The Logical Libertarian

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

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. 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.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.

Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.

Shackling for prolonged periods.

Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.

Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those 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.

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

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Sleeping 7-Year-Old Girl Shot in Head During No-Knock Police Raid on Wrong Home

A Special Response Team shattered a family’s window in the middle of the night, hurled a flashbang onto a couch next to a sleeping girl, then charged in and shot her in the head.  The hyper-aggressive tactics were made worse by the fact that police had taken it upon themselves to raid both sides of a duplex, when their suspect was only known to reside in one of them.

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On the evening of May 16, 2010, the Detroit Police Department’s Special Response Team (SRT) prepared for a surprise raid to arrest a wanted man. A surveillance unit had been monitoring the duplex in which he lived throughout the day and a no-knock raid was scheduled for just after midnight.

Police staged a so-called “safety briefing” shortly before the raid; undoubtedly focusing on their own safety rather than the safety of unknown innocents behind the doors they were about to kick in. Officers were briefed that they’d be entering a “possible dope den,” in which the suspect “might be armed” and might even possess “dangerous dogs.”

Police neglected to account for — or flatly disregarded — the safety of any potential children that might be present. Besides the glaring presence of toys strewn about the lawn and front porch, it is unlikely that investigators could have missed the presence of four young children and multi-generational family in the opposite unit during their surveillance of the duplex.

The raid commenced at roughly 12:40 a.m.  The Special Response Team arrived in its armored vehicle with a warrant to arrest Chauncey Owens, who was known to stay with his fiancée at 4056 Lillibridge Street.

Armed with MP5 submachine guns, adrenaline, and an unhealthy fear for officer safety, the raiders shuffled past the toys that littered the front yard and ignored the two distinct street address signs hanging on either side of the shared porch of the multi-unit building; 4056 was on the left, 4054 was on the right.

A man named Mark Robinson was detained on the sidewalk while walking his dog, just before the raid. He repeatedly told officers, “There are children in the house,” yet his warnings went unheeded. He was pinned to the ground with officers’ boots on his neck and back, reported attorney Geoffrey Fieger.

The raid team was accompanied by an embedded cable TV crew, filming for A&E’s “The First 48.” With full bravado, the SRT put on a display of maximum force for the fans of police-state-adoring reality television.

Without warning, officers simultaneously attempted to breach entrances of two discrete living units of the duplex: the suspects’ location and the neighboring residence. What occurred at 4054 Lillibridge — where the suspect did NOT live — would be devastating.

In mere seconds, masked police officers stormed the porch and smashed the window of the neighbors’ downstairs apartment. They immediately tossed in a concussion grenade and kicked down the door. An officer discharged his rifle, and an innocent little girl named Aiyana Stanley-Jones was dead.

Amateur footage shot from the exterior of the building shows how quickly the raid unfolded.

Partial video from outside the home at the link.

That was in 2011. What became of the officer who shot and killed this little girl in her sleep, and the department who organized such a dysfunctional raid?

Naturally, because of their status as agents of the state, the department and superiors faced no consequences. The officer who shot the little girl, Joseph Weekley, was initially charged with “involuntary manslaughter.” Which is something you may be charged with if you’re pushing your lawnmower over a bunch of rocks and one rock gets slung across the yard and nails a bystander between the eyes. But entering a home and shooting a child in the head when you’ve supposedly received incredible training and you belong to one of the group of people whose ownership and use of firearms is unquestioned? Only because of that protected status as agent of the state can someone get off so easy.

But Weekley got off even easier: last month, Wayne County Circuit Judge Cynthia Gray-Hathaway tossed the involuntary manslaughter charge.

This was Weekley’s second trial; the first, last year, ended in a hung jury.

After the prosecution rested Friday, defense attorney Steve Fishman asked Hathaway to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charge because prosecutors had failed to show that Weekley intentionally created a danger that caused the little girl’s death.

Hathaway agreed because, she said, the law required her to instruct the jury that he had acted with gross negligence, willfully putting Aiyana in harm’s way.

"Gross negligence means more than carelessness; it means willfully disregarding the safety of others," Hathaway said. "The key word here is ‘gross negligence.’ I don’t see evidence that the defendant willfully disregarded the results to others.

Pardon my anger, but when you f*cking shoot a sleeping 7-year-old in her own bed in the wrong house, I think that meets any interpretation of “gross negligence.” I’m not sure how more in harm’s way he cut have put Aiyana, and if he and the rest of the cops didn’t “intentionally [create] a danger that caused the little girl’s death,” who else raided the house in the middle of the night and pulled the trigger??

So yet again, agents of the state cleared agents of the state of wrong-doing. Yet again, the war on drugs claims another victim. Yet again, cops get away with murder.

I have three daughters from under a year to 6-years-old. I can’t imagine what grief this family must be going through. The inevitable payoff the family will receive - at taxpayer expense of course; we wouldn’t want those actually responsible to have to pay! - is a pittance, an insult, next to the life of your child. There is no price that could ever make this right.

The least we could do is stop legitimizing this outrageous police power, and stop defending police. This isn’t a few bad apples. The problem is systemic. 

Oh, what am I saying? System works great guys. Just trust the cops and the government and keep voting or something.