CITY HALL — About 100 people joined in a march from Police Department Headquarters in Bronzeville to City Hall Downtown Tuesday to call for reparations for police torture victims of notorious Cmdr. Jon Burge.
"We are demanding justice, we are demanding reparations and we are demanding accountability," said Martha Biondi, a member of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, a group seeking reparations for Burge victims.
Biondi specifically called for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to support a measure introduced into the City Council last year calling for a $20 million fund to be established to pay for reparations, education, health care and counseling for victims of Burge and his "midnight crew" of Police Department colleagues who engaged in torture from the '70s into the '90s.
She also called on Ald. Edward Burke (14th), chairman of the council's Finance Committee, to hold a hearing on the proposal next month, before February's municipal election, and for the full council to approve it. Biondi claimed the support of 27 of the city's 50 aldermen, including most recently Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), who is running against Emanuel in February's election.
Mayoral spokesman Adam Collins, who accepted a petition signed by 40,000 people, according to the protesters, called Burge's actions "a disgrace to the hard-working men and women at CPD and a disgrace to our city."
Emanuel has personally apologized for Burge's activities.
Ald. Joe Moreno (1st), a lead sponsor of the proposed ordinance, spoke to the protesters at City Hall and compared the march to recent demonstrations in New York City and Ferguson, Mo.
"We don't have to go to Ferguson and the travesty there," Moreno said. "We don't have to go to New York. This was the torture capital of the United States for more than 20 years."
Many Burge victims were exonerated and paid huge settlements, with an estimated $64 million paid by the city alone in the cases. Yet the statute of limitations ran out on earlier Burge victims, thus producing the call for reparations.
Moreno said they were for those who "don't have their day in court and can't get their day in court." He estimated the number of total torture victims at "up to 100 men."
Emanuel expressed support for the victims, but pulled up short of supporting the reparations ordinance.
"We have worked diligently to resolve cases from the Burge era, and will continue to take steps that help us all close that dark chapter of the city’s history," Collins said. "The mayor also believes the city should pull back Jon Burge’s pension, and he is continuing to try to find a legal way to that. As the mayor has said previously, just because the statute of limitations is over doesn't mean our obligations as a city are over, and he will continue to work through this issue in a thoughtful manner that respects Jon Burge’s victims."
Burge was never tried on torture, but was convicted of perjury relating to torture and served three years in federal prison before being released in October.
The ordinance would also call for Chicago Public Schools to include accounts of local police torture in education, as well as the establishment of a memorial for victims. Protesters set up an impromptu memorial outside the Mayor's Office Tuesday.
Biondi also cited the support of Amnesty International and the United Nations Committee Against Torture for the reparations ordinance.
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