All eyes are on Chi-town as the city of Chicago carried out a landmark decision to give out over five million dollars in reparations to 57 African- American victims of police torture. They suffered under the helm of Jon Graham Burge, a former Chicago Police Department detective and his midnight crew of rogue detectives. The men proclaimed acts of being choked, shocked, and suffocated into giving false confessions which for some men, landed them on death row. Burge was accused of torturing over 200 criminal suspects in attempts to gain confessions from 1972 to 1991. Despite the proven claims of the men who suffered under Burge’s command, he never was criminally charged for torture, but instead served a 4 ½ year sentence for perjury about the torture in a civil case and obstruction of justice. Burge was most recently released from a half-way house last year. He still receives a police pension.

As the first major national city to pay reparations, the Chicago City council hoped that by paying out $100,000 checks to victims, it would incite the beginning of a hopeful, new relationship between African-American residents and the Chicago Police Department. The reparations were only a part of the ordinance passed by the city council in 2015. It also includes a mandated formal apology, construction of a new memorial to the victims, as well as adding police torture as a part of the city’s school history curriculum. The ordinance also agrees to provide psychological counseling and free tuition to some community colleges for the victims and their related family members.

It is nice to see the city of Chicago stepping up and taking a stance on trying to rectify it’s poor decision-making and shameful past. However, it only shows that “there is a long way to go”, said Darrell Cannon, a torture victim who also echoed that the payments were only the first step toward healing the city. With video surveillance of Chicago P.D. Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald coming to light last year and more recently, last month’s fatal shootings of 55-year-old Bettie Jones and 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, the relationship between Chicago law enforcement and the citizens of Chicago are more severed than they are repaired. As tensions continue to rise regarding ongoing and new cases of victims at the hands of Chicago’s P.D., it’s going to take much more than $100,000 checks and apologies to right these wrongs.

Jon Graham Burge

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