Homan Square: Chicago police chief's downfall prompts calls to shutter facility
Source: The Guardian
Homan Square: Chicago police chief's downfall prompts calls to shutter facility
Garry McCarthy forced to resign over video of black teenagers death, but
politicians and activists say hearing on off-the-books black site must follow
Nicky Woolf in New York and Kevin Gosztola in Chicago
Tuesday 1 December 2015 21.46 GMT
A secretive Chicago police facility will fall under sworn public testimony for the first time in the wake of a forced resignation by the citys police chief amid a scandal over the shooting of a black teenager.
The renewed scrutiny of Homan Square an interrogation warehouse exposed by the Guardian that has been described as the equivalent of a CIA black site and now a torture chamber was immediate, stretching from national activists and the local Black Lives Matter chapter to an Illinois politician who planned to announce on Tuesday an official hearing into the site as a direct result of the firing.
The murder of Laquan McDonald and the attempted cover-up of that murder over a period of 13 months casts even more doubt on the repeated police denials of wrongdoing at Homan Square, Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin said in a statement provided to the Guardian.
As recent events have shown, when left to its own devices, the Chicago police department will revert to a culture that suppresses wrongdoing and protects wrongdoers, added Boykin. He has repeatedly pressed Barack Obamas administration to examine a facility where his former chief aide and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has said his police follow all the rules despite more than 20 people who have come forward with claims of unconstitutional abuse and detention.
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/01/homan-square-public-testimony-chicago-police-chief-resignation