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Statement of Amnesty International on Police Brutality
Nancy J. Bothne, Midwest Regional Director
July 19, 1999
Human rights violations in the USA, including in Chicago, have been the target of Amnesty International's yearlong campaign in 1999. Over 1 million members worldwide are calling upon the country to make true its promise of equality and justice. Entitled "Rights for All," this campaign focuses particularly on the death penalty, prison conditions and police brutality. Amnesty has documented that the criminal justice system targets people of color, juveniles, the mentally ill and women.
In 1990, Amnesty International issued a report about police torture in Chicago. We received reports that police from the Area 2 police station systematically tortured African American detainees between 1972 and 1986. Even the Office of Professional Standards found that physical abuse "did occur and that it was systematic.', Unfortunately, this finding did not result in the overhaul of the system that would ensure that human rights violations do not continue to occur.
The failure to ensure respect for human rights by Chicago Police officers has life or death consequences. Ten men, including Aaron Patterson, sit on Illinois' death row as a result of confessions coerced from Area 2 police officers. The exercise of sentencing people to death in Illinois is replete with allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct, political grandstanding, and judicial corruption which have resulted to date in the release of 12 innocent men. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as a human rights violation and is especially concerned with Illinois' corrupt record of sentencing innocent people to death.
We must end the culture of impunity which allows those who torture to continue to perpetuate human rights violations. Although most police officers do not commit torture, those who do must be held responsible for those actions by the police department, the courts and ultimately by the public. Years later, we are still waiting for those responsible for torturing people in Area 2 to be held fully accountable.
Amnesty International is pleased to join those organizations and individuals here in Chicago who have pursued police accountability and justice for years. These human rights violations which occur here are not just examples of solitary transgressions by individual police officers. They are violations of international human rights as found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights treaties governing law enforcement standards.
There are 2 major factors in the continuation of police abuse of power that targets largely people of color; failure of police leadership to send a strong message that such conduct will not be tolerated and the lack of an independent oversight body. Among Amnesty International's recommendations of what we can do in Chicago to halt human rights violations by Chicago police officers:
Establish an independent civilian review board, able to operate with adequate resources, free of political influence and accountable to the public.
- The Chicago Police Department should provide information on the internal disciplinary' process by publishing regular scatistical data on the type and outcome of complaints and disciplinary' actions.
Police officers should be trained on international standards of law enforcement, including those standards that prohibit torture and ill-treatment; how to deal with situations which have led to use of force, including pursuits and how to deal with disturbed people; gender issues and sensitivity to minority groups. -Illinois' Congressional delegation must call for finding of the Police Accountability Act provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which would enable the Justice Department to pursue "pattern and practice" lawsuits againsr police agencies nationwide that commit widespread abuses. The Justice Department should compile and regularly publish detailed national data on police use of force with analysis of patterns of concern and police recommendations.
On October 21, Amnesty International will be sponsoring a hearing before an international jury on police brutality in Chicago, to document the human rights record of the Chicago Police Department. We are now pleased to join in this call to ask the Justice Department and Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate police torture.
Amnesty International promotes universal human rights through
the action of its worldwide organization of over 1 million members in 160
countries. We promote all rights articulated in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and we work on behalf of those victims of human rights
who have suffered torture, repression due to their status and those subject
to execution.
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