestly, more that more than
usually happens expected. Yeah, well, I mean this is like
(38:36):
this video is so bad that like this video is
so I mean, raw Emmanuel doesn't really, I mean, he
that the consequence he suffers is that he decides not
to run again because it will be bad for him.
But Raw Emmanuel is currently now that his his consequence
is that he's the American ambassador to Japan and death.
You know, I I will also say this, The people
(38:58):
of Japan do not deserve raw Emmanuel. The Liberal Democratic Party,
on the other hand, are maybe the only people on
earth who actually deserve him. Like, if you didn't want
us to palm rob Mammanuel off on you, you shouldn't
have taken all that CIA money in the fifties and
sixties and let them run your political campaigns. So Liberal
Democratic Party lie down with dogs, get fleas um. But yeah,
Jason van Dyke was released from prison two weeks ago
(39:19):
after serving less than half a sentence. Mcwam McDonald's remains dead. Yeah.
The really depressing part is that that is more consequences
than usually ever happens, and that that only happened because of,
you know, like an incredible amount of organization. And like
I think of all of the times where there is
(39:40):
no video. I think of all the times where there's
nothing and things just happened, no one watches it, and
then dead bodies get kicked into a ditch yum And
that's way more common than anything where there's type of
like recordings or even where there needs to be cover ups.
You know, you you both are probably too young for
this movie. But in one of the trains formers movies
after they beat all the bad transformers. Okay, where the
(40:06):
navy lifts them all up and drops them into the sea. Yes,
what if we did that with the Chicago Police department.
Just drop them in the sea, big old, big old
them up, drop him in the sea. Now we put
them in a bag. There's no swimming. Okay, that's fair. Look,
look they one one, they get one bag individual, Each
(40:27):
individual gets one bag for each bag they put over
someone's head and strangled them with. I think that's fair,
and then right into the sea and solves all problems.
The blessing like I do, I do genuinely want to say,
is that like if if you read the story over
and over and over and over again, you get people
who are like you get the governor going like the
(40:48):
system is fundamentally broken to must reformat. You get the
courts saying the system is fundamentally broken and bust reformat
and it never changes. They just keep killing people, they
keep inslaving people, they keep doing like, they keep troaturing people,
they keep murdering people, they keep raving people, and this
will not end until you abolish the police, Like there
is no alternative if you if your car is fun
(41:12):
is broken on a fundamental level, you can't you can't
reform your car to make it better. There's a certain
point where it's total and you're like, well, I guess
that kind of It's like Asian block is shattered and
you're like, we fixes the tires, so it ought to
go now. No, it's like if it's broken on the
fundamental level, you can't reform it. Those words like those
(41:34):
words don't go together, yea, Like throw out, throw out
your car and build a train. That's that's what you
have to do. Walk to get a bicycle, honestly, Like, yeah,
I stuck a bottle onto the rail of my a
R fifteen, so it's not a gun anymore. Like no,
(41:54):
it's it's still is gone. Yea. This is really really
sad um and it's good stuff. Pretty depressing. Um. Anyway,
I'm gonna go watch two thousand Eights The Dark Night
and feel, uh, feel great about myself. Yeah, all right,
(42:16):
Well that's gonna do it for us that it could
happen here today until next time. Uh. I hope that
more Chicago police officers get COVID there there is that
there's that fun scene in the Dark Night where the
joker goes into the Chicago Police building and blows up
the prison block with all those cops inside. That is
(42:36):
that is a fun scene. Yeah. Anyway, Um, It Could
Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here,
(42:57):
updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
What's incapable of being racist? People joking about Canadians can't
do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada or
the FSCs. It could happen here the French. We can
be racist against the French. It's true. Yeah, speaking of
speaking that makes Quebec angrier. But like speaking of racism, Chris,
(00:27):
what's our topic today? Yeah, today's episode is about why
I hate the cops. Hell Yeah. Specifically it is about
is about Chicago police departments and the many, many, many,
many many crimes they have committed. Uh, we're gonna talk
about well, okay, So to lead us in to explain
what we're doing here today, I'm going to read a
(00:48):
quote from from the late anthropologist David Grabery from this
book The Democracy Project. For my own part, I find
what I call the rape torture and Murder test very useful.
It's quite simple when presented with the political entity of
some kind or another, whether a government, a social movement,
a guerilla army, or really any other organized group, and
trying to decide whether they deserve condemnation or support, first
(01:10):
ask do they commit or do they order others to commit?
Acts of rape torture? Or murder. It seems a self
evident question. But again, it's surprising how rarely, or better,
how selectively it is applied. Or perhaps it might seem
surprising until one starts applying it and discovers conventional wisdom
when many will political issues instantly turned upside down. In
(01:31):
two thousand six, for example, most people in the United
States read about the Mexican governments sending federal troops to
quell a popular revolt initiated by a teachers union against
notoriously corrupt governor in the southern state of Wahaka. In
the US media, this was universally presented as a good thing,
a restoration of order. The rebels, after all, we're violent,
having thrown rocks and molotov cocktails, even if they only
(01:51):
threw them at heavily armed police, causing no serious injuries.
No one, to my knowledge has ever suggested that the
rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither has anyone on
who knows anything about the events and questions seriously contested
the fact that forces loyal to the Mexican government had raped, tortured,
and murdered quite a number of people in suppressing the rebellion.
Yet somehow such acts, unlike the rebels stone throwing, cannot
(02:12):
be described as violent at all, let alone as rape,
torture and murder, but only appear, if at all, as
accusations of human rights violations or in some similarly bloodless
legalistic language. Yeah, and that that's the framework that I
want to take the Chicago Police Department, so people can
understand why and how and just just sort of get
(02:37):
people can get a taste of the sheer horror that
anti police organizers and just like regular people in Chicago
are fighting every day because the Chicago Police Department fails
the rape torture murder test again and again and again
and again. And so we are going to tell four
stories of torture, rape, and murder by the Chicago Police
Department that SEMs fun. It's can be great. Happy pants
(03:01):
on kids, go for a cruise, you know, take the
top down. Um, it's it's time for a good old fest.
So our our first story of torture, rape and murder
by the CPD is the story of Chicago's infamous torture ring,
led by a man named John Burge. Yeah. Now, John
(03:24):
Birge had been a military police sergeant working at a
POW camp in Vietnam. So so immediately you have a
guy who's not only a troop cop, but he's he's
he's a troop cop while he was a troop and
then he becomes a cop and you know, nothing, nothing
good can possibly come from that. And the other thing
and nothing good can possibly come from is the fact
(03:46):
that while Burge was in Vietnam, the US was doing
some just really six ships to Vietnamese prisoners, including rape,
gang rape, rape with hard objects, and rape followed by murder. Uh.
The electric shock called the bell telephone hour rendered by
attaching wire it to the genitals and keep your keep
that one in mind. We have not seen the last
of that uh and rape using eels and snakes, as
(04:06):
we have talked about on bastards of it before. Um,
they're also like they're also a huge water boarding fans.
So this, this is this is the environment that Burge
is sort of you know, being trained as a copy
in right, he's he's one of those these these PW
camps and he gets the purple Heart for his service.
Now when when it comes back to the US and
he becomes a cop and within about three years Burge
(04:30):
and his white cock buddy start just absolutely beating the
crap out of black suspects. Um. One of these prisoners,
a man named Anthony Holmes, was repeatedly tortured with electric
shocks and almost suffocated a death of a bag put
over his head. Holmes was tortured so badly he literally
thought he was going to die, so he confessed to
a crime he didn't commit and spent thirty years in prison. Yeah.
(04:51):
I actually interviewed one of the people tortured by Burge
who was had his testicles electrocuted. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna
get into that. Yeah. It's it's it's horrible. It's it's
pretty mud of the worst things I've ever read. Uh. Yeah.
And Holmes this case is particularly grim because so he
tells his lawyers that he's been tortured, and his lawyers
(05:14):
don't believe him, and so you know, he yeah, he
he he went to spending thirty years in prison that
he didn't do um those shocks. Yeah yeah. So okay,
So that they have this box, right, it's his box
as a handcrate generator. Burge calls at the n word box. Uh,
(05:37):
and he just attaches people's like it's just attaches it
to people. I wonder when Oh, yeah, no, it's he's
all of these people are so indescribably racist. It's like, yeah,
he he just like he keeps this box like on
his desk at at the Chicago Police Department. Like it's
(05:57):
just on his desk at work. Um. You know. The
other thing is notable about this is that he, he
and the people around him would call just electrocuting people
by touching alligator lamps of them and putting nine thousand,
two hundred vaults into them. They called it the Vietnamese
treatment because I guess what he learned this in Vietnam. Um. Now,
Burge is so called Midnight Crew had had an incredibly
high rate of solving crimes. And he has an incredibly
(06:17):
high rate of quote unquote solving crimes because he's just
torturing random black people until they confess. Um. And you know,
it's it's not like people don't know he's doing this.
There's there's a detective in the seventies who like walks
in on Burde torturing a guy, and he goes through
superiors and it's like Burgess, Burgess torturing these people and
that detective gets reprimanded and were reprimanded for like reporting
(06:39):
the torture and transferred another area. So Burge gets promoted
to sergeant in nineteen seventy seven and then again to
lieutenant in nineteen eighty, and he gets he gets put
in charge of the newly formed violent crimes unit, and
from from from this position, his rate of terror intensifies.
And so so in nineteen eight two, someone shoots two
(06:59):
white cops. And you know, this is one of one
of the sort of classic police things. Anytime a cop
dies the the the police department just goes fucking ballistic.
Yeah yeah, And and in this case with with with
virgin charge, he basically turns the entire South Side into
what can only be described as a fascist police state. Um,
(07:21):
here's this is. This is from the Chicago police torture scandal,
illegal and political history. In in Cuoney's Law review, police
kicked down doors and terrorized scores of African Americans. And
what Jesse Jackson of Operation Push Push and Raynald Robinson
if the Afro American police lead condemned as quote martial
law that smacked of Nazi Germany. Thirteen witnesses were smothered
(07:43):
with bags and threatened with bolt cutters and ursion as
detectives took several young men who they were only suspected
to be the killers to police headqure horders and tortured them.
And I mean they're just like you know that they're
buzzing down people's doors or dragging people away out in
the middle of the night. They do this for about
five days before they arrest two brothers and who again
had nothing to do with this. They just decided that
(08:03):
these two were the guys and tortured just the absolute
shit out of him. Um one of the brothers, Andre Wilson.
But before Birds even gets there, because this is the
everything about Birds. It's not just birds, right like everyone
he's like around him, he's also a torturer. It's just
birds sort of, you know, but Bird is the guy
like directing a lot of it. So even before he
(08:24):
gets there, Yeah, like Wilson gets like he's burned with
a cigarette lighter, he gets strangled with the bag over
his head again, and they just like beat him a
bunch of times, and then it gets even worse. Um
Burgs Like you know, but Birds, that's the thing where
he likes he straps him to the to the electric box, right,
but he also straps him against the radiator. And you
(08:45):
know these are like old Chicago steam radiators. Right. If
you touch, if you like touch them even briefly, you
get burned. And so yeah, he straps into a radiator
and every time he like gets shocked, he jerks back
into the radiator, it gets burned. Yeah. I have a
friend who get a second degree burn and just from
like briefly touching one of those things. Yeah, yeah, I
mean it's basically it's basically tying someone to an oven.
(09:06):
It's turns. Yeah, it's it is breasttaking in humanity on
a scale that is yeah, pop esque. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's it's it's real. It's real cops shit. Um, it's
for sure real cop shit. Yeah. So here here here's
(09:27):
an interview, uh with Wilson. There's an excerpt of one
from from the book Writing from the World of Policing.
Wilson said that Berg cranked the generator, sending nine thousand,
two hundred volts of electricity into his body. He put
it on my fingers, Wilson explained, one of the clamps
and one finger and one of the other finger, and
then he kept cranking it and cranking it, and I
was hollering and screaming. I was calling for help. My
(09:49):
teeth was grinding, flickering in my head. Pain, it hurts,
Wilson continued, But it stays in your head. Okay, it
stays in your head, and it grinds your teeth. It
grinds constantly, grinds constantly. The pain just stays in your
head and your teeth cut constantly, grinds and grinds and
grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds. Now, Wilson. They
(10:12):
do this to Wilson for like a day, and he
doesn't confess. He he refuses to confess because he didn't
do it, and so he goes to like they bring
him in front of a family prosecutor and Wilson tells
the prosecutor that he's being tortured, and you know, it's
incredibly obvious he's being tortured, like there's just there's marks
all over's body, like his his face is destroyed. And
(10:32):
the prosecutor sends him back to Burge, who tortures him more.
And but by the time Burge is done with him,
Wilson is so visibly fucked up that the police lock
up keeper like takes a look at it, like takes
one look at him and goes, I'm not going to
be a part of this and refuses to put him
in lock up Cook County Jails. Like Director of Medical
(10:53):
Services um sends a letter going like, this man was
tortured to the police. Here we found a human being. Yeah, yeah,
well you know, and it's like every one once every like,
i don't know, maybe like a hundred pages of reading
about this, you find one person who is a normal
human being. Unfortunately, the state's attorney, instead of prosecuting Burge
for again attaching attaching a man's balls to a hand
(11:16):
create generator and then electrocuting him, uh, the state prosecutor
and the police superintendent both publicly congratulate Burde for his work. Yeah,
Andrew Wilson, mean while died in prison in two thousand seven,
because this world is just the worst. Yeah. Now, you
(11:39):
might be asking yourself, how does he get away with this?
And the answer is that the CPD is complicit in
burdges torture at literally every level. Every attempt to stop
Burge is derailed directly by the departments. And not only
is he not stopped, he's repeatedly praised and promoted for
his actions. And yeah, that's how it goes. Yep, it's
(12:01):
it's great. It's it's it's an institutionalized system of torture,
rape and murder. That. Yeah, it's like that. We have
us a little ABU grade home. But yeah, I don't worry,
we will well, I guess we won't actually get tob
with grades specifically, but I can, I can do, I
can I can do an UPI grave tie in at
the end of this part. So, the CPD has something
(12:25):
they call the Code of Silence, And we'll talk about
this more later, but basically, the core of the Code
of Silence is that just no matter what crimes, what atrocities,
what just inhuman pig horrors you see cops committing you,
stay silent. Now. This code, you know, it's it's it's
a code that everyone sort of knows right in the police,
but it's also directly enforced um and and it's enforced
(12:47):
by the stuff Burdge would do, like just to other cops,
Like he would do things like if there was a
cop who was like unhappy with him. He would like
walk up behind them when they're opening a file cabinet
and point a gun at their head and then go
like bang and then do this like a thing that
I can really only describe as a supervillain monologue about
how like the projects are a dangerous place, maybe you're
gonna turn up dead. It's he also he has these
(13:11):
street files that he keeps on like other cops families,
so that if if another cop like goes after him,
he can have their family arrested and then plant evidence
on them. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, it's it's like,
you know, like in a certain like he's doing this
to other cops, and it's like, well, okay, like you
know what, like what what possible? Like system of of
(13:34):
of accountability quote on court or police reform is like
ever going to do anything to a guy who will
just do this two cops like and you know, with
the CPD actively backing him there, there's there's nothing that
can stop Burge. And I should mention here that there's
persistent rumors that Burge as a klansmen um I I
couldn't find like firm confirmation of it. He's he's certainly
(13:56):
racist enough, but but I think, yeah, but like why
would he why would he spend like that's that feels
like almost he would be like why would I waste
my time doing that, like talking about being racist when
I can go out and torture people because I'm a
racist every day, Like the clan already got it going on. Yeah,
and I think it's sometimes like, yeah, the question is immaterial.
He is a member of the Chicago Police Department, an
(14:18):
organization is systematic racial terror, the likes of which the
modern Clan can only dream of. Yeah, that's whatever. Yeah, Yeah,
it's like who cares he's he's he's jumper. Honestly, if
he were spending time at clan matings, at least he
wouldn't be torturing people during the time. Yeah, it's yeah,
love love, love your police. When if he was a
(14:40):
klansman that might have been slightly better. I mean that's
the big thing with like this type of like liberal
response to the type of extremism. It's like they only
view it as a problem if you're like explicitly part
of this, you know, like it's like very obvious to
everyone white nationalist group, right, they can watch a cop
do all these horrible things that's fine, that's just a cop.
(15:01):
But if he's a clan member, then that's a problem.
Like they can excuse all this horrible torture and not
really be concerned about it. But if but if he
had a robots closet, then it's suddenly this big issue.
It's like no, like the issue is that he was
doing all this torture anyway, and he doesn't like this.
You don't need to focus on like just the like
(15:23):
just that identity, like that weird identity aspect of it. Yeah,
the the clan is old enough and where's a uniform
that is distinct enough that everybody recognizes is it as racist?
Even though the Chicago Police Department is actually much more
of a threat in terms of racism than the clan today,
(15:43):
uh and was at that point in time. But you know,
they're the cops, and if you're a suburban white liberal,
they're there too, you know, help help keep your lawn
safe or whatever. Um, So you don't you don't see
them as the same inherently racial organization exactly, even though
they are. Yeah, and even though I mean they're dragging
people out of their homes and like just electrocuting them,
(16:04):
like this is you know, this is this something also
that I was very annoyed about when I was reading
this was like you read a lot of this stuff
and then and you'll you'll get descriptions of it that
are like, ah, this is something that only happens in
the pressure regimes like Kazakhstan. It's like, have you read
anything of the US like this is like yeah, like
we have the officers over to other countries that often
(16:26):
teach their police how to do ship like this that happens.
But when you were describing a whole bunch of stuff
in the past, like you know, twenty minutes, I was
thinking in my head and like, oh, yeah, this is
just like stormtrooper ship. But the thing is it isn't
like this just is cop shit. And like, like the
thing like the fact of like elevating it in my
(16:46):
brain to it being like something other than cops is incorrect.
You know, like this just is police stuff. It's not
it's not necessarily stormtroopers ship. It's just is police ship.
And the fact that those things are so synonymous that
should be the part that's actually like upsetting is that yeah,
it's actually there is really no difference, and you shouldn't
necessarily resort to calling its stormtrooper stuff, because it is
(17:08):
just what the police do all the time. There's this
whole model you see people talking about it where they
talk about like like the police are using unnecessary force,
and like they're there there there's like a certain threshold
(17:29):
where if you go past it, like you know, sort
of like like even you know, like I'm gonna I'm
gonna read like that. The birch has a lot of
like when when he winds up in court, like the
judges look at this and they're like, oh my god,
this is unacceptable. How could this have happened? And you know,
you get some good descriptions of it. I'm gonna this
is a district judge court describing what bird is doing.
In the early eighties, there existed in two in the
(17:51):
City of Chicago, at factual policy practice and or a
custom of Chicago police officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment
against persons who they alleged had killed her injured a
fellow officer. This revenge and punishment included beating, kicking, torturing, shooting,
and or executing such a person for the purpose of
inflicting pain to injury and punishment on that person and
(18:11):
also for the purpose of forcing that person to make it.
Coupled tory statements. Exculpatory, yeah, sculptor yeah, inculpatory yeah yeah yeah.
You know, and you get stuff like there's there's there's
an FBI report than from the chocolate tripe you're I'm
going to read because it's he left one bullet in
(18:32):
the center and the cylinder and spun it. A report
quoted the inmate is saying about Burge in the nine incident.
He then said, you talk, will blow your black EXPELTI
presumably the N word brains out. Burge then got up
from his desk, walked over to the inmate, put the
muzzle of the revolver against the center of the inmate's
forehead and pulled the trigger. He spun the cylinder and
(18:55):
placed it back against his forehead and pulled the trigger again. So, yeah,
he's just playing Russian Roulette with people, like he's playing it.
I don't. I don't think. Yeah, well he's pulling up
one in the sixth chance of murdering them. They are
in terror. Uh. There's also a lot of like he
(19:19):
does like you sexually abuses people he like he going
after testicles. Yeah he he like he electrocuted like well,
I mean he's also like is like like basically like
raping people. Um, he like electrocutes a thirteen year old child.
And you know this is like it's it's it's just
(19:41):
so bleak that like, I mean, there's so there's a
very famous article about this by Chicago journalists called the
House of Screams. But you know, like like Burge isn't
the only guy doing this, Like one of his loyalists
is lieutenant like is a guy named Byron. He's like
in charge of the midnight shift at that the Aera
Tree Violent Crimes. And they become known internally as burgess
(20:02):
ask kickers at the A Team because this is just
who these people are culturally, and yeah sure sure, but yeah,
um these guys start uh like putting like guns and
prisoners mouths. But they have one thing where they stick
a shotgun in a guy's mouth and they pull the
trigger and it's not loaded, but they's like they keep
(20:23):
doing this thing. Yeah, it's it's that is by the way,
illegal in international law, like internationally, that is a war
crime if you're military to specifically fake executions are a
type of torture and a a war crime under international
law based on treaties the United States has signed. Yeah,
and and Byron also, so if he does that a lot.
(20:46):
And then that same guy, the same guy put the
shotgun thing too. He apparently didn't have the box, so
he stripped the dude and shocked his balls with a
cattle prod. And this is the guy who Lord Lightfoot
sent her number two lawyer to defend in court and
by arguing the torture it never happens. Yeah, that's that's
that's that's ability. Yep, that's the mayor of my city.
(21:07):
Now Life Life Foot. Light Foot is on the record
as saying that birds tortured over a hundred people. But
once it came to, you know, actually putting up or
shutting up, she just goes to back for the cops.
And and this happens in Chicago just so many times
with people who used to be like who you know
who who in the moment I'm like, oh, bird did torture.
We need to reform the police. And it's you know,
(21:28):
the women, they get into power, they do this stuff.
I mean, there there's there's much of like incredibly weird
stuff that happens here, Like so that the Seventh Circuit
Core of Appeals at one point, so saul A like
they saw a case over whether a one thousand dollars
settlement with a torture victim was fair, and yeah, in court,
(21:51):
it's like you read the transcas of it and it's
like it's it's the most brutal demolishing of like a
state's argument I've ever seen. Like they're they're they're just
like in court asking them like okay, like we're we're
we're this person's judge is supposed to have like known
in court that he was also torturing other people. And
they're like it's you know, the courts just like you know,
(22:13):
they're turning him apart. And then when it comes time
to decide the case, uh, the court tosses the case
out inside with the state. Wow. Yeah, I don't know
what's going on there. It's awful. Yep. This I mean
that that is the thing about the way the whole
(22:33):
system works, which is that you know, the police do
horrific things. In Chicago, they torture. In Los Angeles, they
have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of different
horrible ship the police do, and then at some point
the FBI and the Justice Department come in and they
provide incredibly They send in very talented investigators who produce
incredibly detailed lists of all of the things that are
(22:55):
being done. And then the court says, well, but nobody's
gonna get punished, or maybe this one I will get punished,
and then we'll go on back to doing things, and
that the system is supposed to work, although we're we're
going to read a story about the FBI not doing
that in the next episode. So yeah, I mean they
don't know. We don't always get a report. Yeah, I
just I have become increased, Like it's very frustrating because
(23:18):
having these FBI reports on police abuses um is useful
again for talking to liberals because they tend to trust
the FBI, But it's also like, boy, I've read a
lot of detailed FBI reports about how bad police departments are,
and it seems like nothing ever gets done. Like it
seems like they just write a thing saying yeah, it's bad,
and then everything continues forever and it's you know this
(23:40):
this case, Like so the reason we even know any
of this is through what I like what I will say,
like the a genuinely heroic, decades long campaign run by
the People's Law Office on behalf of Birdge victims and
these people, like they say people's lives like that there
are people who Birdge tortured, who ended up on death
row for it. And you know, like this stuff is
(24:02):
so bad that when it comes out, the Supreme Court
does a ruling on it and it like establishes new
precedents for like how people can prove they've been tortured.
Like you know, it's so bad that like Illinois stops
running the death pet like we had the death penalty
and like we still tend to get ethic have it,
but like we just stopped doing it, like we stopped
we stopped executing people because like a Republican governor like
(24:24):
on air, gave a giant thing about how this system
was broken and like this is this is John Ryan, right,
like this is a man who like he he is
like this is a man who was corrupted by the
standards of of of an Illinois politician. And even he
like on the air, is like, yeah, this is like
you know that this is this is broken. He he
(24:45):
pardons the Burge victims and in nine three, faced with
just irrefutable evidence of torture and ruling multiple higher ports,
higher courts, the Police board finally released a report, although
the report also doesn't call it torture and is a
disaster that they finally have Burge fired and some of
his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended for
(25:06):
fifteen months. But Burge isn't prosecuted for, you know, the
crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing until
two after the victims literally go to the United Nations
with a campaign and go in front of the United
Nations and talk about how they are being systemically tortured
by the Chicogo Police Department. But of course by two
the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out,
(25:28):
so uh, he winds up going to jail for three
statue of limitations on torture. Yeah, that's definitely one of
the ones we should have a cap on. Yeah, definitely,
it's great. It's it's it's a great system. Um. I'm
going to read something from the Chogol Tribune that was
a description of of this uh quote. While the jury
was out, Burge, still unrepentant, allegedly asked the courtroom reserve
or whether he thought the jury would quote believe a
(25:50):
bunch of n words. Wow, awesome, Yeah, it's great bridge.
Bridge tortured at least a hundred and twenty five people.
That's almost certainly an under account. Under twenty five is
the number of people who we have who have come forward.
A lot of those people probably have, like people he tortured,
have probably died by now. Um, yeah, I mean yeah,
(26:11):
you'll never will never get an accurate account of all
the people who were Yeah, and and Burge died of
freeman and has never served a day for his actual crimes. Now, now,
burg and his crew are the most famous of the
(26:32):
eighties and seventies and eighties torturers, but they're by no
means the earth the only one. And we're gonna talk
about one more in this torture section. Uh if you
do you know Richard Zuli? Mm hmm okay, so yeah,
Zuli's Zulie is the one that people tend not to know. Um.
Zuli was also a Vietnam War vet, and he becomes
a detective in nineteen Um, what's interesting about him? Zuli
(26:54):
is never part of burgess cadre. Right, Burgess Cadres working
out very at they're on the south side. They're in
an over black part of the outside. Zuli works in
areas three and six on the north side. You know
what what what I what need to mention off the
bat is that Zuli is no less racist than Burge is.
He wants to rest in a black dude for just
like having a car and wearing a watch and like
(27:15):
like those are both felonies in the City of Chicago. Right, Well,
if you famously never know what time it is because
you're a law abiding citizen, Yeah, well it law abiding
cit isn't And also don't be black while doing this
because yeah, he throws him in a cell. Yeah, well
it gets it gets you, Zuli screaming no end word
(27:36):
is supposed to live like this? Oh boy, oh boy,
it's you know we we people like talk about cops
doing stuff for that reason, but it's it's, you know,
they're so racist. Just get a direct quote. Yeah, like
I can't emphasize it, Like they're just they're so racist.
(27:57):
It's like ingrained into the like the cop d NA. Yeah,
they're just saying the loud part loud. Yeah, Like they're
just scrimmy like that we're gonna do with one of
the things the next episode is the cops will just
drive around like blasting the end, we're out of their
out of their like cops stereos. Because yeah, now, Zuli
in a lot of ways, is a more modern torture
(28:18):
than burdges. You know, Birch is very big on your
like overt physical violence, right, you're beating your execution and suffocation.
The problem with these techniques from a torture of perspective
that they leave incredibly obvious marks. And you know, this
is how birde goes down, right, It's it's too obvious
what he's doing. There are people who can just like
show up to a court and be like, hey, look
at my neck, like here all these burns. Zuli is
(28:39):
much smarter about it. Um, you know she. I mean,
she does some beatings because cops are literally animals and
are incapable of resisting the urge to beat the living
share of anyone who falls into their grasp. But you know,
mostly what he does is he does things like he'll
just shackle someone to a wall for twenty four hours,
and you know, and he'll be like, okay, like I'm
gonna shock you to this wall and until you sign
this confession, I won't let you leave. And also you
(29:00):
can't talk to anyone. You can't talk to a layer,
you can't talk to uh, like you can't talk to
your family. And in the next episode we see this.
This is how modern CPD torture works, except zuli Is
doing this in like the eighties. Now. Zuli Is is
a naval intelligence officer who's so he's still technically in
the reserves, which he joins the cops. And that meant
when the CIA's torture is like Autnomo bas stalled out,
(29:22):
they needed a hero and that hero was zuli Um.
Zuli Is was the most active. Like that the thing
is the most active in is the torture of Mohammadu
Old Sali, who is famously known as the most tortured
manic guatanamo. Um he's yeah, at least he gotten a guinness.
Yeah he yeah. They do sleep deprivation. I mean they
(29:47):
so some of it's like the standards sort of like
get most stuff, which is like they don't let you sleep.
They blast like sounds until your cell all the time.
They like beat you. There's molestations and but there's also
stuff that's like like you know, the tharnt of attack
my dogs, but like the whole do things like like
he'll like soap people, like get soaked in ice water,
(30:09):
or like they stuffed him in this like straight jacket
thing that didn't let him breathe properly and then stuffed
it full of ice. And then Zuli also, yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's bad. And he also like threatens to
kidnap his mother and have resent to Guantanamo to be
raped because these people are again jazz monsters. And yeah,
Zuli is still alive today and romes the street as
(30:31):
a freeman, having received literally no consequences whatsoever for being
a torturer. So good in the CPD that the CIA
was like, we're gonna bring this guy into the torture.
That's great, it's great. It's ye yep. And and that
that that brings us to our first interlude, which is
(30:52):
every year Chicago police officers go to the grave of
the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton,
who they assassinated in a police rate after drugging him
ninety nine um. They go to his grave to shoot
his fucking tombstone. They do this literally every year, their families.
They keep getting your tombstones. They shoot them every they
shoot them every year. It just doesn't matter. Uh, the
CPD just keeps shooting it. And there's a quote from
(31:14):
the Great Tree to Daddy and marchis historian C. L. R. James,
and I think about a lot that goes when history
is written as it ought to be written. It is
the moderation and long patients of the masses at which
people will will wonder, not their ferocity. Yep. I really
hope there's a moment of people doing things to cops
that makes generations in the future marvel at their ferocity. Yeah.
(31:37):
I think I can say that without it legally being incitement. Yes.
I'll make one other fun note, which is that five
Chicago police officers died last year from COVID. So that's good. Yeah,
let's make it fifty Officer Dowd. Look, they're working on it.
They don't they won't wear masks. Vacinated critical support to
the Chicago police who don't wear masks. Ye, they're they're they're,
(31:58):
they're they're they're they're having their Lease Academy exams in person. Now,
oh that's good, that's fine, you know, critical support. Yeah,
it's spent more time indoors together without masks. Guys, avoid
those vaxes. Yeah yeah, great, will happen. Okay, So story two,
(32:20):
which is a shorter one, but no less bleak, I think.
On October fourteen, officer Jason van Dyke fired sixteen shots
at Lakwen McDonald, who had turned around and was walking
away from him. Here's from the people of the state
of Illinois. Walking away aggressively, Chris, Yeah, oh boy, violently exiting. Yeah,
(32:44):
I walking away while black, which I guess in the
minds of like half of the United States, is someone
a court defended legal right to shoot people in the
back who are trying to its Yeah, yeah, great country,
We're nailing it. From from the Chicago Tribune and analysis
of the video and this is this is from the
(33:06):
court case, but in thee an analysis of the video
establishes that fourteen to fifteen seconds passed from the time
the defendants Van Dyke fired his first shot to clear
visual confirmation of the final shot. For approximately thirteen of
those seconds, McDonald is lying on the ground, so he
he fires literally every bullet in he's gone at a
(33:27):
man who is, by those like second shots lying dead,
like well he's not quite dead yet, but like lying
on the ground. It's just Yeah, from the cops perspective,
like why not like that? That's like, that's like like
they have the ability to do that if they get
the chance, Oh I get to kill a black person
and it doesn't matter, then why, like you know, that's
(33:48):
like if you if you you have to you have
to think through like what they're actually processing this as.
And they don't see them as like a they don't
see them as like an equivalent human life. So it
doesn't like it's it's they don't. It doesn't you can't
like apply the same rules of civility that like we
should all kind of agree upon because cops have such
(34:12):
a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at the top,
that they can never actually exist within any kind of
humane society. That's why again unspeakable ferocity of the masses
fingers crossed one day. Yeah, yeah, well you know, and
I think the thing, you know, Okay, so look, if
(34:34):
this is the price of liberal democracy, right, if if
you're going to if you're going to live in a
society that has like you know that that where laws
are enforced by the police, the police are going to
murder people. Like that's that that that's what you're signing
on for. And I think that I think that's an
absolutely unacceptable price. And but we shouldn't do this. Um now.
The other aspect of this is because you have to
(34:56):
keep all of these just absolutely like just bloodthirsty burderers
on the leash. And because also all the people who
are actually in the governments are just genuinely the asplicable
human beings. Uh, immediately after I mean like really before
the shots have stopped firing, like there's a cover up
that stretches from like includes everyone from the officers on
(35:18):
the scene all the way up to may Ram Emmanuel.
So for example, mysteriously none of the multiple dashboard cameras
on the scene we're recording audio for reasons only the
discerning listener can guess at yep, like everyone across the
entire chain of command again going right up to the
Mayor's office immediately goes we we cannot let this video
get out because it's it's so bad that even the
(35:40):
CPD is like, this is gonna look bad for us,
because the thing gets out, then people will want to
do bad things to cops and they can't have that.
And you know, so this this, this, this, this tape
is concealed for over a year until the journalist Brandon
Smith like literally gets a like sues them and literally
(36:03):
gets the judge to like order the state to release it.
And while this is going on that the cops are
doing this massive pr blitz featuring this just like incredible
pack of racist lies, including that McDonald had lunge forage
yet Van Dyke with a knife. No, he didn't, he
was literally walking away from them. That McDonald had a gun,
which is inititing one because not only like they didn't
even have time to like plant like they killed him
(36:24):
so fast, they didn't have time to plant a gun
on him, like there's no gun. But the multiple officers
will are are like you can you can find news
things of them talking about how this guy, oh, he
had a gun. It's like there's no gun. Um. Yeah.
The classic one is that like Van Dyke feared for
his life and uh no he didn't. He probably should now,
but he does not. Yeah, he should never. He should
(36:45):
never live awaking or sleeping moments where he's not in
constant fear of someone cutting his head off, just as
like in terms of the hoard or that should be
imbued inside people who do these things, they should never
like they shouldn't be able to like sit down and
be comfort bowl. The closest we've ever gotten into justice
for one of these guys is when that mobs surrounded uh,
(37:07):
Derek Chauvin's house and it would have been actual justice
if they had gotten through the door. Yep, yeah, it's yeah,
so you know all and the ever like so there's
there's there's this huge coterie of cops. We're all just
lying about this. They're lying in the press. They're lying
just there lying. They they start they lie like on
the stand um and you know, the strategy works for
(37:30):
a while because his country is just the racistellhole until
the court forces him to release the video. And when
it becomes clear of the video is going to come out,
the state immediately charges him like they charged him and
then later that day they released a video. Now, now
keep this in mind, they had this video for a
fucking year. What it's all, it's all fake and you know, yeah,
and they only charged him with the alternative was literally
(37:51):
being run into the Sea by an entire mob of
the literally the entire population of Chicago. Um so van
Dyke suspended without pay, right, but he immediately gets hired
by the by the police union. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
makes sense. Yeah, and and Van Dyke Van Dyke. Eventually,
I mean, he goes down. Eventually he gets convicted of
you know, second green murder and sixteen counts of amated battery.
(38:13):
But you know, there's a there's a later report that
describes the involvement of sixteen other officers in the cover up.
U Four officers were eventually fired for lying about the case,
three were tried for the cover up and acquitted, and
four officers were given a one week suspension for the
mysterious lack of camera audio. Honestly, more that more than
usually happens expected. Yeah, well, I mean this is like
(38:36):
this video is so bad that like this video is
so I mean, raw Emmanuel doesn't really, I mean, he
that the consequence he suffers is that he decides not
to run again because it will be bad for him.
But Raw Emmanuel is currently now that his his consequence
is that he's the American ambassador to Japan and death.
You know, I I will also say this, The people
(38:58):
of Japan do not deserve raw Emmanuel. The Liberal Democratic Party,
on the other hand, are maybe the only people on
earth who actually deserve him. Like, if you didn't want
us to palm rob Mammanuel off on you, you shouldn't
have taken all that CIA money in the fifties and
sixties and let them run your political campaigns. So Liberal
Democratic Party lie down with dogs, get fleas um. But yeah,
Jason van Dyke was released from prison two weeks ago
(39:19):
after serving less than half a sentence. Mcwam McDonald's remains dead. Yeah.
The really depressing part is that that is more consequences
than usually ever happens, and that that only happened because of,
you know, like an incredible amount of organization. And like
I think of all of the times where there is
(39:40):
no video. I think of all the times where there's
nothing and things just happened, no one watches it, and
then dead bodies get kicked into a ditch yum And
that's way more common than anything where there's type of
like recordings or even where there needs to be cover ups.
You know, you you both are probably too young for
this movie. But in one of the trains formers movies
after they beat all the bad transformers. Okay, where the
(40:06):
navy lifts them all up and drops them into the sea. Yes,
what if we did that with the Chicago Police department.
Just drop them in the sea, big old, big old
them up, drop him in the sea. Now we put
them in a bag. There's no swimming. Okay, that's fair. Look,
look they one one, they get one bag individual, Each
(40:27):
individual gets one bag for each bag they put over
someone's head and strangled them with. I think that's fair,
and then right into the sea and solves all problems.
The blessing like I do, I do genuinely want to say,
is that like if if you read the story over
and over and over and over again, you get people
who are like you get the governor going like the
(40:48):
system is fundamentally broken to must reformat. You get the
courts saying the system is fundamentally broken and bust reformat
and it never changes. They just keep killing people, they
keep inslaving people, they keep doing like, they keep troaturing people,
they keep murdering people, they keep raving people, and this
will not end until you abolish the police, Like there
is no alternative if you if your car is fun
(41:12):
is broken on a fundamental level, you can't you can't
reform your car to make it better. There's a certain
point where it's total and you're like, well, I guess
that kind of It's like Asian block is shattered and
you're like, we fixes the tires, so it ought to
go now. No, it's like if it's broken on the
fundamental level, you can't reform it. Those words like those
(41:34):
words don't go together, yea, Like throw out, throw out
your car and build a train. That's that's what you
have to do. Walk to get a bicycle, honestly, Like, yeah,
I stuck a bottle onto the rail of my a
R fifteen, so it's not a gun anymore. Like no,
(41:54):
it's it's still is gone. Yea. This is really really
sad um and it's good stuff. Pretty depressing. Um. Anyway,
I'm gonna go watch two thousand Eights The Dark Night
and feel, uh, feel great about myself. Yeah, all right,
(42:16):
Well that's gonna do it for us that it could
happen here today until next time. Uh. I hope that
more Chicago police officers get COVID there there is that
there's that fun scene in the Dark Night where the
joker goes into the Chicago Police building and blows up
the prison block with all those cops inside. That is
(42:36):
that is a fun scene. Yeah. Anyway, Um, It Could
Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here,
(42:57):
updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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