Tag: Jon Burge

The national protests catalyzed by the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson last August continue even as many have moved on. In Chicago, many have used the energy and opening created by these ongoing protests to re-animate existing long-term anti-police violence campaigns. On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered at the Chicago Temple to show our love for police torture survivors on the day after Jon Burge was released from house arrest.

Former Lt. Jon Burge was equipped with a special unit that included individuals such as Joe “Machine Gun” Gorman, who participated in the assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark. That is how he got his moniker “Machine Gun.”

RIP Oscar Grant III. You, unarmed, pleading for your life as a young father, at the tender age of 22, while a rogue Bay Area Rapid Transit cop Tony Pirone punches you, then crushes your neck with his knee, shortly followed in his enthusiastic, racist, vicious rage by Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shoots you in the back, murdering you.

Political prisoner Aaron Patterson was tortured by Chicago police and brought up on trumped up charges originally in 1986, when he was framed for a double homicide. In 2003, Gov. Ryan of Illinois acknowledged the torturing tactics of the Chicago Police Department under the leadership of Lt. Jon Burge and tenure of then prosecutor and now Mayor Richard M. Daley.