‘Black Site’ Interrogation Facility For American Citizens Found In Chicago

It was revealed that a “black site” C.I.A. style Police Interrogation compound was used by Chicago police in the wake of the terrorist threats and the U.S war on terror.
The police department operate the interrogation compound without records, rendering American citizens – usually black, brown or from poor backgrounds –  unable to be found by family members or attorneys.
It has been widely speculated that such sites existed, but its only now that its coming to surface in the media.
Chicago’s Homan Square- ‘warehouse’, ‘black site’, was used to shackle, beat, deny attorneys, deny legal rights and perform C.IA. black-ops style interrogation tactics on U.S Citizens. One man was found unresponsive in the interview room and later pronounced dead.

From The Guardian

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.

“This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

Much remains hidden about Homan Square. The Chicago police department did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the facility. But after the Guardian published this story, the department provided a statement insisting, without specifics, that there is nothing untoward taking place at what it called the “sensitive” location, home to undercover units.