Chicago Police Operate ‘Black Site’

by Goldie Taylor

 According to a report from The Guardian, the Chicago Police Department “operates an off-the-books interrogation compound.” The revelation comes as the department attempts to fend off a flurry of criticisms about policing in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

Spencer Ackerman, the national security editor for Guardian US, published the explosive story on Tuesday.

“The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units,” wrote Ackerman. “Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.”

The anonymous facility is used to interrogate witnesses and suspects outside of the purview of the legal system, and their presence is never entered into the searchable database that would indicate their location. They have no access to attorneys or their families. Detainees have included minors as young as 15.

“They just disappear,” Anthony Hill, a criminal defense attorney, told The Guardian, “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”

The warehouse was compared to a “black site,” a military term used to describe secret prisons operated by the Central Intelligence Agency outside the U.S. No one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked, according to lawyers and relatives of those who have been brought there.

While the CIA’s abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

The department refused to address questions from The Guardian and an unidentified man turned one of its reporters away last Friday. “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” he said.