Was Janet Reno Unconcerned about Chicago Police Torture?

Carol Marin of The Chicago Sun-Times reports on infamous Chicago Police Commander John Burge and police torture:

In 1990, OPS investigator Michael Goldston catalogued 50 cases of alleged police torture. The department suppressed his report and made Goldston's life a living hell. Thanks to a court order, the report was finally made public in 1992.

It was front-page news for a minute. But nobody, including the mainstream press, law enforcement, state or federal prosecutors or the judiciary did much of anything to demand answers. There were exceptions, of course. John Conroy of the Reader relentlessly reported on police torture. And civil rights attorneys suh as Flint Taylor of the People's Law Office fought constantly to get someone to listen.

That includes the U.S. attorney's office. Taylor had meetings in 1989 with federal prosecutors in Chicago and with then-Attorney General Janet Reno back in the '90s. A delegation that included U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and Judge R. Eugene Pincham went to Washington to talk to her.

"We told her about torture," Taylor said last week. "She was very attentive but noncommittal." She was hardly alone, he said. "Everybody since Reagan passed on it."

John Burge and Chicago's luck has run out: Patrick Fitzgerald is on the case.