Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’

● Exclusive: Secret interrogation facility reveals aspects of war on terror in US
● ‘They disappeared us’: protester details 17-hour shackling without basic rights
● Accounts describe police brutality, missing 15-year-old and one man’s death

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

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.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

●Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
●Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
●Shackling for prolonged periods.
●Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
●Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead. Much More Here

For those that may have absolutely NO knowledge of how police work goes; many Police Departments have facilities like Homan Square. They are known by many names, a few being *The Barn*, *The Church*, *The Facility*, *The Warehouse* and they ALL serve a vital service to major Departments that can afford the space. 

If you know what to look for it’s easy for a trained eye to spot one of these facilities. You rarely see a *marked* unit parked there, but as I understand it the Chicago PD makes no real effort to hide this one. 

Many of these facilities house Units that the Department doesn’t want seen too often, if at all, units like Vice, Narcotics, Major Crimes, CID, Homeland Security to name a few.

These facilities are also used to house workout equipment and rooms for those that are so inclined, as well as records storage, cold case files and whatever else can be stashed out of site but still accessible if needed.

Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.

Church was held there in 2012? This is now 2015, why would it take somewhere close to 3 years for him to come forward if he was held illegally?

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “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.”

So, this begs the question of HOW does Church know what kind of *Black Ops* sites the CIA may or may not use or be operating in the Middle East, or in any other region of the world for that matter?

Is this Brian Jacob Church a CIA operative? Has he been an operative in the past? Has he had some type of direct contact with a CIA operative, one that divulged what I would have to presume is information the CIA wouldn’t want released if such were true?

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

OH MY GOD … military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage? The horror!

Police all over this nation have armored vehicles; they are a necessity for SWAT Teams and Special Operations units, they aren’t used in an offensive manner, they are used to protect the lives of Officers in a dangerous situation such as an active shooter scenario.

And you have to park them somewhere for crying out loud.

Interrogation cells and even a cage? I don’t think I have ever seen a Police facility that didn’t have interrogation cells and a cage, that cage being a *holding cell*.

There is a lot more to the original story than I have posted and please feel free to read the rest of it at the link provided above.

In closing; I am not about to declare that ALL Police Officers are angels and that their agencies are pure and blameless, but if the allegations against the Chicago PD are true, if they illegally detained arrestees and denied them their Constitutional rights then let the cards fall where they may, but again I ask, WHY did it take so long for this individual to come forward and WHY, if it’s such a poorly kept secret that Homan Plaza is a *Black Site* hasn’t it been addressed by the Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emmanuel?

He does, after all, have friends in HIGH places…