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- [00:01]
A
Before we start this next episode, I've been thinking about what we're covering here. And I was stuck on something. And. Hi. Maybe we haven't been formally introduced, but some of you might know me from a few years ago in Minneapolis during the demonstrations after the police murder of George Floyd. And that command we heard from almost a block away. So let me take you back. This was May 29, 2020. My team and I had been covering the protests for days. Things were peaceful during the daytime and then progressively getting more violent in the overnight hours. Windows broken, things set on fire, stuff like that. Well, on that morning, my team and I were reporting live from a location that had seen a lot of damage. No real police presence in the really early morning hours. When we first got there, it's when the local police showed up. Then from what felt like nowhere, honestly, police pulled up to the scene. We actually saw them slowly advancing down the block. So we cleared out of their way to let them do their thing. And scattering the protesters. At that point, we were reporting live outside their perimeter when all of a sudden. I'm sorry, you're under arrest. Okay. Do you mind telling me why I'm under arrest, sir? Why am I under arrest, sir? You're under arrest.
- [01:23]
B
Okay.
- [01:24]
A
Those were the only words I ever heard from any officer in that moment as my team and I got handcuffed and taken into custody for reasons I'm still not totally sure of, all on live tv. If you're just tuning in, you are.
- [01:42]
C
Watching our correspondent Omar Jimenez being arrested by state police.
- [01:47]
A
We got released later that morning. And while that was crazy, that's not why I'm telling you this story. After we were taken into custody, and I still think about this. The Minnesota State Patrol wrote on social media, in the course of clearing the streets and restoring order, four people were arrested by state Patrol troopers, including three members of a CNN crew. The three were released once they were confirmed to be members of the media. Come on. We had our credentials front and center. We said we were live on tv. And even if you weren't sure, once you led us away, you had my name. Google me. I'm pretty sure I pop up right there. Top of the list. Anyway, everyone saw what happened live on television. I didn't have to explain it. You saw it. You were my witness. But if that camera hadn't been there, it could have been my word against theirs. For the rest of time, the world wasn't watching. When James Gibson was picked up by Chicago police, it was his word versus theirs. And in those days in Chicago, his word didn't have a chance. Maybe the only reason James Story ever saw the light of day is because of one unlikely man named maybe the unlikeliest man imaginable, who told his own story over and over and over until enough people started to pay attention. Today, the story of that man. His name was Andrew Wilson. I'm Omar Jimenez from CNN Presents. This is torture. Just.
- [03:39]
D
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [04:07]
E
Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell, oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy.
- [04:25]
A
Break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit.
- [04:30]
F
Made with cage free eggs, smoked bacon.
- [04:31]
A
And melty cheese on a buttery biscuit.
- [04:33]
D
AM P M. Too much Good stuff.
- [04:38]
A
Our story starts with one of the largest manhunts in Chicago history. February 1982.
- [04:44]
B
They were the kind of killings that scare cops most murders with no apparent motive.
- [04:49]
A
It was seven years before James Gibson's arrest. He was a teenager at the time. Two white police officers, William Fahey and Richard o', Brien, pulled over a car on the south side.
- [05:00]
G
They were coming back from another police officer's funeral.
- [05:04]
A
Richard Briesek was superintendent of the Chicago Police Department at the time and says the two officers were conducting a routine traffic stop.
- [05:12]
B
Witnesses say the two policemen were shot by a motorist and his passenger after stopping a car for a routine check.
- [05:19]
G
They overpowered the two officers. Bang, bang, they killed them. And then they took off.
- [05:25]
B
Patrolman Richard o', Brien, shot once in the head, died in a hospital Tuesday. Patrolman William Fahey, shot three times in the chest, died yesterday.
- [05:35]
A
The two police officers deaths shocked the city. The mayor issued a $50,000 reward for any information leading to the killers. And the Chicago Police Department came down hard.
- [05:48]
H
The manhunt was pretty extraordinary.
- [05:51]
A
John Conroy is a longtime Chicago journalist.
- [05:54]
H
The police officers went a little crazy. You know, one detective who later became a defense lawyer, he said, I don't know what Kristallnacht was like, but I think this was pretty close.
- [06:10]
I
They completely terrorized the entire west and south sides of the city of Chicago.
- [06:16]
A
Flint Taylor is a legendary Chicago civil rights attorney who would go on to represent many victims of police torture. He's 72 now, but in 1982, he had already been a partner at his co op law firm, the People's Law Office, for a decade. He's a really focused guy, direct. It seems like he remembers every detail from this time.
- [06:39]
I
They kick down doors, they beat black people indiscriminately. They drag certain young black people to police stations and tortured them and beat them because they thought they might have some information about who killed their brother and the white cops.
- [06:56]
A
Now Briesack, the police superintendent at the time, has a different perspective on how the manhunt went down. He said police were under intense pressure to find the killers.
- [07:07]
G
We knew what we had to do because we had two vicious killers out there. So steps had to be taken. People want action.
- [07:18]
A
Bresek believes most of the neighborhood thought the manhunt tactics were justified.
- [07:23]
G
How do you deal with violence? One of the ways is violence has to mean violence. It may have to be superior violence. I don't think what we did in back in 1982 was offensive to most of the people who live in those neighborhoods that we were operating in, who pay the taxes, who go to work, who send their kids to school. They're not the ones complaining.
- [07:54]
A
In the end, the search did turn up two suspects, Jackie Wilson and his brother, Andrew Wilson. Jackie has his own story, but we're going to stick with Andrew. Here's journalist John Conroy again.
- [08:07]
H
He was at large for about a week, and then they got a tip that he was holding up in an apartment on the west side. So John Burge put this team of people together to go arrest him.
- [08:24]
A
John Burge, the Chicago police officer at the center of this series. By this time, Burge had been a Chicago police detective for a decade. He had risen through the ranks and was now commander of the violent crimes unit for Area 2, a collection of police districts on the south side.
- [08:41]
H
They did it very early in the morning. I think it was between 4 and 5am and Burge was the first one through the door. You know, those kind of guys often ruled from a chair. You know, they weren't in the field. Burge was a field guy. No shots were fired. Andrew Wilson was arrested. And Wilson later testified that Byrd said something like, take it easy on him. We'll get him at the station.
- [09:19]
A
The story of what the police did to Andrew Wilson took years to come out. The brutality of that story is part of the reason why we know about John Burge and his midnight crew at all. The details matter. So we're going to tell you some of the specifics. And if descriptions of violence aren't for you, you can skip the next few minutes. Andrew Wilson described what happened in hours of depositions, in lawsuits that would come later. We had actors read a few passages from one of those depositions. You'll hear Andrew first being questioned by a lawyer for John Birch.
- [10:00]
J
Well, while they was beating me up, one of them took the bag out of the garbage can and put it over my head.
- [10:09]
A
A plastic bag or a paper bag?
- [10:12]
J
A plastic bag. They knocked me back down to the floor. And a pig do. He was clean cut. He kicked me, but he didn't fully kick me, but he was trying to. And I moved some and I got my eye messed up.
- [10:34]
A
John Conroy wrote about Andrew's account.
- [10:37]
H
One of the officers kicked him in the eye and that tore his retina. He described being electroshocked. He said that alligator clips had been attached to his ears. John Birch had turned this crank on a generator and that had resulted in severe pain.
- [11:04]
I
All right, so you felt the shock in your ear. Did you feel it in your ear or nose or.
- [11:13]
A
Or both places?
- [11:17]
J
It goes to your brain. And if you feel your teeth shattering flint.
- [11:25]
A
Taylor was in the room for the deposition we've been referencing.
- [11:29]
I
The torture machine was a box that had a generator in it. And they attached wires to the generator in this box. And they had clips, alligator clips on the wire. They had him strapped, handcuffed across one of those old heat radiators that have bars, a steam radiator. And so when they shocked him, his chest and face and leg went against the red hot radiator.
- [12:02]
A
How many times did you cry out?
- [12:06]
J
I don't know, about three, four times. I just stopped.
- [12:12]
I
You stopped hollering after a while?
- [12:16]
J
Yes, because nobody wasn't coming. Nobody wasn't coming to help me.
- [12:27]
A
What happened next?
- [12:29]
J
He stopped with the crank and then he went and got the other one out.
- [12:35]
A
The other one was another kind of electroshock device, sort of like a cattle prod. Andrew said police shocked his genitals with it. And then what happened? The testimony has a few of these breaks. Even years later, it was difficult for Andrew to talk about what happened to him without crying. His longtime lawyer told us Andrew hated that he cried like that. Eventually, after 15 hours, Andrew signed a 13 page statement police put in front of him, saying he'd killed the two police officers. This is the story Andrew Wilson would tell and retell for the rest of his life. And look, nobody has substantially questioned Andrew Wilson's guilt in the murder of the two officers in 1982. There were witnesses. This doesn't appear to be a case where police pinned a crime on someone who was innocent. But torture is still torture, even if someone's guilty. Police had their man. They had his confession. They had two, actually. They'd arrested Andrew's brother Jackie, who I already mentioned. He also was beaten by police until he said he told them what they wanted to hear. It looked like it would be a slam dunk case. With their confessions, prosecutors would be able to convict them. Easy. But police also had a problem.
- [14:20]
G
On February 15, 1982, I was called by the attending physician who was working at Cermak Health Service.
- [14:27]
A
Dr. John Raba was the medical director at the clinic that served the Cook County Jail. He later gave interviews about what happened when he examined Andrew Wilson, including this one. It was for a 1994 PBS documentary called the End of the Nightstick.
- [14:41]
G
I examined him quickly and was able to identify multiple, very unusual injuries that we have never seen here at Cermak Health Services.
- [14:52]
A
The injuries were severe enough that Rabba immediately wrote a letter to the man in charge.
- [14:57]
G
I got a letter from the attending physician at the Cook County Jail.
- [15:03]
A
The letter went to Richard Brezek, the superintendent of police, who told me that.
- [15:08]
G
Andrew Wilson had injuries consistent with being burned by a radiator.
- [15:19]
A
Dr. Raba described Andrew Wilson's injuries, and he ended his letter demanding a, quote, investigation of this alleged brutality. The letter, along with photos of Andrew taken around the same time, were entered into evidence. And I want to pause on this moment because in a story like this, with dozens of victims, there are always potential turning points. Moments in this case when people in power could have done something to stop the torture that was happening at the hands of John Burge and the Midnight Crew. When the letter came to Briesek, he had two ignore it or pursue it. When I talked to Brecsek about this, he said he pursued it. He opened an internal investigation, and then he did something else.
- [16:07]
G
I wrote a letter to Richard M. Daley.
- [16:10]
A
Daley went on to become the longest serving mayor in Chicago's history. At this time, he was the state's attorney.
- [16:16]
G
He's the chief law enforcement officer of the county. He's prosecuting the case. I sent him a copy of the letter. And if you read the letter I talked about, I'm conducting the investigation, but I also am looking for some Guidance so as what you want me to do and what you don't want me to do, so I don't interfere with the criminal prosecution of the case.
- [16:42]
A
He didn't want to interfere with the criminal prosecution of the case. Breczek knew, and surely then State's Attorney Richard M. Daley knew, that if it became clear that Andrew Wilson had been tortured by police before he confessed, their case against him could be destroyed. What then? Would a cop killer go free? The letter Briesek wrote daily is short seven sentences. He said he didn't want to jeopardize the prosecution's case. So besides starting an internal investigation, he'll do nothing unless he hears from Daly. But as far as we know, Daly didn't respond. There were no follow up calls or meetings, and Daly also didn't respond to my requests for comment. Maybe in another city or at another time or in another institution, something would have come out of Brecec's actions. But the police didn't police the police. Not then, at least. I was kind of surprised Briesek even spoke to me at all for this story. The fact is, almost no one on the force ever spoke on the record about police torture on the south side. Briesek was young to be leading the Chicago Police Department at the time. Now he's 82. There just aren't many other former police officers left who were around then. And as you can imagine, Rezek has had a lot of time to think about what happened in February of 1982.
- [18:12]
G
I'm not sure, you know, what else I could have done other than maybe gone out to the Area 2 headquarters, taken my jacket off, rolled my sleeves up, and take over the whole investigation and do it myself. When you get a reputation for doing the right thing or trying to do the right thing, sometimes people don't want the right thing done. That's all I can tell you.
- [18:43]
A
This case ended up following Richard Breczek for years. He was actually listed as a defendant alongside John Burge and other officers who were accused of torture. I almost wonder if Briesek spoke to me because he wanted to make it clear that he didn't consider himself one of them.
- [19:00]
G
I'm not saying that Burge did this because I never saw him do it. He never admitted it to me. But in my opinion, okay, I think Burge was an out and out racist, okay? And I think that he looked at people arrested of a color other than white as being subhuman. That's the way I looked at him.
- [19:33]
A
Now, Brieseck is far from the only person who's accused Burge of being racist. It's an accusation Burge denied. But in Andrew Wilson's case, whatever Briesek thinks the right thing to do might have been, Wilson was still a cop killer, which to him embodies a particular kind of evil.
- [19:52]
G
You know, they snuff out people's lives over what? Hatred, you know, because they committed a crime. And the people in blue are the ones that stand between them and anarchy, tyranny. You know, I mean, I mean, what's a justification for killing a police officer?
- [20:15]
A
Andrew Wilson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1983. He would spend the rest of his life in prison. Stay with us. We're taking a quick break. We'll be back.
- [20:31]
D
Want to make a difference in your community, but not sure how? Go to GoFundMe.com right now and start a GoFundMe. Seriously. Your next fundraiser doesn't have to start in a school parking lot or a church basement. You can start a GoFundMe today in just minutes. Fundraise for yourself a friend or family member or an organization. All that matters is that you care about them. GoFundMe is the trusted place to fundraise for what you care about. With no pressure to hit your fundraising goal, but tons of tools to help you reach it, you can confidently start fundraising right now. Whether it's creative, local, or critical, your cause matters. And there's a reason why GoFundMe is backed by millions and chosen by fundraisers everywhere. It works and it matters. GoFundMe helps you make a real difference. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. that's GoFundMe.com G-O-F-U-N-M E.com this is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe.
- [21:30]
E
This week on the assignment with me, Adi Cornish. These new online accents are shaped by algorithms. Like linguists are finding that we're using that weird AI vocabulary everywhere. Our language model just keeps iterating, prompting new output. So everything's getting optimized into one big collab. And even worse, the out of context generational slang, as in low key. We're just vibing and talking like actual memes out loud now. Internet culture one. No, Cap. We're talking about why this is happening with a linguist, a language detective. Listen to the assignment with me, Audie Cornish. Streaming now on your favorite podcast, Apple.
- [22:13]
I
Andrew was a very quiet and introverted man.
- [22:17]
A
Chicago civil rights attorney Flint Taylor became Andrew Wilson's lawyer in 1986. By that time, Wilson had been in prison for three years for the murder of the two police officers.
- [22:29]
I
He had obviously suffered a great deal of trauma by being tortured mercilessly by Burge and his men. He clearly didn't trust people, including us, even though he knew who we were and had asked for us to be involved in the case.
- [22:51]
A
Wilson's young life had been lived in a series of institutions. It started when he was a kid and he couldn't focus in school. He was sent to a school for kids with behavioral problems, and he never learned to read. Then he ended up in a juvenile detention facility as a young teen for burglary. A doctor there diagnosed him with seizure disorders, emotional disturbance, and hyperactivity. As an adult, Wilson had a long rap sheet. Prison wasn't new to him. By the time he landed there for murder. By the time Flint Taylor took on his case, Wilson had already launched an appeal.
- [23:29]
I
Unlike a lot of cases, we had physical evidence that supported Andrew's torture.
- [23:39]
A
The bruises, swelling, the scabs on his body from the alligator clips that delivered the shocks to his nose and ears. There were photographs. There was that hospital letter that had been sent to Police Superintendent Brieseck.
- [23:55]
I
The evidence was so strong that this Illinois Supreme Court reversed his death penalty case and ordered that his confession be thrown out of evidence.
- [24:09]
A
Now, to be clear, that didn't mean that Andrew Wilson was free. It just meant that one piece of evidence, the confession, couldn't be used against him. There was enough other evidence supporting Andrew Wilson's guilt that he was convicted in a second trial. This time, he was sentenced to life. And that's where it could have ended.
- [24:33]
H
But anonymous letters started arriving at the.
- [24:37]
A
Offices of Wilson's attorneys, John Conroy. Again.
- [24:42]
H
And these anonymous letters came in Chicago Police Department envelopes. And there were four of them.
- [24:52]
A
Four letters from inside the Chicago Police Department. They came from someone or maybe more than one person close enough to the torture to know names and details.
- [25:04]
I
We called the source Deep Badge.
- [25:08]
A
The letters showed up over the course of months while Flint Taylor argued Wilson's case on appeal and then later defended him in his retrial. But the folks at the People's Law Office never found out who Deep Badge was.
- [25:21]
I
There was some feeling that perhaps these sources or source when there'd be something on TV about the case, that he or she would have feelings of guilt and reach out. But that's all kind of speculation. What's not speculation is the information that we got in those four letters. What it did Was lead us to other torture survivors, other torture victims in the prisons. And this led us to uncover other cases. The source told us to look up a man by the name of Melvin Jones in a county jail. We did, and we found out that Melvin Jones had been tortured by the same torture box nine days before Andrew Wilson had, by Burge. And so now we had another case that was highly similar to Andrew's case.
- [26:15]
A
And Melvin wasn't the only one, because when they went to talk to him, Melvin Jones knew about a man named Anthony Holmes.
- [26:22]
H
They find Anthony Holmes, and he says, oh, yeah, same thing happened to me in 1973.
- [26:31]
A
One person led to another and another. John Conroy can still rattle off the names.
- [26:38]
H
Holmes goes on to say, and that happened to George Powell, and it happened to Maurice Powell, and it happened to Lawrence Paris twice. And they came into the case thinking they had one torture case. And now, oh, wait, these machines have been used broadly.
- [26:58]
A
What started with the Andrew Wilson case is now all these other cases, including some people who'd been sentenced to life in prison or death. And the reports of the electrocution machine lined up perfectly with John Burge's career. Burge became a detective in 1972. The first victim Taylor and his team found, Anthony Holmes said Burge tortured him in 1973. Now, 16 years later, people were finally seeing a pattern. And that pattern was crucial. It's what Andrew Wilson and Flint Taylor needed to build out a solid civil suit against Burge, police leaders, and the city of Chicago. At this point, Wilson was never going to get out of prison, but he could still sue for damages over the torture. John Conroy was reporting for the Chicago Reader and was there when the suit went to court in the late 80s.
- [28:01]
H
At the time, the federal courthouse was covered by one reporter from each paper. There was a sports agent who was on trial, famous guy, and they were bringing in celebrity witnesses. And so, you know what's more interesting? So that's how I ended up hearing the whole thing While other reporters didn't.
- [28:28]
A
Conroy was the right reporter in the right courtroom at the right time. He dove into the story headfirst and spent months pouring over the documents that had amassed in Andrew Wilson's file over the past several years. Conroy published a massive story in the Chicago Reader about the whole thing. Wilson, the torture, the lawsuits, all of that. In January 1990. It was headlined House of Screams. At almost 20,000 words, it reads like a detective novel. What John laid out was all the evidence that convinced a jury that police and the city that Employed them were sanctioning torture. He knew he was publishing a bombshell. He was just waiting for it to go off.
- [29:14]
H
We were so sure that the dailies, the daily newspapers were going to take over this story and throw a bunch of people on it. But the dailies didn't come to it for like almost two and a half, three years.
- [29:29]
A
Conroy was shocked that other journalists weren't rushing to the story.
- [29:34]
H
Millions of people now knew that there had been torture in the Chicago police department and there were guys on death row who were going to die. If nobody did anything and nobody did anything, why do people not react when there is an emergency like that?
- [29:57]
A
Meanwhile, Andrew Wilson's first civil suit against Burge and the city of Chicago ended in a hong jury. But then when he appealed, he scored a weak sorta half victory. The court said, yes, his constitutional rights were violated. And this was important because for the first time it was there on paper. The city of Chicago had a de facto policy that resulted in abuse. All those names added up to something undeniable for the jury. But none of the men Wilson sued directly, including Burge and Brezek, were found liable. But Conroy kept following the story. He wrote article after article for the Chicago Reader with headlines like town without pity. The shocking Truth. Pure torture. And slowly people started to pay attention.
- [30:49]
B
Police torture is the crime.
- [30:52]
A
John Boots between time it started with protests like these. Citizens Alert, the Malcolm X grassroots movement. These were groups that had been organizing and demonstrating against police brutality in Chicago for years.
- [31:05]
I
It was an organic thing that was happening. There was a movement that was building.
- [31:11]
A
Flint Taylor was often out there on the streets with the protesters.
- [31:15]
I
Activists were demonstrating. People were going to city council and demonstrating right in the chambers. And so the council people couldn't miss it.
- [31:26]
B
Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. And I think it's going to be up to us. The people are going to do something about it. We have been through all the organizations. We've been to the ops.
- [31:35]
A
Those protests helped put a global spotlight on what was happening in the city. In December of 1990, Amnesty International issued a report on the allegations of torture of suspects by the Chicago police Department.
- [31:48]
B
The goal of this report is fairly clear, to put public attention and pressure on the people whose job it is to make sure Chicago police follow the law themselves.
- [31:57]
A
The report called on top prosecutors and city leaders to investigate the torture allegations. Civil rights activists used the report to keep the pressure on the police and the mayor, who by now was Richard M. Daley, the former state's attorney.
- [32:12]
E
Mayor Daley was state's attorney at the time. He knew about this and did absolutely, absolutely nothing.
- [32:18]
A
And remember, Daley was state's attorney in the mid-80s. He must have known about what happened to Andrew Wilson. Superintendent Bresek sent him that letter about Wilson's injuries.
- [32:30]
B
Here's the man at the top, and he stands there with his arms around John Byrd's and says, it's okay. He says the allegations against Birch don't amount to anything. It's okay to torture young black men. In the city of Chicago, the activists.
- [32:45]
A
Began carrying a replica of one of the torture devices so many people had described. A hand cranked black box with wires coming off it.
- [32:53]
C
I would like to show everybody the black box.
- [32:58]
E
An electric shock box the task force says is a copy of one used to terrorize suspects.
- [33:03]
A
But as the protests grew and the pressure built on the city to address the allegations, city leaders appeared to do nothing. In Mayor Daley's public comments, he didn't even seem to take the allegations seriously. Here he is commenting on the charge that the city was sanctioning torture.
- [33:21]
B
If you're trying to portray that superintendent police or police Patel, you're greatly mistaken. And the police officer are not and the people are not.
- [33:31]
A
But behind the scenes, out of the public eye, there was an investigation.
- [33:37]
C
I knew that there was something important going on here and that there was a lot at stake.
- [33:43]
A
If Andrew Wilson was an unlikely person to blow open the Burge story, so was Francine Sanders. She grew up in the Chicago suburbs. She was a movie buff who majored in journalism. You might not expect her ending up in a job investigating misconduct in the Chicago PD's Office of Professional Standards. But she spent a decade doing exactly that, starting in the late 1980s.
- [34:08]
C
It was a job where nobody really liked you a whole lot.
- [34:12]
A
The Office of Professional Standards ops, a civilian team that was part of the Chicago Police Department. But it was also meant to operate independently. It was tasked with reviewing allegations of police misconduct.
- [34:25]
C
The police didn't really trust you because you're now one of them. And then the community, you're riding up in an unmarked squad car and carrying a badge, you know, and then, you know, your unit reports to the superintendent. There's skepticism there, understandably.
- [34:42]
A
OPS had investigated Andrew Wilson's case. Richard Brezek, the former superintendent, had told them to. That was the internal investigation he said he opened. The result was a one page report that the public never heard about. This was true of a lot of OPS investigations, and it definitely reflected what a lot of people in the public thought about how the department policed itself. Sure, maybe there was a report, but nothing ever happened. This time, with protesters in the streets and eyes on the case, it went differently. The assignment fell to two people. An OPS investigator named Michael Goldston and Francine Sanders.
- [35:27]
C
There were just more eyes on this. There was this outcry, and there was this atmosphere. You've been picked to do this really big job.
- [35:36]
A
Me and Michael Goldston was tasked with looking for patterns of abuse within the department. Sanders focus was more narrow re investigate what happened to Andrew Wilson while he was in custody. So she started by reviewing the documents and reading John Conroy's House of Screams cover story. Then she went to interview potential witnesses. But almost nobody in the department would talk to her. And this actually wasn't typical. She investigated a lot of claims of misconduct while she worked at ops. Police might not have loved it when she came knocking, she said, but they generally cooperated. Some of them she was friendly with.
- [36:15]
C
I loved when I was able to prove that an officer did the right thing. He know that was super satisfying. I didn't have, like, an agenda like, I've got to. We got to nail these guys, you know, I. I was just trying to figure out what happened. And to me, there was no question in my mind. After going through all this documentation and evidence, there was no other way to explain Wilson's injuries.
- [36:47]
A
And that's where Sanders landed her investigation came to the conclusion that John Burge and another officer had tortured Wilson, beaten him, shocked him, failed to intervene, refused to give him medical treatment. Goldston, the other investigator, was also meticulous. He made a database of every allegation of abuse by detectives that he could find. There were 50. There was systematic abuse over more than a decade. It was methodical. It was planned, it was torture.
- [37:27]
C
I guess my hope was just that it would all come to light and that there would be some justice here.
- [37:33]
A
Sanders and Goldstein's reports were packaged up into two binders stamped on every page with confidential and delivered to the superintendent of police, where they stayed because the superintendent of police at the time, Leroy Martin, kept the report secret for a year and a half. Martin died in 2013, so we couldn't ask him about this. But at the time, he claimed he didn't know about the wrongdoing or the report.
- [38:01]
B
No, I had no knowledge of it. If I had any knowledge of wrongdoing, anytime, any place, I have taken action, and I think my reputation speaks that I'll take action. Martin says.
- [38:10]
A
The only reason we can read the ops reports that Sanders and Goldstein wrote Is that Flint, Taylor and the people's law Office fought in court to have them released. They'd come across them during discovery in a police brutality case, but the reports were under a protective order. They claimed the public had a right to see them and a federal judge agreed.
- [38:30]
I
So that's when you had the banner headlines all across the country and in Chicago, you know about torture in Chicago Pattern of torture.
- [38:40]
B
Tonight, a confidential report implicates a high ranking Chicago police officer in the alleged torture of criminal suspects.
- [38:46]
A
Channel 5 News in Chicago quoted the report.
- [38:49]
B
Abuse did occur and was systematic. The time span involved covers more than 10 years. The type of abuse described was not limited to the usual beating, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture. Particular command members were aware of the systematic abuse and perpetuated it, either by actively participating in same or failing to take any action to bring it to an end.
- [39:15]
A
The release of the report was like a dam breaking. All eyes were on Chicago. Immediately. Chicago mayor Richard M. Daly pushed back.
- [39:24]
B
This is a report by an individual. It is not fully documented. It's a lot of rumors. There has been police brutality. It is not systematic.
- [39:33]
A
Just days after the report went public, the Chicago police board launched hearings to decide whether Burge and two other officers should be fired. And it's worth noting, like ops, the police board was run by a group of civilians, but it had teeth. It could fire police officers. The police board is still deciding whether to fire Burge and two other officers. The hearings began on a cold, gray February day in 1992. Outside police headquarters, protesters marched up and down the sidewalk hoisting poster board signs. Beat back the racist attack Fire Burge, end systematic torture. By this time, Burge had given testimony in not one but two civil trials as a defendant. He denied everything he was accused of then and he denied it again to the police board. The examiner asked him if he'd applied a hand cranked electric shocking device to Andrew Wilson by applying clips on the ends of wires to Wilson's ears and nose. No, sir, Burge said. Did he apply a shocking device to Wilson's little fingers? No, sir, I did not. Did he put a gun to a suspect's head? Did he cause Wilson to be burned on a radiator? Did he put a typewriter cover over a suspect's head? He denied it all concisely and categorically, these hearings. It was an administrative procedure, but it unfolded like a hearing in a court of law with the board acting as the judge. Francine Sanders was there for one of the Hearings, watching with the public.
- [41:14]
C
All I remember is like a sea of police officers looking back at me.
- [41:22]
A
Among them was John Burch. At one point, he turned and looked at her.
- [41:28]
C
It was uncomfortable, you know, it just made me aware of how much support he had.
- [41:39]
A
The support was vocal and visible. In the middle of the hearings, thousands of people showed up to a fundraiser at Chicago's Teamsters Auditorium for him and. And other officers accused of torture.
- [41:51]
B
It's a waste of time, it's a.
- [41:52]
A
Waste of taxpayers money, and it's an.
- [41:54]
B
Insult to the law enforcement. And what they're doing is trying to.
- [41:57]
A
The board fired Burch tonight in one.
- [42:00]
B
Of the most infamous cases of police brutality in Chicago history. Chicago police board found him guilty of.
- [42:06]
A
Torturing suspects, and they fired him. It had been 11 years since Andrew Wilson was arrested and tortured. And now, while it might not have been justice, it was at least some accountability. But when journalist John Conroy read the police board's decision, the most vaguely worded.
- [42:26]
H
Decision you could imagine, John Burge did kick and, or punch and. Or deny medical attention to. So the newspapers ran with stories that said John Birch fired over torture charges. But in. In fact, the word torture wasn't used in the board's decision.
- [42:47]
C
I was happy that there was something, but it wasn't enough.
- [42:51]
A
Francine Sanders job had been a straightforward one. Investigate, find out whether rules were broken. But she said her report, and Goldstein's in particular, revealed a lot more than that.
- [43:04]
C
Clearly, whether you've got the bad apple or not, just there's a lot of bad apples. There's a lot of people turning away, looking away, not doing the right thing. You know, it was so much bigger than Burge.
- [43:23]
A
The people who knew about what John Burge was doing on the south side or suspected it, the leadership who never took a second look when they should have, they would have been ordinary police officers, like the ones she'd gotten to know on the job and liked.
- [43:39]
C
I don't want to get too philosophical, but I go back to, you know, like the movie Chinatown, which is one of my favorite movies, Chinatown. And there's a line something like, you know, at the right time, in the right place, people are capable of anything.
- [44:02]
A
John Burge moved to Florida in 1993 at age 46. He still had his pension. It had been over a decade since Andrew Wilson's arrest and torture. Andrew Wilson wasn't the first person beaten and electrocuted by Chicago police officers. His fight, his lawsuits prove that. But he also wasn't the last. All through the 11 years between Andrew Wilson's arrest and John Burges firing, black men in Chicago were being tortured, including James Gibson, who we started his story with. He was picked up by police in late December of 1989, accused of murdering a mechanic and an insurance salesman in his Englewood neighborhood. He was held by police for four days, beaten, threatened, and then convicted in a bench trial months later, based on a statement police say he gave them putting him at the scene, James and Andrew never met each other, never knew the details of each other's lives or cases, but they're linked in time. Andrew Wilson won his civil suit against the city just months before James was arrested. The swelling and bruises James got from being beaten by police were still healing when John Conroy's House of Screams article came out in January of 1990. You almost wonder if things had just happened faster, if the excruciatingly slow crawl toward some kind of accountability over 11 years could have been sped up. Maybe James's life would have gone differently. By the time Burge was fired, James had already spent three years in prison. He'd been sentenced to life. He maintained his innocence. He said police had manufactured the whole story of his presence at the crime scene. But at that point, what did it matter? He felt like nobody cared. Except one person, his mom. They couldn't really talk on the phone because she. She was deaf. So whatever prison he was in, he was moved around to a few over the years. She'd take the bus to come visit.
- [46:19]
F
And she would say, baby, I know how you feel. She said, but you got to get them things out your heart. She said, you got to get those things out your heart so that God can do what he need to do for you. She said, you coming home? She said, but them white folks, they ain't gonna play fair for you. She said, you might have to do about 20 years. She say, but you got to get that stuff out your heart. I say. I say, if you say I'm coming home, I'm coming home.
- [46:45]
A
His mom wouldn't live to see it happen. James found out that his mother was dying after a dream he had locked up in a prison cell.
- [46:55]
F
I wrote her and I told her I had a dream I was in a white car and I came to your house and there was no presence. I said, somebody finna die. And she told me it was her. She brought me back and she told me that the doctor told her she had to get up fast and order.
- [47:19]
A
James mother died in April 2000. Two, 12 years into his prison sentence. He would spend another 18 behind bars.
- [47:30]
F
She told me I was coming home and I believe that. And I put every effort in tearing they ass up. I didn't miss a beat. She and I'm still mad too.
- [47:51]
A
That rage, sadness, frustration, loss might have been what fueled Andrew Wilson's fight too. Andrew died in prison in 2007. He did eventually get a settlement from the city, a million dollars. Most of which went to his lawyers. The rest went to the family of one of the murdered officers. But he left this unlikely legacy. He set off the chain of events that eventually freed dozens of men who had been wrongfully imprisoned.
- [48:27]
H
He was remorseless and persistent.
- [48:30]
A
The journalist John Conroy.
- [48:32]
H
Remorseless in that he didn't seem to feel, you know, particularly bad for having killed two cops. And persistent in that he just kept going. With this civil suit. One, he could easily have just dropped it. There was no benefit to him to keep going. The other survivors, I understand their persistence because they're hoping to get out. Andrews had no hope of getting out. Some people would have just dropped it at that point because going through a civil suit like that is really brutal. The cross examination was just nothing I would ever want to submit to. And you know, Wilson did it over and over again. I think he was just driven by, you know, his hatred of what had happened to him. I don't think anybody anticipated the impact Andrew Wilson would have.
- [49:36]
A
Andrew Wilson's persistence is the reason we can tell this story. And let's be clear, he did an awful thing. He killed two police officers and he ignited this series of events that exposed another awful thing. Because of Andrew, we know what John Burge and the Midnight Crew did. And even today, decades later, there are still people like James picking up the pieces of their lives. The time they lost, the time that was taken from them. How do you get justice for that? Next in the final episode, the open.
- [50:22]
H
Secret is something that people know. It's just that we also know that nothing is going to be done about it.
- [50:30]
E
We knew that this was really where we might have our hook. So how do we prove it? How do we prove that he lied?
- [50:36]
F
I've been fighting so long I'm still swinging. I still carry scars on my body.
- [50:40]
A
36 years later, we thought we had justice. I don't think there is any right.
- [50:47]
G
Now.
- [50:49]
A
Not for my family, any.
- [51:05]
E
This is the story of the 1. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [51:35]
B
News fatigue have I GOT News for you? Was the cure and also the disease. CNN's Comedy Quiz show is back, making sense of the mayhem and definitely adding to it. Have I Got News for you? Saturday at 9 on CNN.