It Could Happen Here - Four Stories of Torture, Rape and Murder from the Chicago Police Department Part 1

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

The gang takes on two stories from dark history of the Chicago police department: the Burge torture ring and the police's murder of Laquan McDonald and Rahm Emanuel's subsequent coverup. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's incapable

of being racist? Canadians. People joking about Canadians. Yep, can't do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada. Or the French. This could happen here. Yeah.

The French? We can be racist against the French. It's true. Yeah. Speaking of... That makes Quebec angrier. But like, speaking of racism, Chris, what's our topic today? Yeah, today's episode is about why I hate the cops.

Hell yeah. Oh yeah, cool. today's episode is about why I hate the cops. Hell yeah. Specifically, it is about the Chicago Police Department and the many, many, many, many, many crimes they have committed. We're going to talk about... Well, okay, to lead us in to explain what we're doing here today, I'm going to read a quote from the late anthropologist David Graeber from his book, The Democracy Project. For my own part, i find what i call the

rape torture and murder test very useful it's quite simple when presented with a political entity of some kind or another whether a government a social movement a guerrilla army or really any other organized group and trying to decide whether they deserve condemnation or support first ask do they commit or do they order others to commit, acts of rape, torture, or murder? It seems a self-evident question, but again, it's surprising how rarely, or better, how selectively, it is applied. Or perhaps, it might seem surprising until one starts applying it and discovers conventional wisdom on many world political issues instantly turned upside down. In 2006, for example, most people in the United States read about the Mexican government's

sending federal troops to quell a popular revolt initiated by a teacher's union against a notoriously corrupt governor in the southern state of Oaxaca. In the U.S. media, this was universally presented as a good thing, a restoration of order. The rebels, after all, were violent, having thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails, even if they only threw them at heavily armed police, causing no serious injuries. No one, to my knowledge, has ever suggested that the rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither has anyone who knows anything about the events in question seriously contested the fact that forces loyal to the Mexican government had raped, tortured, and murdered quite a number of people in suppressing the rebellion. Yet somehow such acts, unlike the

rebels' stone-throwing, cannot be described as violent at all let alone as rape torture or murder but only appear if at all as accusations of human rights violations or in some similarly bloodless legalistic language yeah and that's the framework that i want to take the chicago police department so people can understand why and how and just just sort of get it people can get a taste of the sheer horror that anti-police organizers and just like regular people in chicago are fighting every day because chicago police department fails the rape torture murder test again and again and again and again and so we are going to tell four stories of uh torture rape and murder by the chicago police department oh good that seems fun it's gonna be great happy pants on kids yay go for a cruise

you know take the top down um it's it's time for a good old fun fest so our first story of torture rape and murder by the cpd is the story of chicago's infamous torture ring uh led by a man named john burge yeah now john burge had been a military police sergeant working at a pow camp in vietnam so so immediately you have a guy who's not only a troop cop but he he's he's a troop cop while he was a troop and then he becomes a cop and you know nothing good can possibly come from that and the other thing that nothing good can possibly come from is the fact that while burge was in vietnam the u.s was doing some just really sick shit to vietnamese prisoners including rape gang rape rape with hard objects and rape

followed by murder. The electric shock called the bell telephone hour rendered by attaching wires to the genitals, and keep that one in mind, we have not seen the last of that, and rape using eels and snakes, as we have talked about on Bastards a bit before. They're also huge waterboarding fans. So this is the environment that Burge is sort of being trained as a cop in. He's in one of these POW camps, and he gets a Purple Heart for his service.

Now, when he comes back to the U.S. in 1969, he becomes a cop. And within about three years, Burge and his white cop buddies start just absolutely beating the crap out of black suspects. Burge and his white cop buddies start just absolutely beating the crap out of black suspects. One of these prisoners, a man named Anthony Holmes, was repeatedly tortured with electric socks and almost suffocated to death with a bag put over his head. Holmes was tortured so badly he literally thought he was going to die, so he confessed to a crime he didn't commit and spent 30 years in prison. Yeah, I actually interviewed one of the people tortured by Burge, um, who was,

yeah, had his testicles electrocuted. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to get into that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's,

it's horrible. It's, yeah, it's pretty bad stuff. The worst things I've ever read. Uh, yeah. Uh,

and Holmes's case is particularly grim because, so he tells his lawyers that he's been tortured and his lawyers don't believe him and so you know he yeah he he went to spending 30 years in prison for something he didn't do um those shocks yeah yeah so okay so they have this box right it's a box as a hand crate generator uh burge calls it the n-word box uh and he just attaches people's like it just attaches it to people oh i wonder why he calls it that oh yeah no it's he's all of these people are so indescribably racist it's like yeah um he he just like he keeps this box like on his desk at the chicago police department like it's just on his desk at work um now the other thing that's notable about this is that he and

people around him would call just electrocuting people by attaching alligator clamps to them and putting 9200 volts into them uh they called it the vietnamese treatment because uh guess what he learned this in vietnam um now burge's so-called midnight crew had had an incredibly high rate of solving crimes and he has an incredibly high rate of quote-unquote solving crimes because he's just torturing random black people until they confess um and you know it's it's not like people don't know he's doing this there's there's a detective in the 70s who like walks in on burge torturing a guy and he goes to his superiors and is like burge is burge is torturing these people and that detective gets reprimanded and reprimanded for like reporting the torture

and transfer to another area so burge gets promoted to sergeant in 1977 and then again to lieutenant in 1980 and he gets he gets put in charge of the newly formed violent crimes unit and uh from from from this position his rate of terror intensifies. And so in 1982, someone shoots two white cops. And this is one of the sort of classic police things is anytime a cop dies, the police department just goes fucking ballistic. They kind of lose it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And in this case with Burge in charge, he basically turns the entire South Side into what can only be described as a fascist police state.

This is from the Chicago police torture scandal, Illegal and Political History in Cooney's Law Review. And what Jesse Jackson of Operation Push and Raynald Robinson of the Afro-American Police League condemned as, quote, And, I mean, they're just like, you know, they're busting down people's doors or dragging people away out in the middle of the night they do this for about five days before they arrest two brothers and who again had nothing to do with this they just decided that these two were the guys and tortured just the absolute shit out of them um one of the brothers angie wilson but before burge even gets there because this is the everything about burge is it's not just burge right everyone he's like around him is also a torturer it's just burge sort of you know burge is the guy like directing a lot of it so like even before he gets there yeah like wilson gets like he's burned with a cigarette lighter he gets strangled with

the bag over his head again and they just like beat him a bunch of times and then it gets even worse um burge like you know but burge has a thing where he like he straps him to the electric box right but he also straps him against a radiator and you know these are like old chicago steam radiators right if you touch if you like touch them even briefly you get burned yeah and so yeah he straps into a radiator and every time he like gets shocked he jerks back into the radiator it gets burned yeah i have a friend who got a second degree burn just from like briefly touching one of those things yeah yeah i mean it's basically it's basically tying someone to an oven that's turned yeah i mean it's it is breathtaking inhumanity on a scale that is cop-esque.

Yeah. It's real cop shit. It's for sure real cop shit. Yeah. So here's an interview with Wilson. There's an excerpt of one from the book, Writings from the World of Policing. Wilson said that Berg cranked the generator, sending 9,200 volts of electricity into his body.

He put it on my fingers, Wilson explained, one of the clamps on one finger and one on the other finger, and then he kept cranking it and cranking it, and I was hollering and screaming. I was calling for help. My teeth was grinding, flickering in my head, pain. It hurts, Wilson continued, but it stays in your head, okay? It stays in your head and it hurts wilson continued but it stays in your head okay it stays in your head and it grinds your teeth it grinds constantly grinds constantly the pain just stays in your head and your teeth constantly grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds now wilson they do this to wilson like a day, and he doesn't confess. He refuses to confess because he didn't do it.

And so he goes to, like, they bring him in front of a felony prosecutor, and Wilson tells the prosecutor that he's being tortured. And, you know, it's incredibly obvious he's being tortured. Like, there's marks all over his body. Like, his face is destroyed. And the prosecutor sends him back to burge who tortures him more and but by the time burge is done with him wilson is so visibly fucked up that the police lockup keeper like takes a look at it like takes one look at him and goes i'm not going to be a part of this and refuses to put him in lockup uh cook county jails like director of medical services um sends a letter going like

this man was tortured to the police hey we found a human being yeah yeah what you know it's like every once once every like i don't know maybe like a hundred pages of reading about this you find one person who is a normal human being uh unfortunately the state's attorney instead of prosecuting burge for again attaching attaching a man's balls to a hand crank generator and then electrocuting him uh the the state prosecutor and the police superintendent both publicly congratulate burge for his work uh yeah angie wilson meanwhile died in prison in 2007 because this world is just the worst oh it is that too yeah now you might be asking yourself uh how does he get away with this and the answer is that uh the cpd is complicit in burgess torture at literally

every level uh every attempt to stop burge is derailed directly by the departments and not only is he not stopped he's repeatedly praised and promoted for his actions. And yeah. No, I mean, that's the, that's how it goes. Yep.

It's, it's great. It's, it's, it's an institutionalized system of torture, rape, and murder that. Yeah.

In Chicago. It's like, we have us a little Abu Ghraib. Yeah. Oh, right in home, but yeah. Well,

don't worry. Well, I guess we won't actually get to Abu Ghra specifically but i can i can do i can do an abu grave tie in at the end of this part yeah so the the cpd has something they call the code of silence and we'll talk about this more later but basically the core of the code of silence is that just no matter what crimes what atrocities what just inhuman pig horrors you see cops committing, you stay silent. Now, this code, you know, it's a code that everyone sort of knows, right, in the police, but it's also directly enforced. And it's enforced by the stuff Burge would do to like just to other cops. Like he would do things like if there was a cop who was like unhappy with him, he would like walk up behind them when they're opening a file cabinet and point a gun at their head and then go

like bang and then do this like a thing that i can really only describe as a super villain monologue about how like the projects are a dangerous place uh maybe you're gonna turn up dead it's he also he has these street files that he keeps on like other cops families so that if another cop like goes after him, he can have their family arrested and then plant evidence on them. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, like in a certain way, like he's doing this to other cops.

Like, you know, what possible, like, system of accountability, quote-unquote, or police reform is, like, ever going to do anything to a guy who will just do this to cops? Like, you know, with the CPD actively backing him, there's nothing that can stop Burge. And I should mention here that there's persistent rumors that Burge is a Klansman. I couldn't find, like, firm confirmation of it it he's certainly racist enough but but i think yeah but like why would he why would he spend like that's that feels like almost he would be like why would i waste my time doing that like yeah talking about being racist when i can go out and torture people because i'm a racist every day like fuck the clan i already got shit going on yeah and i think it's sometimes like yeah the question is immaterial he is a member of the chicago police department an organization

of systematic racial terror the likes of which the modern clan can only dream of yeah that's whatever yeah yeah it's like who cares he's he's he's john birch um honestly if he were spending time at clan meetings at least he wouldn't be torturing people during yeah time yeah it's meetings at least he wouldn't be torturing people during yeah time yeah it's yeah love love love your police when if he was a Klansman that might have been slightly better I mean that's the big thing with like this type of like liberal response to this type of extremism it's like they only view it as a problem if you're like explicitly part of this you know like it's like very obvious to everyone white nationalist group right they can watch a cop do all these horrible things and it's fine because that's just a cop

but if he's a clan member then that's a problem yeah like they can excuse all this horrible torture and not really be concerned about it but if but if he had a robe in his closet then it's suddenly this big issue it's like no like the issue is that he was doing all this torture anyway and he doesn't like this you don't need to focus on like just the like just that identity like that weird identity aspect of it yeah the the clan is old enough and wears a uniform that is distinct enough that everybody recognizes it as racist, even though the Chicago Police Department is actually much more of a threat in terms of racism than the Klan today and was at that point in time. But, you know, they're the cops. And if you're a suburban white liberal, they're there to, you know, help help keep your lawn safe or whatever. So you don't you don't see them as the same inherently racial organization exactly even though they are yeah even though i mean they're

dragging people out of their homes and like just electrocuting them like this is you know this is something also that i was very annoyed about when i was reading this was like a lot you you read a lot of this stuff and then and you'll get descriptions of it that are like uh this is something that like only happens in repressive regimes like kazakhstan it's like have you read anything about the history of the u.s like yeah this is like yeah like we have officers over to other countries that often teach their police how to do shit like this that happens but like yeah when you were describing a whole bunch of stuff in the past like you know 20 minutes i was thinking in my head i'm like oh, oh yeah, this is just, like, stormtrooper shit.

But the thing is, it isn't. Like, this just is cop shit. Yeah. Like, the fact of, like, elevating it in my brain to it being, like, something other than cops is incorrect. No, like, this just is police stuff. It's not necessarily Stormtrooper shit, it just is police shit. And the fact that those things are so synonymous, that should be the part that's actually, like, upsetting. Is that, yeah, it's actually, there is really no difference, and you shouldn't necessarily resort to calling it Stormtrooper stuff, because it is just what the police do all the time. to do all the time. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology

of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's this whole model, you see people talking about it,

where they talk about, like, oh, the police are using unnecessary force. And, like, there's, like, a certain threshold where if you go past it, like, you know, the sort of, like, even, you know, like, I'm gonna read, like, Burge has a lot of, like even you know like i'm gonna read like the burge has a lot of like when he winds up in court like the judges look at this and are like oh my god this is unacceptable how could this have happened and you know you you get some good

descriptions of it i'm gonna this is a a district judge court describing what burge was doing in the early 80s there existed in 1982 in the city of chicago a de facto policy practice and or custom of chicago police officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment against persons who they alleged had killed or injured a fellow officer. This revenge and punishment included beating, kicking, torturing, shooting, and or executing such a person for the purpose of inflicting pain, injury, and punishment on that person, and also for the purpose of forcing that person to make an inculpatory statement exculpatory yeah exculpatory yeah or at this or inculpatory it's inculpatory yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah cool you know and and you you get stuff like like there's there's there's an fbi report then from the chicago tribune i'm going to read because it's he left one bullet in the sentence in the cylinder and spun it a report quoted the inmate as saying about Burge and the 1985 incident. He then said, you talk or I'll blow your black, uh, expletive, presumably the N-word, brains out.

Burge then got up from his desk, walked over to the inmate, put the muzzle of the revolver against the center of the inmate's forehead, and pulled the trigger. He spun the cylinder and placed it back against his forehead and pulled the trigger again so yeah he's just playing russian roulette with people like he's playing it i don't i don't think yeah yeah well he's uh pulling a one in six chance of murdering them they are in terror uh there's also a lot of like he does like he sexually abuses people he like he loves going after testicles yeah he he like he electrocuted like well i mean he's also like is like like basically like raping people um he like electrocutes a 13 year old child and you know this is like it's it's it's just so bleak that like i mean there's so there's a very famous article about

this by chicago journalist it's called the house of screams but you know like like burge isn't the only guy doing this like he one of his loyalists is, is, is Lieutenant. Like there's a guy named Byron who's like in charge of, uh, the, the midnight shift at, at the area to violent crimes. And they, they become known internally as Burgess ass kickers at the a team,

because this is just who these people are culturally. And yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Sure. But yeah. Um,

these guys start, uh, like putting like guns in prisoners mouths um they have one thing where they stick a shotgun in a guy's mouth and they pull the trigger and it's not loaded but they just like they keep doing this mock execution thing yeah it's it's that is by the way illegal in international law like internationally that is a war crime if you're military specifically fake executions are a type of torture and a a war crime under international law based on treaties the united states has signed yeah and and byron also so he does that a lot and then that same guy the same

guy the shotgun thing too uh he apparently didn't have the box so he stripped the dude and shocked his balls with a cattle prod and this is the guy guy who Lori Lightfoot sent her number two lawyer to defend in court in 2020 by arguing the torture never happened. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's. Accountability. Yep. That's the mayor of my city. Now, Lifefoot, Lifefoot is on the record as saying that Burge tortured over 100 people.

But once it came to you know actually putting up or shutting up uh she just goes to bat for the cops and and this happens in chicago like so many times with people who used to be like you know who in the moment you're like oh uh burge did torture we need to reform the police and it's you know the moment they get into power they do this stuff i mean there there's there's much of like incredibly weird stuff that happens here like so but the seventh circuit court of appeals at one point saw a saw a like they they they saw a case over whether a one thousand dollar settlement with a torture victim was fair and jesus christ yeah in court it's like you you read the transcript of it and it's like it's it's the most brutal

demolishing of like a a state's argument i've ever seen like they're they're just like in court asking them like okay like where where this person's judge is supposed to have like known in court that he was also torturing other people like it's you know the the court's just like you know they're tearing them apart and then when it comes time to decide the case, the court tosses the case out and sides with the state. Wow. Yeah. I don't know what's going on there. It's awful.

That's the judicial system. Yep. This happens just all the time. I mean that is the thing about the way the whole system works, which is that, you know, the police do horrific things in Chicago. They torture in Los Angeles. They have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of different horrible shit the police do. And then at some point, the FBI and the Justice Department come in and they provide incredibly they send in very talented investigators who produce incredibly detailed lists of all of the things that are being done.

And then a court says, well, but nobody's going to get punished. Or maybe this one guy will get punished and then we'll go on back to doing things. And that's the way the system is supposed to work. Although we're going to read a story about the FBI not doing that in the next episode. So yeah, you can. Yeah, I mean, they don't, we don't always get a report. Yeah, no. so yeah yeah i mean they don't we don't always get a report um yeah no i just i i have become increased like it's very frustrating because having these fbi reports on police abuses um

is useful again for talking to liberals because they tend to trust the fbi but it's also like boy i've read a lot of detailed fbi reports about how bad police departments are and it seems like nothing ever gets done no like it seems like they just write a thing saying yeah it's bad and then everything continues forever yeah and it's you know in this case like the reason we even know any of this is through what i like what i will say like the a genuinely heroic decades-long campaign run by the people's law office on behalf of burge victims and these people like they save people's lives like there are people who burge tortured who ended up on death row for it and yeah you know like this stuff is so bad that when it comes out the supreme court does a ruling on it and it like establishes new precedents for like how people can prove they've

been tortured like you know it's so bad that like illinois stops running the death pet like we had the death penalty and like we still tend to i think have it but like we just stopped doing it like we stopped we stopped executing people because like a republican governor like on air gave a giant thing about how the justice system is broken and like this is this is john ryan right like this is a man who like he he is like this is a man who was corrupt by the standards of an Illinois politician. And even he, like, on the air is like, yeah, this is like, you know, this is broken. He pardons some bridge victims. And in 1993, faced with just irrefutable evidence of torture and rulings from multiple higher court higher courts the police board finally released a report although the report also doesn't call it torture

and is a disaster that they finally have burge fired and some of his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended for 15 months but uh burge isn't prosecuted for you know the crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing until 2010, after the victims literally go to the United Nations with a campaign and go in front of the United Nations and talk about how they were being systemically tortured by the Chicago Police Department. But, of course, by 2010, the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out. So he winds up going to jail for three years on perjury. Yeah, it makes sense that there's a statute of limitations on torture.

Yeah, that's definitely one of the ones we should have a cap on yeah definitely it's great it's it's it's a great system um and i'm gonna read something from the chocolate tribune that was a description of of this uh quote while the jury was out burge still unrepentant allegedly asked a courtroom observer whether he thought the jury would quote believe a bunch of n words wow awesome dude yeah this is 2010 it's great amazing burge burge tortured at least 125 people that's almost certainly an undercount 125 is the number of people who we have who have come forward a lot of those people probably have like the people he tortured have probably died by now um yeah i mean yeah you'll never we'll never get an accurate count of all the people who were. Yeah, yeah.

And Burge died a free man and has never served a day for his actual crimes. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, Burge and his crew are the most famous of the 80s and 70s and 80s torturers, but they're by no means the only one. And we're going to talk about one more in this torture section. Do you two know Richard Zuley? Mm-mm. Okay, so yeah, Zuley's the one that people tend not to know. Zuley was also a Vietnam War vet, and he becomes a detective in 1977. What's interesting about him is Zuley is never part of Burge's cadre, right? Burge's cadre is working out of Area 2.

They're on the south side. They're in an overwhelmingly black part of the south side. Zooli works in Areas 3 and 6 on the north side. You know, what I need to mention off the bat is that Zooli is no less racist than Burge is. He once arrested a black dude for just, like just having a car and wearing a watch. Well, but those are both felonies in the city of Chicago, right? I mean, you famously never know what time it is because you're a law-abiding citizen. Yeah, well, law-abiding citizen and also don't be black while doing this because... Well, sure.

Yeah, he throws him in a cell and... That's going to get you an extra couple of charges. Yeah, well, it gets you Zool zuly screaming no n-word is supposed to live like this oh boy oh boy it's you know we we people like talk about cops doing stuff for that reason but it's it's you know they're so racist just get a direct quote yeah yeah like i can't emphasize it like they're just they're so racist it's like ingrained into the d like the cop dna yeah they're just saying the loud part loud yeah like they're just screaming like that we're gonna do with uh one of the things the next episode is the cops will just drive around like blasting the n word out of their out of their like uh cop

stereos because jesus christ yeah now zuli in a lot of ways is a more modern torturer than burge is uh you know burge is very big on your like overt physical violence right you're beating your electrocution your suffocation um the problem with these techniques from a torturer perspective that they leave incredibly obvious marks and you know this is how burge goes down right it's too obvious what he's doing there are people who can just like show up to a court and be like hey look at my neck like here are all these burns uh zulia is much smarter about it um you know i mean she does some beatings because cops are literally animals and are incapable of resisting the urge to beat the living shit out of anyone who falls into their grasp but you know

mostly what he does is he does things like he'll just shackle someone to a wall for 24 hours and you know and he'll be like okay like i'm gonna shackle someone to a wall for 24 hours and you know and he'll be like okay like i'm gonna shackle you to this wall and until you sign this confession i won't let you leave and also you can't talk to anyone you can't talk to your lawyer you can't talk to uh like you can't talk to your family and in the next episode we're gonna see this this is how modern cpd torture works except zuli is doing this in like the 80s now zuli is a naval intelligence officer who's he's still so he's still technically in the reserves when he joins the cops and that meant when uh the cia's torturers at guantanamo bay stalled out they they needed a hero and that hero was zuli um zuli is was the most active like

the thing is the most active in is is the torture of muhammadu old sali who is famously known as the most tortured man at guantanamo um he well that's yeah at least he got into guinness yeah he yeah they they do sleep deprivation i mean they so some of it's like the standard sort of like get most stuff which is like they don't let you sleep they blast loud like sounds into your cell all the time they like beat you there's molestations and but there's also stuff that's like like you know the third of attack by dogs but like he'll do things like like he'll like soak people like get soaked in ice water or like they they stuffed him in this like straight jacket thing that didn't let him breathe properly and then stuffed it full of ice. Oh, cool.

And then Zooli also, yeah, yeah, it's bad. And he also, like, threatens to kidnap his mother and have her sent to Guantanamo to be raped because these people are, again, just monsters. alive today and uh roams the streets as a free man having received literally no consequences whatsoever for being a torturer so good in the cpd that the cia was like we're gonna bring this guy into due torture that's great it's great it's yep yep and and that that that brings us to our first interlude which is every year chicago police officers go to the grave of the deputy chairman of the black panther party fred hampton who they assassinated in a police raid after drugging him in 1969 um they go to his grave to shoot his fucking tombstone they do this literally every year every year families every year they keep getting new tombstones they shoot them every they shoot

them every year it just doesn't matter uh the cpd just keeps shooting it and there's a quote from the great trinidadian marxist historian.R. James that I think about a lot that goes, when history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which people will wonder, not their ferocity. there's a moment of people doing things to cops that makes generations in the future marvel at their ferocity yeah i think i can say that without it legally being incitement yes i'll make one other fun note which is that five chicago police officers died last year from covid so that's good yeah only five huh let's make it 50 officer dad look they're working on it they don't they won't wear masks they won't get vaccinated critical support to the chicago police who don't wear masks yeah they're uh they're they're they're they're having their police academy exams in person now oh that's good that's fine you know what critical support yeah yeah spend more time indoors together without masks guys avoid those vaxes yeah yeah i'll be great no mandate will happen

okay so story two which is a shorter one but no less bleak i think on october 20th 2014 officer jason van dyke fired 16 shots at laquan mcdonald who had turned around and was walking away from him uh here's from the people of the state of illinois walking away aggressively chris yeah uh oh boy violently exiting yeah i i walking away while black which i guess in in the minds of like half of the united states is uh the same thing they do have someone a court defended legal right to shoot people in the back who are trying to get away yeah it's yeah great country we're nailing it from the chicago tribune an analysis of the video this is this is from the the court

case but in the chicago tribune an analysis of the video establishes that 14 to 15 seconds passed from the time the defendant van dyke fired his first shot to clear visual confirmation of the final shot for approximately 13 of those seconds mcdonald is lying on the ground so he he fires literally every bullet in his gun at a man who is by those like second shots lying dead like well it's not quite dead yet but like lying on the ground yeah it's just yeah i mean from the cops perspective like why not like that's like that's like they have the ability to do that if they get the chance oh i get to kill a black person and it doesn't matter then why like you're right that's like if you if you you have to you have to think through like what they're actually processing this as and they don't processing this as, and they don't see them as an equivalent human life. upon because cops have such a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at the top that you they

can never actually exist within any kind of humane society no that's why again unspeakable ferocity of the masses fingers crossed one day yeah yeah well you know i think the the thing you know okay so look if this is the price of a liberal democracy, right? If you're going to live in a society that has like, you know, where laws are enforced by the police, the police are going to murder people. Like that's what you're signing on for. Yeah. And I think that's an absolutely unacceptable price, but we shouldn't do this. price and but we shouldn't do this um now the other aspect of this is because you have to keep all of these just absolutely like just bloodthirsty murderers on the leash and because also all the

people who are actually in the government are just genuinely despicable human beings uh immediately after i mean like really before the shots have stopped firing, like there's a cover up that stretches from like includes everyone from the officers on the scene all the way up to Mayor Rahm Emanuel. So, for example, mysteriously, none of the multiple dashboard cameras on the scene were recording audio for reasons only the discerning listener can guess at. Everyone across the entire chain of command, again, going right up to the mayor's office, immediately goes, we cannot let this video get out because it's so bad that even the CPD is like, this is going to look bad for us. Yeah, because if it gets out, then people will want literally gets the judge to like plant it like they killed him so fast they didn't have time to plant a gun on him like there's no gun but the multiple officers will are like you can you can find news things of them talking about how this guy oh he had a gun it's's like, there's no gun.

Yeah. The classic one is that Van Dyke feared for his life, and no, he didn't. He probably should now, but he does not. Yeah, he should never live a waking or sleeping moment where he's not in constant fear of someone cutting his head off. No. Just in terms of the horror that should be imbued inside people who do these things they should never like they should never be able to like sit down and be

comfortable yeah the closest we've ever gotten to justice for one of these guys is when that mob surrounded uh uh derek chauvin's house um and it would have been actual justice if they had gotten through the door. Yep, yep. It's – yeah. So there's this huge coterie of cops who are all just lying about this. They're lying in the press. They're lying just – they lie on the stand. And this strategy works for a while because this country is just a racist hellhole until the court forces them to release the video. And when it becomes clear that the video is going to come out the state immediately charges him like they they charge him and then later that day they released a video now now keep

this in mind they had this video for a fucking year yeah they knew exactly what he'd done it's all it's all fake and you know yeah and they only charged him with the alternative was literally being run into the sea by an entire mob of the sea literally the entire population of chicago um so van dyke is suspended without pay right but he immediately gets hired by the police union yeah yep yeah that makes sense yeah okay cool and and van dyke van dyke eventually i mean he goes down eventually he gets convicted of you know second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery but you know there's a later report that describes the involvement of 16 other officers in the cover-up uh four officers were eventually fired for lying about the case three were tried for the cover-up and acquitted and

four officers were given a one-week suspension for the mysterious lack of camera audio honestly ah yes more that is more than than I expected. Yeah, well, I mean, this video is so bad. This video is so... I mean, Rahm Emanuel doesn't really... The consequence he suffers is that he decides not to run again because it will be bad for him. But Rahm Emanuel is currently now...

His consequence is that he's the American ambassador to Japan. Okay, well, that is a fate worse than death you know i i will also say this the people of japan do not deserve rama emmanuel the liberal democratic party on the other hand are maybe the only people on earth who actually deserve him like if you didn't want us to palm rama emmanuel off on you you shouldn't have taken all that cia money in the 50s and 60s and let them run your political campaigns so uh liberal democratic party lie down with dogs get fleas um but yeah uh jason van dyke was released from prison two weeks ago after serving less than half his sentence

laquan mcdonald's remains dead yeah i mean the the really depressing part is that that is more consequences than usually ever happens yep yep and that that only happened because of, like, an incredible amount of organization in Chicago. Yeah, and like, think of all of the times where there is no video. Think of all the times where there's nothing. And things just happen, no one watches it,

and then dead bodies get kicked into a ditch. Yep. And that's way more common than anything where there's type of, like, recordings or even where there needs to be cover ups. You know, you both are probably too young for this movie, but in one of the Transformers movies, after they beat all the bad Transformers. I've watched all of the Transformers movies, including the old animated ones. Where the Navy lifts them all up and drops them into the sea.

Yes. What if we did that with the Chicago Police Department? Just drop them in the sea. Big old, big old. Sink or swim. Scoop Department? Just drop them in the sea. Big old scoop them up, drop them in the sea. No, we put them in a bag. There's no swimming. Okay, that's fair. Look, they get one bag.

Each individual gets one bag for each bag they put over someone's head and strangled them with. I think that's fair. And then right into the sea. The sea solves all problems the last thing like i i do i do genuinely want to say is that like if if you read this story over and over and over and over again you get people who are you know like you get the governor going like the system is fundamentally broken we must reform it you get the court saying the system is fundamentally broken and must reform it and it never changes they just keep killing people they keep enslaving people they keep doing like they keep torturing people they keep murdering people they keep raping people

and this will not end until you abolish the police no like there is no alternative if you if your car is fun is broken on a fundamental level you can't you can't reform your car to make it better there's a certain point where it's totaled and you're like well i guess that car it's like your engine block is shattered and you're like well i fixed the tires so it ought to go now no no like if it's broken on a fundamental level you you can't reform it. Those words don't go together. Throw out your car and build a train. That's what you have to do. Or walk.

Use your feet to get a bicycle, honestly. Yeah, I stuck a bottle onto the rail of my AR-15, so it's not a gun anymore. No, it's still a gun. Yeah, this is really, really sad. Yeah, it's good stuff. Pretty depressing. Anyway, I'm going to go watch 2008's The Dark Knight

and feel great about myself. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going to do it for us at It Could Happen Here today. Until next time, hope that more Chicago police officers get COVID. There is that fun scene in The Dark Knight

where the Joker goes into the Chicago police building and blows up the prison block with all those cops inside. That is a fun scene, yeah. Anyway, bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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