The hidden: how Chicago police kept thousands isolated at Homan Square

[friendly_iconoclast]

Source: Guardian (UK)

For nearly two decades, when Chicago’s police brought people under arrest to their detentions and interrogations warehouse, not even the vast majority of the police force knew where they were, according to an internal memo acquired by the Guardian.

Homan Square, a warehouse complex headquartering narcotics, vice and intelligence units for the Chicago police, has also served as a secretive facility for detaining and interrogating thousands of people without providing access to attorneys and with little way for their loved ones to find them. Records documenting the presence of someone at Homan Square, especially while they are there, have existed largely outside Chicago police’s electronic records system.

Now, documents and evidence from senior officers have for the first time disclosed detailed official accounts of how police based at the unit were able to operate – and how it was almost impossible to tell who was being held inside.

Depositions of senior officers, memorandums for the current police chief and other internal police records portray Chicago police procedures and record-keeping that obscured visibility into Homan Square’s apparatus of detentions, both to the public and even to police themselves.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/homan-square-chicago-police-records-secret-interrogation-facility-new-documents-lawsuit

[cstanleytech]

1. More and more I am leaning towards an order that revokes the pensions for any retired or current

officer who was involved in this.

[LiberalFighter]

3. I'm past the leaning stage. It needs to happen.

And they need to get rid of Holman Square. As far as I am concerned they used lack of space as an excuse that was not justified.

[Human101948]

2. Like when people disappeared into Lubayenka...

http://images-resrc.staticlp.com/S=W750M,H450M,U/O=85/

In the 1930s Lubyanka Prison was the feared destination of thousands of innocent victims of Stalin’s purges. Today the grey building looming on the northeastern side of Lubyanskaya pl is no longer a prison, but is the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, or Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti . The FSB keeps a pretty good eye on domestic goings on. The building is not open to the public.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/russia/moscow/sights/architecture/lubyanka-prison#ixzz45k7bl7yx

[friendly_iconoclast]

4. Or the ESMA, in Buenos Aires:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Petty-Officers_School_of_Mechanics

The Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (in Spanish, Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada, commonly referred to by its acronym ESMA[1]), was originally an educational facility of the Argentine Navy. It was used as an illegal, secret detention center during the so-called National Reorganization Process (Dirty War) of Argentina's 1976–1983 military dictatorship.

The original ESMA was a complex located at 8151 Libertador Avenue, in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, in the barrio of Nuñez. It was the seat of U.T.3.3.2—Unidad de Tareas (Task Unit) 2 of G.T.3.3 (es)[2]–which was responsible for thousands of instances of forced disappearance, torture and illegal execution. The military took the babies born to mothers imprisoned there, suppressed their true identities and allowed them to be illegally adopted by military families and associates of the regime. ESMA was the largest detention center of its kind during the Dirty War.

The National Congress passed a law on 5 August 2004 that converted the ESMA complex into a museum, the Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Espacio para la Memoria y para la Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos). Since 2014 plans are also made for the campus to house a second museum, this time, to honor the military personnel killed and wounded during the Falklands War, since several of its alumni and 230 students fought in the conflict.

The School, once again legitimate, was renamed Escuela de Suboficiales de la Armada (acronym ESSA; English: Navy Petty-Officers' School) in 2001, and moved in 2005 to the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base,[3] 28 km from the city of Bahía Blanca, and about 600km southwest of Buenos Aires.

[PSPS]

5. This analysis piece doesn't belong in LBN.

[Octafish]

6. The Constitution doesn't apply to what the secret government does.

It's OK to hold citizens indefinitely without trail in war time because the War on Terror is forever

Secret government policies profit secret agents. And that's all right with them.