it could you so sort of talk to key see me a bit. so name is crying for justice quantity ah, 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. i, the mayor continues to be 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 activist survivors and also families fight these cases. here we are in 2021. i'm the torture started under burge and $972.00. and we still haven't had full resolution of these

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

a field telephone reconfigured by chicago police to administer electric shocks to those they were interrogating with a series of other torture practices, including savage beatings and suffocation with plastic bags. he led the campaign against police commander john burge, who homed his torture techniques while serving in the army and viet nam, and elicited scores a 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, the end, the death penalty in illinois, and obtained reparations for many of the tortures 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 groundwork. 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? chris, thank you for having me on 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 it's co, intel pro program was behind the assassination of fred hampton, in the murder of mark clark. and in terms of why hampton was targeted a 21 year old charismatic leader here in the city of chicago,

who is on his way to being a national leader in the party. we can go back to the co and tell pro documents that were penned by hoover and william c. sullivan is 1st lieutenant in the domestic intelligence division. and those documents in 196-7900. 68. before hampton had become the leader that he became in $969.00 and samplers, talked about neutralizing and disrupting african american black leaders and their organizations and named dr. king and named malcolm x. it named allies. your mohammed, wrapped around stokely carmichael and all of those organizations that they headed up. but what he also highlighted an underline, was that these organizations had to be stopped informing coalitions, warming coalitions between black organizations and organization structures. large.

the young patriots here in chicago. other organizations not only of color what s t s and radical and revolutionary white organizations. and hoover was definitely afraid not only of the messiah that black messiah as it were. when also of their organisations and the power in a and the threat of them coming together, particularly in an era where not only black power and black duration 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 exposed much of this kind of lay out how they operate. let's begin with the informant o'neil. and of course, this was something that was part of malcolm x assassination. they withdrew the or

they arrested the, his body guards outside that were 9 informants inside the wall room where malcolm was assassinated. and the person who allegedly pulled the shot gun out from under his coat was never charged because he perhaps had f b links. but talk about because, but you really exposed the mechanisms by which they went after hampton and finally killed them. so. so please talk about especially the informant that they used and how they drug them the night before, etc. well reinforcement was name william william neal, and he was not only inform and he was a provocative and he was got got his way up close and personal with the panthers, and particularly with its leadership. fred hampton, bobby rush. and he was reporting directly to the racial matter squad, and roy mart, 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 seventies was that this informal o'neil had mapped out a floor plan of the apartment where fred hampton and deborah johnson, his fiance would be sweeping, and they pass that on the f b i and his control to the rating police officers and the states attorney edward hanrahan who plan and we documented not only later after fighting years in court that only did this. we got this floor plan, but that o'neill was rewarded for setting up the rate that he was given a bonus by hoover in his, in washington for setting up the raid $300.00 as it were 30 pieces of silver. and that it was the reward was because of the tremendous value that o'neill had

swayed in setting up the rain. and also we change a co and tell pro document the counterintelligence document. the program that we alluded to earlier, which claimed the raid, which of course was executed by local police and the prosecutor here in chicago was part of the co intel pro program. and that document was dated the day before the rate. so that trilogy of documents established not only that the f, b i and co, intel pro, was behind the raid hampton's department, which showed us the importance of the provocative william o'neill in sat not only shutting up this rates, but also in attempting over the time that he was in the panthers in shutting up panthers to be arrested, setting up panthers encouraging our criminal activities of the kind of classic

provocative tourism that we saw in the sixty's with cran and the f b i. informant. and we've seen throughout history with regard to f, b i and local informs. so that was one of the major stories that we uncovered during the 13 years of litigation in the red hampton chairs. although was never finally determined who drugged fred hampton the night before, was it? no, it wasn't what we were able to have an independent toxicologist looked at the blood of fred hampton after he was married. and she found that there was a larger amount of check, a barber tall in his system. now everyone knew that fred didn't use drugs. so the question is, how did those drugs get into the government? and the state was very hard to discredit the evidence that fred was drug,

what are toxicologist was very, very independent and bullet proof as it were. so the question became, how did he, how was he drug? o'neill, of course, denied it, but he was in the apartment the night before. he had access to the thread. some people and 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 with malcolm, there were many, an identified informants in the chicago black panther party in 969. we perhaps will never know for sure. who drug, fred hampton. we just know that there's no way that threat 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 drug and the toxicology confirms 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 shoots them through the head that correct. right. there were 2 bullet holes through fred's head. he, there was blood all over the bed. and deborah johnson, who was in bed with him and pregnant with their son, was taken out of that room. and at that point thread was still lying there and had moved really. and then she heard 2 more shots. and before that, she heard an officer say, he's barely alive, he'll barely make it. and then 2 shots, and then he's good and dead now. so that was the evidence that established the murder. i want to read from your book, this is the reaction. this is in the process of litigating i case. the judge also refused to admit a police radio tape on which unknown officers cheered 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 offer it as evidence, the chilling picture of smiling cops carrying freds body out of the apartment. this really was part of a war. we don't know much about it. so this, the litigation that you did is extremely important in giving us a window windows or 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. would that be correct? well yes, there were raids across the country. most of them were locally or originated in the sense that bleach lead the raids. we should get an el rey on 4 days after the

murder of red hampton, and mar clark. we see it in chicago. several raids, mostly police raids, show me f b i ridge. but if you use that template that was used here in chicago, the f b i was behind the police raise as well as orchestrating their own rage and their own arrest in their own provocative tourism. and all kinds of tools and techniques of disruption, and you re going on constitutional conduct is going grow use venue. c, a broader, broader plan, which was basically embraced publicly by nixon by john mitchell, attorney general. and by jeris leonard, his head of civil rights, quite ironically, and hoover all at home who targeted the panthers not only secretly,

but also called them out publicly as the greatest threat to this country and talked about how they had to be small. when we come back, we'll continue our conversation about the police war against people of color with civil rights attorney flint taylor, me. i your questions? birth new questions number at star, and endless at the end. bring you all in depth and lift your i to all that remain in question. i'm holland cook. i invite you to climb with me above the main stream media meyer.

and from that higher vantage to glimpse the big picture question more. me welcome back on contact. we continue our conversation about the police war against people of color with civil rights attorney flint taylor. so you go on from the hampton case. i mean, there's much that you uncover including of course, the systematic use of torture. and you then go after the police department, the chicago police department, but this looks not limited. i mean, you know, police departments in major cities are also carrying out these kinds of techniques . we'll talk a little bit about burge. but what i find fascinating is that transference of knowledge, especially in the case of birth, people who served in the military and viet nam, had been a president or complicit in the torture techniques that we're using. and especially

this field telephone. this disappears on the color 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, railroaded into prison on false confessions, you have colloquy, expose some of those false confessions and been able to free people. but, but tell us how, what's happening behind the scenes. what are the techniques that, that they use and, and how, how it, how did it become institutionalized? well, the burge tech torture was somewhat unique in the extreme that it, that, that it took in terms of electric shopping people in suffocating people try marino

as it were then, and mark executions. the kind of techniques that were internationally used and not only in vietnam that were birch learned this, but you know, in south africa under apartheid, new central america in those regimes. but it was not thought to be used here in this country. but burge brought it back and use it again and again and again over a 20 year period against african american suspects in chicago on south shop. but the broader question that you ask is these techniques or similar techniques to get false confessions or to get confessions, some of which may be true, some of which may be fall somewhere. who knows? but torture, of course, cannot be countenance no matter what it's used for. i and torture as defined by the united nations is much broader than just using electric shock or suffocating

someone in the course using coercive tactics. whether it be a psychological or whether it be physical to obtain confession, georgia 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 or women, particularly men or women of color to the pen tension. and that, of course, has been a major aspect of mass incarceration over the years. and that was a mass, an impact aspect of what happened and what continues to happen. not necessarily with electric shocks and suffocation here in the city of chicago. but detectives are still coercing, confessions, confer, coercing, of false confessions, and people are still being sent to the penitentiary on the basis of these confessions, you'll 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 change, the andrew wilson case. i took an american man who was charge and we convicted of doing to white police officers. and he was brutally and repeatedly tortured with all the techniques that i previously mention. and we went to trial and represented him on a, on a civil rights case, claiming that he was gone by virgin his man. and during that case, an anonymous police source who we dug deep badge told us that, hey, you're not just looking at one extreme case. this is a pattern of practice, a gracious white supremacist torture that everyone in the police department of power and the state attorney of cook county who was at that time, reggie dailey, went on to be the long time mayor of year. they all knew about it. they all count

how many that they all use. those confessions edition people to the penitentiary and to death rock and show over the years re uncovered. and some of those cases are chronicled from their testimony. in my book over a 125 cases of african american men who were tortured under burges 20 year regime. and during that period of time, he went from a detective, fresh from vietnam and the tactics that they use on the b o. w camp that he worked on from detective sergeant lieutenant commander. and as commander was when we were taking him on in federal court and the evidence that we were able to uncover, led to a re investigation, went to him being fired and ultimately decades later, read to him being sent to the penitentiary or a lying about georgia and yet,

during that whole period, when you are publicly exposing systematic torture, then state senator brock obama did not utter a word. and as you point out in your book endorsed daily who had been the attorney general overseen 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 or acro bama was just brock obama. he was a state senator. he was doing some decent things in terms of reform, of 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 the death. because the kids in the 6th grade at that point where happened away 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 we thought through the many, many chapters of exposing the police torture and trying to bring some modicum of justice. unfortunately, brock obama wasn't one of those people. well, he took the seat. he defeated one of them to name. well, she ran to get the only yeah, he took a defeat from bobby rush. the only time. yeah. may have a loss. was against former panther defense minister bobby rash, of course, with a co leader with fred hampton and estate 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, shall we be beat him in a sure i believe it was. i forget what kind of race was might have in the state

senator, re or whatever. but i think he learned his lesson about how to fit his bobby on his own. gerald, let's talk 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 burge the torture is now publicly verifiable. there's this code of silence within the police. talk to us about the institution itself and it's it's kind of orientation to the outside world. well chris, as you know, you can trace the history of policing to, to the child in this way patrols and you can trace it to, to the anti labor. i'll read that were police in the, in the early 19 hundreds and that culture has continued. and that culture as

african americans became more front and center in, in the chaps they became the focus of reese and the culture in that culture. of course, the code of silence covering each other's backs no matter how racist or, or violent conduct of the police is, is a trademark of that culture. and that kind of culture is something this starts at the top with the powers that be. and of course, you can analyze it in terms of the protection of property under capitalism. you can analyze it in terms of what the police are supposed to do and great are back in the communities of color and or communities. an invading force and oppression was not a force that serves and protects a horse that imposes the laws of the power structure and the white supremacy

that is showing damage in society. so when we talk about police, we need to take more of a look at some of the more fundamental changes that people in the streets are talking about in terms of abolition and funding. well, one of the things that the end of the book that i found fascinating is you talk about the amount of money that cities and as an taxpayer is put out to defend police officials who carry out torture. lethal attacks, you said, according to public records, which i have obtained and updated since 2005 the scandal across the city and county and taxpayers. $140000000.00 by the end of 2018. the federal tap are investigating, burgeon is confederates, and for prosecuting birth was an additional unknown amount. burge, i collected $900000.00 and pension money. chicago police officers implicated in the torture scandal had collected an additional $31000000.00 in pension,

pushing the still mounting total past $170000000.00. well, i guess i need update my book because that that meter keeps running adjustment. now, we're getting close to 200000000 and what's interesting is not only did daily as the mayor, not only did rama manual was the mayor continue in one form or another to get your son, the defense of these cases in court. now we have laurie lightford who ran on a progressive approach and there was a torture torture case that she put to trial rather than to shuttle in the last year or 2 across the city. another $10000000.00 show doesn't really matter. who the mayor is. the mayor continues to be 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 fight these cases. here we are in 2021. and the torture started under burge and $972.00. 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. right. thank you. that was civil rights attorney, an author flint taylor on his new book? the torture machine. ah, the ah

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