“That place was and is scary. It’s a scary place. There’s nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something.” – Attorney David Gaeger
As with most of these cases of egregious police abuse, the victims were disproportionately minorities. These statistics about the “disappeared” detainees were also released:
“82.2% of people detained at Homan Square were black, compared with 32.9% of the Chicago population.
11.8% of detainees in the Homan Square logs were Hispanic, compared with 28.9% of the population.
5.5% of the detainees were white, compared with 31.7% of the population.” – Guardian article.
These abuses are beyond the pale. Even worse is the lack of any booking or public records for people held at Homan Square. Attorneys detail how the police can hide clients there – there’s no way to call into the facility, and detainees are frequently not allowed their one phone call out of the facility. If even a small percentage of these allegations are true, it’s a vast departure and violation of Chicago PD’s own directives detailing the requirements on reporting and processing for all arrests.
The Chicago Police Department responded to the allegations of abuse with this statement. They assert that:
“There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square.”
Craig Futterman, a Chicago Law School Professor who studies policing, says that the exact opposite is happening:
“They’re not given access to phones, and the CPD’s admitted this until they get to lockup – but there’s no lockup at Homan Square, How do you contact a lawyer? It’s not telepathy.”
As The Guardian’s transparency lawsuit continues, we can look forward to more horrifying stories coming out as more light is shed on the Homan Square facility. Even more troubling is how the number of detainees at the facility keeps increasing with each new revelation. Also, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has overseen increased use of the facility during his time as mayor. The Guardian also has a Freedom of Information Act request pending with his office to detail his involvement with the facility.
