By Steve Rhodes
A guide to Homan for our comprehension-challenged local media.
SHOW NOTES
00: Strawberry Rock Show.
1:10: Koffin Kats at Reggies last Friday night.
2:25: Explaining Homan.
* “How do you think the local media will react?” “Oh, they’ll try to knock it down. That’s their mindset.”
* Spencer Ackerman lives in Brooklyn and works for Guardian US.
* The context: Zuley.
* Siska Guardian Op-Ed.
* Touchless torture.
* Tribune: Abuse Citywide, Therefore Homan Not A Story.
18:48: Brooke Fraser at the Bottom Lounge last Friday night.
20:16: What The Guardian Originally Reported.
* What is a black site?
* The distinction between Homan and district station houses.
* No one said Homan was hidden by a cloaking device; Area 2 was a far more public building and Burge tortured people there in secret too.
* The nature of Homan is exactly why some detainees are brought there.
* Now we have a roster of victims, through follow-ups by the Guardian and other non-Chicago outlets.
* Dear Trib: Lawyers familiar with Homan are more useful to talk to than lawyers who aren’t, duh.
* Being able to retrieve your property isn’t the same as being able to see your client or family member, duh.
* The CPD itself calls Homan secretive.
* Ackerman states that abuses such as those at Homan are happening citywide. Multiple times. But again, there’s a reason why Homan is distinctive.
* Ackerman states that the abuses at Homan are just the latest example of abuses that have happened historically – and throughout Chicago police facilities.
* The CPD itself says most detainees at Homan are involved in drug cases, which in Chicago – and America – means mostly poor and of color.
* “Unlike a precinct . . . ”
* The CPD refused to provide any records or answer any questions to refute the allegations.
* A coalition including the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild and First Legal Defense Aid got fed up and went to CPD to complain about Homan. The result: CPD actually changed its General Orders on arrestee procedures. Were those lawyers lying?
* Real-time tweets from lawyers about Homan and not being able to find their clients.
* Even the lawyers the Trib talked to called the CPD statement “laughable.”
* A team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of ‘active searching.’ No booking records existed. It took contacts in the mayor’s office to even learn of Homan Square.
* The Tribune’s cherry-picked attorney.
* Enough sources yet?
* Cook County Medical Examiner mysteriously discovers a cause of death after the Guardian publishes.
* Former Chicago police chief.
* Police used to use the term “shadow sites.”
1:04:36: Koffin Kats.
* From Esquire to Glenn Beck.
* How do you knock down a story like this without ever talking to the cops?
1:09:15: Koffin Kats.
* The unlearned lessons of Jon Burge.
* Is the Chicago media racist? Yes.
* These abuses happen all across the city – almost exclusively to poor people of color.
* In the absence of a CPD response, the allegations stand. As they should.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on March 1, 2015