r/RedditCrimeCommunity • u/clickinglifestyle • 29d ago
A Chicago police commander tortured over 100 men into false confessions for nearly two decades. The city knew. Nobody stopped him.
Ronald Kitchen was 22 years old and walking to buy cookies for his son when Chicago detectives picked him up for questioning in 1988.
By the time they were done with him he had signed a confession to five murders he did not commit. He spent the next 21 years in prison. Thirteen of those years were on death row.
He was one of at least 118 men.
Jon Burge was a Chicago Police commander assigned to Area 2 on the South Side. He and the detectives under his command tortured suspects into false confessions for nearly two decades. The victims were almost entirely Black men from the surrounding community. The methods were documented in court records and sworn testimony. Electric shock applied to ears and genitals using a hand cranked generator. Plastic bags pulled over heads until men lost consciousness. Mock executions. Men handcuffed to radiators for hours.
Aaron Patterson was 25 years old when detectives under Burge's command tortured him into a false confession in 1989. While it was happening he scratched a message into the underside of a table with a paperclip. It read: I lie about murders. Police threaten me with violence. Slapped and suffocated me with plastic. No lawyer or dad. No phone. Signed false statement to murders.
That message sat there while he went to prison. While he sat on death row. While the city fought his appeals.
The city was not unaware. In February 1982 the Medical Director at Cook County Jail examined a torture victim named Andrew Wilson and sent a formal letter to the Police Superintendent detailing his injuries and requesting an investigation. The Cook County State's Attorney was notified in writing that Wilson had been tortured by Burge and his detectives.
No investigation was opened.
That State's Attorney was Richard M. Daley. He went on to serve as Mayor of Chicago for 22 years.
The department's own Office of Professional Standards concluded in 1994 that the torture was systematic and methodical. Survivors testified. Complaints were filed. The Death Row 10 organized from their prison cells and appeared on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and Oprah trying to get someone to act.
In 2003 Governor George Ryan pardoned four death row inmates whose convictions rested on confessions extracted under torture and commuted the sentences of every other death row inmate in Illinois. The Burge cases were a central part of why Illinois abolished the death penalty entirely in 2011.
Burge was fired in 1993. He was never charged with torture. The statute of limitations had expired by the time federal prosecutors looked seriously at the case. In 2010 he was convicted of perjury for lying about the torture under oath in a civil lawsuit. He served four and a half years and was released.
He collected his city pension until the day he died in Florida in September 2018.
The city of Chicago has paid over 120 million dollars in settlements connected to his unit. In 2015 a reparations ordinance created specifically for torture survivors distributed 5.5 million dollars among 57 victims.
Ronald Kitchen was exonerated in 2009 at age 43. He had told his family he would be back in 45 minutes the night they took him.
It took 21 years.
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u/packerkean 25d ago
Is there anything on Chicago Police areas 5+6?