Monday, May 24, 2010

Here's your monopoly on force...

...right here:

For decades, black men across Chicago described torture at the hands of former police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers, and for decades no one listened. Suspects landed in jail and even on death row for crimes they say they didn't commit after Burge and his men coerced confessions using terrifying methods including suffocation, a form of waterboarding and electric shocks.
And that, along with Anthony Abbate, is the type of person Chicago mayor Richard Daley thinks should have a monopoly on force. These are the types of people he believes should be trusted with lethal force -- the types of people he believes should have the only guns. I'll admit it's funny -- albeit in a really twisted way -- to watch Daley joke about putting a bayonet up a reporter's ass, but this type of savagery is what the "Chicago Way" of doing things comes down to. This is where the rubber meets the road. And it's deadly serious business -- especially when one considers the fact that Daley was the Cook County state's attorney during Burge and his thugs' reign of terror. Call me a cynic, but there's no way you're going to get me to believe he didn't know about any of the methods being used to extract confessions from the people his office put on trial.