Chicago police department caught 'disappearing' Americans into secret black site interrogation compound on U.S. soil

(NaturalNews) Practically since its founding in the 19th century, the city of Chicago has been a hotbed of corruption -- so much so that Ovid Demaris, in his 1969 book, Captive City, wrote:

From the moment of its incorporation as a city in 1837, Chicago has been systematically seduced, looted, and pilloried by an aeonian horde of venal politicians, mercenary businessmen, and sadistic gangsters. Nothing has changed in more than 130 years.

If past is prologue, as William Shakespeare once wrote, then this story makes perfect sense.

As reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper, the modern-day city of Chicago still operates much like its corrupt past, in which the Chicago P.D. even keeps a secret gulag where criminal suspects are "disappeared" and then interrogated under some pretty brutal conditions.

The paper noted, specifically, that the department's facility is "off the books," and anyone taken there cannot be found by family or attorneys. Those familiar with it have likened the facility to a CIA black site.

Further, the paper reported:

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.

Witnesses and other sources -- some who spoke anonymously to The Guardian -- described treatment at the facility as more than just abusive, including:

-- some arrestees being kept out of official booking reports;

-- beatings by police that have resulted in head wounds;

-- suspects being shackled for long periods of time; and

-- suspects being held without legal counsel for up to 24 hours, including some suspects who are as young as 15 years old.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square "interview room" and later pronounced dead, the paper added.

A protestor known as one of the "NATO Three," Brian Jacob Church, told the paper that he was held at Homan Square and questioned following a police raid in 2012. He said cops there restrained him for most of a day and did not provide him access to an attorney. Eventually, they sent him to a nearby police station to be charged and booked.

"Homan Square is definitely an unusual place," Church told The Guardian. "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 mysterious site is another in a series of recent examples reported by The Guardian of Chicago police practices that are similar to oft-criticized detention practices of the United States during its "war on terrorism." And while the U.S. government's practices largely impacted non-citizen foreigners, those of the Chicago P.D. at Homan Square -- which reportedly houses military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and a cage -- is directed at Americans, and mostly poor, minority Americans.

The Guardian reported that no one who is taken to the site is booked, unlike normally when suspects are taken to police precincts. Those who are taken to the facility do not appear to have "a public, searchable record" that has been entered into a database indicating where they are, like when suspects are booked properly, the paper reported.

"Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts," The Guardian said. "Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside."

Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes told the paper: "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."

Initially, the Chicago P.D. would not respond to the paper's questions about Homan Square. But after the first stories were published, the department sent a statement essentially stating that nothing illegal was taking place at what it described as a "sensitive" location, where mainly undercover work was being done.

Read the entire, sordid, sad story here.

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com

http://directives.chicagopolice.org

http://articles.chicagotribune.com

http://www.umich.edu