Are the Chicago police detaining and interrogating American citizens in a secret black site?

  When the National Defense Authorization Act and the FAA Re-authorization Act were in the news I wrote quite extensively about the possibility that America was headed into a police state where American citizens could be held indefinitely and without charges as well as the fact that 30,000 unmanned drones would be policing the skies above major United States cities by the year 2020. Couple these two pieces of legislation with the PATRIOT Act and the NSA spying program and you have a recipe for the continued erosion of our Constitutionally protected rights.

  I am not alone; many people also feel the same way but yet I feel that most Americans feel as if this is tin-foil hat material, a conspiracy theory, and as such is nothing but the ravings of a paranoid, anti-government radical extremist and something which could never happen in the United States.

  Well, if this story is true, it IS happening in at least one American city–Chicago. Here is more:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

• Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
• Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
• Shackling for prolonged periods.
• Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
• Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

And there is more:

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage

Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.

  The story I linked to above is very long and I suggest that everybody take the time to read it–it is quite frightening indeed! If this story is true one has to wonder in how many other cities across the nation is this also taking place in. I find it hard to believe that this is isolated to only one city.

  After the Boston Marathon bombing we saw what amounted to defacto Martial Law declared in Boston and the surrounding towns and most people did not seem to care, in fact most people applauded and thanked the police for their efforts while nobody seemed to be concerned about their Constitutionally protected rights.

   Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety…

Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium