A HISTORY OF TORTURE CONTINUES....

It is believed that Jon Burge or those under his command tortured as many as 120 victims from 1972 to 1991, in many cases employing extreme measures — such as suffocating, burning and electroshock — in order to extract confessions from primarily Black, male victims. 

In 1969, Jon Burge--a military police sergeant--returned from his tour of duty at a prisoner of war camp in South Vietnam and soon thereafter became a Chicago police officer.

In the Spring of 1972, Burge was promoted to detective, and assigned to the midnight shift at Area 2 police headquarters. The "Midnight Crew" employed torture tactics that Burge had most likely learned from his fellow soldiers in Vietnam.

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In 1981, Jon Burge was promoted to lieutenant. A new Violent Crimes Unit run out of the police station known as Area 2 is formed with Burge as the supervisor. 

In January 1991, John Conroy published his first story in the Chicago Reader about police torture, “House of Screams.”  https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/house-of-screams/

October 11, 1991: An Office of Professional Standards report finds “systemic” and “methodical” abuse and “planned torture” at Area 2. Chicago Police Superintendent LeRoy Martin refuses to make the report public.

February 11, 1993: The Chicago Police Board fires Burge, finding that he had abused Andrew Wilson. The other officers involved, John Yucaitis and Patrick O’Hara, are suspended for 15 months.

April 24, 2002: A Cook County judge appoints a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture under Jon Burge, some of which are now decades old.

July 19, 2006: The special prosecutors appointed to investigate Burge-related torture allegations  
found that the “commander of the Violent Crimes Section of Detective Areas 2  and 3” was “guilty (of) abus(ing) persons with impunity,” and that it  therefore “necessarily follows that a number of those serving under his  command recognized that if their commander could abuse persons with  impunity, so could they.”

Even after Burge left the Chicago Police Department, his legacy of torture continued under his notorious acolytes Kenneth Boudreau, Michael Kill, John Halloran, and James O'Brien. 

Boudreau joined the Chicago Police Department in 1986 and joined Violent Crimes in 1990. He worked there until 2004 and left the force in 2014. Halloran and O'Brien both began working Violent Crimes in 1990, and left the force in 2017. Kill worked in Violent Crimes from 1978 to 1991, and then again in 1993 until he left the force in 1994. 

Some of the allegations against these Burge Acolytes include:

• 1991: Kill (with Boudreau observing) slapped a minor on the left side of his face, threatened him and his family, knocked him to the floor, kicked and stomped on his back, punched him in the ribs, threatened to push him out the window, and threatened to burn him with a cigarette lighter

• 1991: O'Brien beat a man with a bat, pointed a gun at his head, pushed him against the wall, forced his way into his home and searched it without a warrant, and denied him an attorney

• 1991: O'Brien and Boudreau beat a man with their fists and flashlights

• 1992: Boudreau, Kill, and Halloran beat a man

• 1992: Boudreau choked a man and threatened to throw him out of a window

• 1993: Boudreau, Halloran and O'Brien coerced confessions from mentally deficient juveniles

• 1993: Boudreau, Halloran, and O'Brien deprived a man of food, sleep, and the bathroom; threatned him; choked him; beat him; threatened to burn him with a cigarette; slapped him in the head and face; and was cuffed to a chair that was kicked over

• 1994: Boudreau and Halloran "clothes lined" a man out of a chair, kicked him in the groin, cuffed him to a coat rack so high his feet couldn't touch the ground, did not allow him to eat and put out a cigarette in his food when it was brought, punched him in the back of the head when he wouldn't throw up gang signs during a lineup

• 1995: Boudreau, Halloran, and O'Brien withheld a minor's pain medication for a broken foot, hit him in the face/head and hand while handcuffed, stomped on his foot and slammed a chair on his toes, threatened to arrest his girlfriend and have her child taken away, threw him against the wall, choked him, and deprived him of sleep

• 1995: Boudreau, Halloran, and O'Brien beat a man while he was shackled to the wall, O'Brien held a gun to his head

• 1997: Boudreau handcuffed a man to a wall for a lengthy period of time, grabbed him by the neck and hicked him up in the air, denied him sleep and food

• 1998: Boudreau, Halloran, and O'Brien punched a minor in the stomach, beat him with a night stick (over a phone book), covered his head with a typewriter cover, slapped him in the face until it was numb, punched him, electric shocked him while a bag was over his head, denied food/drink and use of the bathroom, and threatened to beat and charge his girlfriend if he didn't confess 

• 2000: Halloran stripped a man of his clothing, kept him in a cold room, and denied him food or sleep 

• 2004: Boudreau chained a man to a wall for over 30 hours, denied him access to food and sleep, and repeatedly interrogated him

• 2005: Boudreau, Halloran, and O'Brien deprived Richard Anthony of food, sleep, or bathroom; threatened, chocked, and beaten; threatened to burn him with a cigarette, slapped in the head and face, cuffed to chair that was kicked over

• 2005: Halloran and O'Brien deprived Willie Lee Hughes of food, sleep, or bathroom; threatened, chocked, and beaten; threatened to burn him with a cigarette, slapped in the head and face, cuffed to chair that was kicked over

While the misconduct of second generation Burge torturers is more widely known and accepted, the legal system has yet to fully appreciate the Third Generation.

Trained by and alongside notorious torturers, many of these detectives honed their skills to avoid the scrutiny that came with obvious signs physical abuse. Additionally, rather than concentrating on the purported offender, a hallmark of the Third Generation is using coercive tactics on witnesses.

As the abuse happened to a third party, many criminal defendants did not/could not challenge the admissibility of the statement. Despite recantations, in almost every instance, the coerced statement was accepted as evidence of a person's guilt.

Relying on racist tropes like "no snitching" or a "street code," prosecutors and police secured scores of wrongful convictions despite witnesses credibly testifying that they were abused and threatened into providing false evidence. 

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Forberg was promoted to Detective in May of 2000 where he worked at Area One (Central) alongside notorious torturers John Halloran and James O’Brien.

Many of his earlier cases contain the same hallmarks of torture seen in those of the Burge ac

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Pictured posing as if he were hunting a Black man, former CPD Officer Timothy McDermott was a detective for over 10 years until his firing. McDermott worked alongside Forberg.