US Questioned on Record of Police Brutality by UN Committee Against Torture

GENEVA
May 8
In testimony before the UN Committee Against Torture today, the US government defended its record on police brutality in response to questions raised about the excessive and deadly use of TASERs, the illegal use of coerced confessions, particularly those in the Burge torture cases in Chicago, and rape and sexual abuse by law enforcement agents.

“According to the US government, all allegations of police brutality are investigated, and if the facts warrant, they are prosecuted. The reality is that prosecutions for police brutality are the exception, not the rule,” said Andrea Ritchie, a civil rights attorney from New York City.

A case in point, raised by several Committee members today, involves the torture of over 135 African Americans to secure false confessions by former Commander Jon Burge and detectives under his command at the Chicago Police Department over a twenty year period. Torture techniques used by the police officers included electrically shocking genitals with cattle prods and electric shock boxes, suffocations with plastic bags, and beatings about the body with telephone books and rubber hoses. Despite mountains of evidence and numerous judicial findings that Burge and his officers “systematically” and “methodically” tortured African Americans at police headquarters, not a single officer or official has been prosecuted.
...