On Thursday morning as disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge was released from federal prison to a Florida halfway house, one of his first torture victims, Anthony Holmes, stood at City Hall with tears in his eyes, recalling four decades of pain and loss.
Holmes, a former Black Gangster Disciples leader, was arrested by Burge in 1973 and taken to a South Side police station, where detectives hooked him up to an electrical box, put a bag over his head and shocked him until he confessed to a murder he says he did not commit. Holmes said he still remembers Burge in his ear, calling him the “N” word and warning him, “Don’t you bite through that bag.”
By the time Holmes was released from prison 30 years later, the statute of limitations to sue had long since run out. He has never seen a dime in damages. Now nearing 70, the soft-spoken newspaper delivery driver said he is still awakened by nightmares and struggles financially.
On Thursday he joined several aldermen and supporters to demand the City Council pass an ordinance allowing for millions of dollars in reparations and other damages to Burge’s victims, particularly those who have never had their claims heard in court.
“I need some help,” Holmes told a crowd of reporters, his voice sometimes choked with emotion. “I try to hold my emotions back because I don’t want people to see me like that. … My family has been through a lot.”
Burge, 66, who entered the low-security prison in North Carolina in March 2011, was released Thursday morning and entered a halfway house in the Tampa, Fla., area, said Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. He is scheduled to be released from the halfway house in mid-February.
Burge, who has a home in Apollo Beach, Fla., was “anxious to get home to family and friends and get this period behind him,” Burge’s attorney, Richard Beuke, said Wednesday.
The former Chicago commander continues to generate controversy for collecting a $4,000-a-month police pension despite costing the city tens of millions of dollars in legal costs because of the torture and abuse of dozens in the 1970s and 1980s.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan challenged the city pension board’s refusal to strip Burge of the pension, but in a setback, a divided Illinois Supreme Court held in July that Madigan’s office didn’t have the legal authority to do so.
“(Burge) has the opportunity to start his life anew with the funds he receives from his police pension that is funded by the Chicago taxpayers,” said attorney Joey Mogul, of the People’s Law Office, at the City Hall news conference, “while those he tortured continue to struggle to cope with the torture they endured without one red cent or redress from the city of Chicago.”
At last count, the city and Cook County have spent a combined $96 million on Burge-related settlements and legal fees. Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an unexpected public apology for the stain Burge has left on the city, calling it a “dark chapter” that needed to be put in the past.
Burge was fired by the Chicago Police Department in 1993, but it wasn’t until 2006 that special Cook County prosecutors, after a four-year investigation, found evidence of widespread abuse by Burge and detectives under his command but concluded that the statute of limitations had passed on criminal charges.
However, federal prosecutors later charged Burge with lying in a civil case when he denied knowledge of the abuse. At his trial in 2010, a number of former convicts — including Holmes — testified about Burge’s use of cattle prods on genitals, plastic to suffocate suspects and phone books to beat them.
Testifying in his defense, Burge denied he ever tortured suspects or condoned its use, saying that he had never witnessed a cop abusing a suspect in his 30 years with the department.
The ordinance being promoted Thursday at City Hall calls for a $20 million set-aside to finance compensation to Burge’s victims, provide free enrollment in city colleges to the survivors, require Chicago Public Schools to teach a history lesson about the cases and fund a public memorial.
The ordinance was introduced at last month’s City Council meeting and currently has the support of 26 of the council’s 50 members. Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, who chairs the Finance Committee where the ordinance currently sits, said Thursday he would have to review it in more detail before it could come to a vote.
Tribune reporters Hal Dardick and Meredith Rodriguez contributed.
Twitter @jmetr22b
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