Chicago – Police beat, kicked and shocked scores of black suspects in the 1970s and 1980s to try to extract confessions from them, prosecutors said Wednesday.
However, the prosecutors – appointed by a Cook County judge four years ago to look into torture allegations – said that the cases are too old or too weak to prosecute anyone now.
Prosecutors Robert D. Boyle and Edward Egan said they found evidence that police abused at least half the 148 suspects whose cases were reviewed. Nearly all of the suspects were black.
Among other things, the suspects claimed that police beat them, played mock Russian roulette, administered electric shocks with a cattle-prod-like device and a crank-operated “black box,” and placed typewriter covers over their heads to make them gasp for air.
“We only wish that we could indict,” Boyle said after a $6.1 million investigation that involved more than 33,300 documents, the issuance of 217 grand jury subpoenas and interviews of more than 700 people.
