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Uncovering Chicago police secrets with the man fighting Homan Square.

Oct 24 2015
It's a centralized, off-the-books, place where they can take you for hours, sometimes a day or two, keep you from your family and lawyer, if you have one, and try to extract information from you. It's primarily an intelligence gathering operation. And an intimidation operation.

Civil rights attorney Flint Taylor explains how the Chicago's Homan Square facility allows police to disappear, intimidate and torture detainees while a clueless local media nitpicks the the international newspaper that broke the story, and a cynical mayor uses evidence of police abuse to make the case for more police abuse.

Last week, Flint's law firm, the People's Law Office, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Chicago and six Chicago police officers.

 

Guest

Flint Taylor

As a law student, Flint Taylor was a founding member of the People’s Law Office and has been a partner of the PLO since 1972. As a student and lawyer, he has been dedicated to litigating against police violence and racism for more than fifty-four years. Among the landmark cases that Taylor has litigated are the Fred Hampton Black Panther case; the Greensboro, North Carolina case against the KKK, Nazis and Greensboro police; and a series of cases arising from a pattern and practice of police torture and cover-up by Chicago police Commander Jon Burge, former Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, and numerous other law enforcement officials. He has represented, and continues to represent, many wrongfully convicted persons, including police torture victims who have spent decades in prison and on death row. He has chronicled his work and that of the People’s Law Office in an award-winning historical memoir titled The Torture Machine.

 

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