Nation Magazine: Racism, Torture and Impunity in Chicago

The Nation reports:

Forty years ago, a rookie Chicago police detective named Jon Burge tortured Anthony Holmes using electric shock and suffocation, causing him to crawl on the floor in pain. Lacing this torture with racial epithets, Burge initiated a pattern of dehumanizing abuse that would terrorize at least 120 African- American men, their families and the black community for the next twenty years. This pattern was marked not only by its uniquely brutal tactics, but also by its overtly racist motivation. Burge referred to his notorious electric shock device as the “nigger box,” used the term “nigger” as part of his torture routine, and also used the term to describe his victims in boastful conversations with friends and even casual acquaintances. One day, when asked by an acquaintance about his work investigating homicides, he remarked that he had been “dealing with dead fucking niggers all day.” His “right-hand men,” Sgt. John Byrne and Detective Peter Dignan, also repeatedly used the term, including during interrogations, introducing the plastic cover used for suffocation by saying they had “something special for niggers,” and threatening to hang another suspect by pointing to a noose dangling from the basement ceiling and saying they “hang niggers around here all the time.”

Yet the Nation magazine thinks it's just fine for citizens in Chicago to be disarmed!