Chicago Police Torture Victims To Receive $5.5 Million in Reparations

By Carla Murphy Apr 15, 2015

The city of Chicago yesterday agreed to a $5.5 million reparations fund for the mainly African-American male victims of police torture under former and disgraced police commander Jon Burge. He was recently released from a Florida halfway house where he’d finished up a 4 and a 1/2 year federal sentence for perjury, not participating in or overseeing the torture of more than 100 people. The proposed fund includes free city college tuition and counseling for at least 50 victims and their families, the Chicago Tribune reports. The long-sought reparations fund is widely being seen as the city’s effort to end the decades-long scandal that first came to light in the early 1990s.

That’s not likely, however. Current inmates are filing lawsuits or alleging that their confessions had been elicited under torture. At least 20 additional cases, all alleging to have been Burge’s victims, have been identified.

Learn more about the proposed reparations plan in The Chicago Tribune.