Excerpted and edited for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett
Before it happened to me, I didn’t know anything like this happened in the United States and the more we screamed about the use of torture by police the less people cared to do anything about it. It also amazes me that in the United States there is a statute of limitation on torture [Darrell Cannon].
Darrell Cannon says Chicago police tortured him in 1983 and forced him to confess to a murder he did not commit. He is one of dozens of men alleging abuse by the Chicago police. Cannon spent 23 years in prison and though a prosecutorial hearing in 2004 dismissed the case on the grounds that officials had tortured Darrell Cannon into confessing, Cannon was not released until 2007. Here is some of his story told on today’s Democracy Now program.
It was the 2nd of November 1983 between the hours of 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning. The initial torture and verbal abuse and intimidation started then but did not end until probably well after 3:00 in the afternoon of that day.
It began when white [police] detectives kicked open the door to an apartment I shared with my common-law wife and my son. They cursed her, ransacked the entire apartment and found nothing. They searched for me and finally found me. They took me downstairs, placed me on my knees to wait in the hall while other detectives searched other apartments.
After their apartment searches, they put me in a car and drove around looking for another guy they said was complicit in this particular crime. Not finding the other person, they took me to the police station where I stayed for a short time before they took me on another drive around.
They double-handcuffed me in the back seat of a car while they ate their breakfast at restaurant catering to truckers and police officers. After eating their breakfast, they drove a distance, through a pipe and came out on the opposite end. The area was isolated ─ nothing around but water and railroad tracks.
They took me from the car’s back seat and started asking more questions about a homicide. I told them I had no knowledge about the homicide.
Torture series one: mock hanging
They then began a mock hanging: The detectives cuffed me behind my back and one of them got on the detective car’s bumper; the other two detectives lifted me up to him and he grabbed me from behind by the handcuffs that bound me. They dropped me, causing my arms to go up backwards ─ almost wrenching the inside of my shoulders. This [torture] went on for — I don’t know how long. Ultimately, it wasn’t successful because there was a fine-mist rain that morning and Detective John Byrne, the tallest of the detectives, kept slipping off the back of the bumper.Torture series two: shotgun roulette, mock execution
The detectives switched to a second torture treatment involving a shotgun. The took their pump shotgun from the trunk of the car. Detective Peter Dignan, the most vicious one of the detectives, asked me some more questions about the murder. He told me what they knew had already occurred and wanted me to fill in the gaps. I refused to do so. Detective Dignan then took a shotgun shell, showed it to me, and said (his exact words), ‘Listen, Nigger’—and turned his back to me. I heard a clicking sound that seemed like the shell being placed in the chamber. Detective Dignan turned back around to face me. I no longer saw a shotgun shell. They continued asking me questions. I refused to answer.
One of the detectives said, ‘Go ahead; blow that Nigger’s head off.’Peter Dignan then forced the shotgun in my mouth. He said, ‘You’re not going to tell me what I want to hear? You’re not going to tell me?’
I said, ‘No.’
That’s when he [Detective Dignan] pulled the trigger.
The detectives did a mock execution three times.
When I heard the trigger pull the third time, I thought in my mind he was blowing the back of my head off. Hearing that click, the hair on the back of my head stood straight up.
Since they were unsuccessful in getting me to tell them what they wanted to hear, they began a third treatment. They put me in the backseat of a detective car, unlocked the handcuffs from behind and locked them in front of me. Detective John Byrne put a gun to my head and told me, ‘Don’t move,’ and redid the handcuffs.
The detectives put me sideways in the backseat of a detective car and made me lie across the seat. They pulled my pants and my shorts down. Then Detective Byrne [electrocuted my genitals] took an electric cattle prod, turned it on, and shocked me on my testicles.
They did this for what seems like forever with me but it wasn’t that long. At one point, I was able to kick the cattle prod out of the detective’s hands. That movement knocked the batteries out. The detective retrieved the batteries and loaded the prod.
One of the detectives tried to hold my feet down with his feet to stop me from kicking. Then they resumed shocking me with the electric cattle prod, all the while telling me they knew I was not the one they wanted; but I had information that could lead them to the other person that they did want.
They continued electric shocks until finally I agreed to tell them anything they wanted to hear ─ anything, it didn’t matter to me. … If they said, ‘Did your mother do it?’ ─ ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
The diabolical treatment I received was such that I had never experienced in my life. I didn’t even know anything like this existed in the United States.
[Torturers] should not be able to hide behind any kind of alleged statute [of limitations]. Wrong is wrong. Right is right. What these despicable detectives did could never be justified in the United States under any shape, form or fashion [Darrell Cannon].
Sources and notes
“Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men, May 24, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/24/trial_begins_for_ex_chicago_policeA former Chicago police commander Jon Burge accused of overseeing the torture of more than 100 African American men goes on trial today in Chicago for lying under oath and obstruction of justice ─ not for torture. The police department fired Burge in 1993 for mistreatment of a suspect, but did not press charges. For decades, Berge has avoided prosecution but torture accusations have been made against him for forty years. Beginning in 1971, “Burge was at the epicenter of what’s been described as the systematic torture of dozens of black men to coerce confessions. More than a hundred people in Chicago say they were subjected to abuse, including having guns forced into their mouths, suffocation with bags placed over their heads, and electric shocks to their genitals” [Democracy Now].
Human Rights at Home: The Chicago Police Torture Archive
Excerpt from a timeline prepared by Students for Human Rights and based on material from the People’s Law Office whose lawyers have represented many of Burge’s torture victims http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/timeline.shtml- 2004 – In furtherance of the code of silence, Burge, Byrne, and more than 30 other Area 2 detectives and supervisors invoke the constitutional right against self-incrimination on each and every allegation of torture when they are questioned at depositions in the pardoned inmates’ civil cases.
- 2004 – Several African-American former Area 2 detectives who worked under Burge come forward and break the code of silence, admitting in sworn statements given in the civil cases that they saw or heard evidence of torture, saw implements of torture, including Burge’s shock box, and that torture by Burge and his men was an “open secret” at Area 2.
- April 2004 – The States Attorney’s Office finally dismisses Darrell Cannon’s prosecution rather than rebut his evidence of a tortured confession.
- January 2005 – In a habeas corpus case brought by torture victim Leonard Hinton, Federal Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood likened Area 2 torture to that of Abu Ghraib, writing:
“[A] mountain of evidence indicates that torture was an ordinary occurrence at the Area Two station of the Chicago Police Department. Eventually, as this sorry tale came to light, the Office of Professional Standards Investigation of the Police Department looked into the allegations, and it issued a report that concluded that police torture under the command of Lt. Jon Burge — the officer in charge of Hinton's case — had been a regular part of the system for more than ten years. And, in language reminiscent of the news reports of 2004 concerning the notorious Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq, the report said that ‘[t]he type of abuse described was not limited to the usual beating, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture.’”
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