welcome to on contact today we discuss police abuse and torture with the civil rights attorney flint taylor doesn't really matter who the mayor is if the mayor continues to fuel this cover up is exposed as it is here in the city of chicago as we sit here today and men and women still remain in the penitentiary who have been tortured and we continue without going to lawyers and community activists and survivors and also families good fight these cases. here we are in 2021 and the torture started i'm divergent 972 and we still haven't had full. resolution of these cases

and the conscience of this city with regard to torture has not been completely cleansed in any regard. flint taylor along with his colleagues at the people's law office has dedicated nearly 5 decades to exposing systematic corruption abuse violence and torture within the chicago police department and throughout the city's corrupt political machine in his book the torture machine he chronicles the war police have carried out against poor people of color beginning with the 1969 assassination by the f.b.i. and the chicago police of the charismatic black panther party chairman fred hampton and panther mark clark taylor spent 13 year as a litigator in the hampton case in the process exposing the routine torture the title of his book the tour. a machine comes from

a field telephone reconfigured by chicago police to administer electric shocks to those they were interrogating along with a series of other torture practices including savage beatings and suffocation with plastic bags he led the campaign against police commander john birch who honed his torture techniques while serving in the army in viet nam and elicited scores of false confessions through torture joining forces with community activists torture survivors and their families other lawyers and local reporters taylor and the people's law office gathered evidence from multiple cases to bring suit against the chicago police department officers and the city of chicago he was one of the leaders in the successful campaign to end the death penalty in illinois and i've paid reparations for many of the torture survivors setting human rights precedents that have since been adopted across the united states joining me to discuss his

book the torture machine is the legendary civil rights attorney flint taylor so flint you open with hampton the assassination of fred hampton and perhaps you can lay that historical ground why was hampton considered such a threat to j. edgar hoover at the time the head of the f.b.i. and why was he why was he a target. a curse thank you for having me i'm your show it's an honor and a pleasure fred hampton case of course is the one case where it is documented without a shadow of a doubt that the f.b.i. and its cointelpro program was behind the assassination of fred hampton in the murder of mark clock and in terms of why hampton was targeted a 21 year 0 charismatic leader here in the city of chicago who was on his way to

being a national leader in the party we can go back to the cointelpro documents that were penned by hoover and william c. sullivan is 1st lieutenant in the domestic intelligence division and those documents in 1967 in 1968 before hampton had become the leader that he became in 1969 in the fanfares talked about neutralizing and disrupting african-american or black leaders and their organizations and they named dr king it named malcolm x. named allows your mohammad wrapped around a stokely carmichael and all of those organizations that they had it out but what he also highlighted an underlying was that these organizations had to be stopped in forming coalitions warming coalitions between black organizations and

organizations such as lawrence the young patriots here in chicago other organizations not only of color but s.d.s. and radical and revolutionary white organizations and who was deathly afraid not only of the messiah the black messiah as it were but also in their organizations and the power in a and the threat of them coming together particularly in an era where not only black power and black lead. aeration was at the forefront but also the fight against imperialism and the war in vietnam the techniques that the f.b.i. used to assassinate hampton. and you expose much of this kind of lay out how they operate let's begin with the informant o'neill and of course this was something that was part of malcolm x. assassination they withdrew the or they arrested the. his bodyguards outside

there were 9 informants inside the ballroom where malcolm was assassinated and the person who allegedly pulled the shotgun out from under his coat was never charged because he perhaps had f.b.i. links but talk about because but you really exposed the mechanisms by which they went after hampton and finally killed him so so please talk about especially the informant that they used and how they drugged him the night before except for a wealthy informant named william. william omeo and he was not only informant he was a provocateur truer and he was. got his way up close and personal with the panthers and particularly with this leadership fred hampton bobby rush and he was reporting directly to the racial matters squad and right mark mitchell at the f.b.i.

and what we were able to document with the help of the senate church committee on intelligence back in the mid seventy's was that this informant o'neill had mapped out a floor plan of the apartment where fred hampton and deborah johnson his fiance would be sweeping and they passed that on the f.b.i. and his control to the reading police officers and the state's attorney edward hanrahan who planned the raw. and we document it not only later after it's lighting years and court that o'neill did this we got this floor plan but then o'neill was rewarded floor setting up the raid that he was given a bonus by hoover and his men in washington were sending up the rate $300.00 as it were 30 pieces of silver and that it was this reward was because the tremendous

value that o'neill had played in setting up the rig and also we are a chain at cohen's help pro document the counterintelligence document the program that we alluded to earlier which claimed the rate which of course was executed by local police and this prosecutor here in chicago was. the cointelpro program that document was dated a day before the raid so bad trilogy of documents established not only that the f.b.i. and cointelpro was behind the raid on the hamptons apartment but showed us the importance of the robot gets your way among neo unset not only setting up this raid but also in attempting over the time that he was in the panthers in setting up camp there was to be arrested setting up panthers in courage ing i criminal activities

of the kind of classic provocateur ism that we saw in the sixty's with the klan and the f.b.i. informants and we've seen throughout history with regard to f.b.i. and local informants so that was one of the major stories that we uncovered during me 13 years of litigation in the very hampton. oh is never finally determined who drugged fred hampton the night before was it. no it wasn't what. we were able to have an independent toxicologists look at the blood of fred hampton after he was murdered and shakes found that there was a large amount of 2nd call in his system now everyone knew that fred didn't use drugs so the question is how did those drugs get in his system the government and the state plot very hard to discredit the evidence that threat was drawn out what our

cox ecologist was very very independent and bullet proof as it were so my question became how did he how was he drawn o'neill of course denied it but he was in the apartment the night before he had access to fred some people in the survivors in the apartment said that he served drinks and food to fred the night before so circumstantially it could well have been o'neill or it could have been someone else like without malcolm there were many an identified informants in the chicago black panther party. in 1969 we perhaps will never know for sure who drug fred hampton we just know at this no way that fred hampton would have laid in his bed and been shot through the head after the police came in if in fact he had not been drugged and the toxicology confirms that. and that's

a pretty important point that you speak about in your book that the police are already in the apartment and and one of them walks apparently just walks in the bedroom where hampton is prone on the bed and shoot some through the head is that correct right there were 2 bullet holes through threats said he there was blood all over the bed and debra johnson who was in bed with him and pregnant with their son was taken out of that room and at that point fred was still lying there and had been moved drury's and then she heard 2 more shots and before that she heard about this or say is barely alive he'll barely make it and then 2 shots and that he's good i'm dead now so that was the evidence that established the murder i want to read from your book this is the reaction you're this is in the process of litigating that case the judge also refused to admit

a police radio tape on which unknown officers cheer when it was announced that fred was taken to the morgue and on which one said in unwitting affirmation of our evidence that is the time to catch them when they are in bed we also offered as evidence the chilling picture of smiling cops carrying fred's body out of the apartment. this really was part of a warm and we don't know much about it so this the litigation that you did is extremely important in giving us a window into us off small. piece of activity by the f.b.i. but this was being carried out nationally and of course i think you would probably agree the vast part of this activity despite the charge commission is probably to this day remains unknown without the correct well yes there there were raids across the country and most of them were locally or originated in the sense that louise that the raids we see it in l.a.

only 4 days after the murder of fred hampton and mark clark we see it in chicago several raids mostly police raids regime f.b.i. raids if you use that template that was use year in chicago if the f.b.i. was a high in the police raids as well as orchestrating their own raids and their own arrest and their own provocateur resentment all kind of tools and techniques of destruction and you read around on constitutional crime that cointelpro you then you see a broader broader. plan which was basically embraced publicly by nixon by john mitchell journey general and by gerry slandered his. head of civil rights quite ironically i am who are all of whom who targeted the panthers not only secretly but also called them out publicly as the

greatest threat to this country and talk about how they had to be stopped when we come back we'll continue our conversation about the police war against people of color with civil rights attorney flint taylor. hi folks joe nemeth here and if you're on medicare this is important you're now entitle to eliminate co-pays and get dental care dentures eye glasses prescription coverage and home unlimited transportation and home delivered meals all at no additional cost plus your zip code may have coverage with the give back benefit that adds money back to your social security check every month i could get transportation and if. you look this my receipts you lation.

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police department but this let's not limit it i mean you know police departments in major cities are also carrying out these kinds of techniques we'll talk a little bit about birds but what i find fascinating is that transference of knowledge especially in the case of birds people who served in the millet. and viet nam had been a president or complicit in the torture techniques that were using especially this field telephone this disappears on the cover of your book brought these techniques back into the inner cities and use them against american citizens so perhaps you can speak about torture as a technique we're talking about you know across the country without doubt thousands if not tens of thousands of people again mostly poor people of color were railroaded into prisons on false confessions you have heroically exposed some of those false confessions and have been able to free people but but tell us how you

know what's happening behind the scenes. you know what are the techniques that that they use and and how how it how to become institutionalized well urged that torture was somewhat unique in the extreme that that it took in terms of electric shock being people in suffocating people dries up marino as it were then and mock executions the kind of techniques that were internationally used and not only in vietnam that where virtually this you know in south africa under your central america and those regimes that it was not thought to be used here in this country but birds brought it back and use it again and again and again over a 20 year period against african american suspects in chicago on the south side but the broader question that you ask is these techniques or similar techniques to

get confessions or to get confessions some of which may be true some of which may be false somewhere who knows but torture of course cannot be countenanced no matter what it's use floor and torture as defined by the united nations. it is much broader than just using an electric shock or suffocating someone is of course using coercive tactics whether it be a psychological or whether it be physical to obtain confessions or to to to to punish and of course that's what we see every day in the police stations across this country to get confessions and send men and women particularly men and women of color to the penitentiary and that of course has been a major aspect of mass incarceration over the years and that was a mass and important aspect of what happened and what continues to happen not

necessarily with electric shock and suffocation here in the city of chicago but the check those are still a coercing confessions convert coercing false confessions and people are still being sent to the penitentiary on the basis of these confessions. chronicle in the book many cases of people who. are innocent profess their innocence but finally are so broken that they agree to sign just to stop the torture. yes definitely. we started out with one remarkable case the andrew wilson case. african-american man who was charged and ultimately could go to white lilies offices and he was brutally and repeatedly tortured without its techniques that i previously mentioned. and we went to trial and represented him on an on a civil rights case claiming that he was voted by birds in his nap and during that

case i'm not mislead the source who we've got deep that told us that hey you don't mesh not just looking at why me extreme case this is a pattern and practice of racist white supremacist torture that everyone in the police department. and the state's attorney of cook county who was at that time richard daley who went on to be the long time mayor here they all knew about it they all count how to minutes that they all used the most confessions i have to send people to the penitentiary and to death rob and so over the years we uncovered and some of those cases are chronicled from their testimony in my book over 125 cases of african-american men who were tortured under burgess 20 year regime and during that period of time you went from a detective fresh from vietnam and the tactics that they used on the p.o.w. camp that he were gone. from detective the sergeant there with tenants of command.

and as commander was when we were taking him on in petrel court and the evidence that we were able to uncover led to it reinvestigation let him be exile and ultimately decades later let him be exempt to the penitentiary or a lying about torture. and yet during that whole period when you were publicly exposing systematic torture then state senator barack obama did not utter a word and as you point out in your book endorsed daley who had ben the attorney general overseeing this empire for the mayor's office you noticed that yes in the book it was at the time i didn't think quite so much about it because barack obama was just barack obama he was as they senator he was going some

decent things in terms of reformulate the death penalty but he never spoke out against the death penalty and my daughter heard him speak when she was in 6th grade and she came back and was wondering why he wouldn't come right out against it because the kids in the 6th grade at that point were definitely against the death penalty or many of her classmates and she were but yes when you look back on it. we had a few politicians who were regressive and courageous enough to stand with us as replot through the many many chapters of exposing the police torture and trying to bring some modicum of justice unfortunately i'm barack obama wasn't one of those people well he took the seat defeated one of them and then well she ran to get the only guy he tried to defeat from bobby rush the only time yeah i'm ever lost was against former answer. your sense

minister bobby rush who of course was a cult leader with fred hampton and escape his own assassination because he didn't happen to be in the apartment on the night of december 4th and brock took him on and bobby soundly but he beat him in a struggle it was i think that were kind of race it was might have been a state senator race. or whatever but i think he learned his lesson about how to pick his pots after he had our home on his own cherry let's talk of the last few minutes about the culture of the police which you know very well. all of these charges are coming out and police are holding fundraisers for burrage the torture is now publicly verifiable there's this code of silence within the police. talked to us about the institution itself and it's. it's kind of

orientation to the outside world where our chris as you know you can trace the history of policing up to to the south and the slave patrols and you can trace it you through the anti labor. that were police. in the early ninety's hundreds and that counts or has continued and that culture as . african-americans became more front and center in it in the attacks they became obvious locus of police and the police car ensuring that culture course the code of silence however each other's backs no matter how racist or well 'd or violent conduct of the police is is a trademark all that culture and that kind of culture is something that starts at the top with the powers that be are and of course you can analyze it in terms of

the protection of property or capitalism you can analyze it in terms of what the police i spoke so close to do and they are in fact in the communities of color and we're communities are an invading force and oppressive not of course that serves a great tax but of course that you know always is the laws of the power structure and the white supremacy. that is showing damage in society so when we talk about police really need to take more of a look at some of the more from the mental jane jane is that people in the streets are talking about germs a graduation and well one of the things at the end of the book that i found fascinating is you talk about the amount of money that cities and athens taxpayers put out to defend police officials who carry out torture you know lethal attacks you said according to public records which i have obtained and

updated since 2005 the scandal it cost the city and county and taxpayers $140000000.00 by the end of 2018 the federal tab for investigating persian is confederates and for prosecuting burrs was an additional unknown amount birgitte collected $900000.00 in pension money chicago police officers implicated in the torture scandal had collected and additional $31000000.00 in pension pushing the still mounting total past $170000000.00. well i guess i need to update my book because that that meter keeps running and i guess that now we're getting close to 200000000 and what's interesting is not only did daley as the mayor not only did rahm emanuel as the mayor continue in one form or another to just fund the defense of these cases in court now we have lori lankford who ran on a progressive. approach and there was

a torture torture case that she put to trial rather than just settle in the last year or to cost the city another $10000000.00 so doesn't really matter who the mayor is i think the mayor continues to fuel this cover up as exposed as it is here in the city of chicago as we sit here today and men and women still remain in the penitentiary who have been tortured and we continue with other lawyers and community activists and survivors and also families to fight these cases. you know we aren't 2021 and the torture started i'm divergent 972 and we still haven't had full resolution of these cases and this city with regard to torture as not been completely cleansed in any regard right thank you that was civil rights attorney

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something for you and your sports h.q. . hello there i'm an election and you are watching in question broadcasting from our to america's national news headquarters in washington d.c. here today top stories 1st a calamity at contradictions g. 7 powers meeting to counter china and russia while at the same time hoping to build stronger ties with both countries. our panel will weigh in then venezuelan president nicolas maduro releasing half a dozen american prisoners in the country could this after of mercy be a step towards renewed relations with washington details next and finally the presidency of joe biden is proving to be a huge moneymaker for some of the country's richest people we'll see how that stacks up against other world powers.