Richard A. Devine, Cook County State's AttorneyWhy We Protest
Against Dick Devine
From the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network.
At a parade ostensibly designed to commemorate LGBT people rebelling against police brutality at the Stonewall Inn, there was hardly a more appropriate place for the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network, Queer to the Left, trans/action, Sangat and others to demonstrate against homophobic, transphobic and racist police brutality in Chicago. In the last five months, there have been three Amnesty International reports which have focused on gay-bashing by Chicago police, and yet there has not been a single criminal prosecution by State's Attorney Dick Devine, let alone investigation, of any Chicago police officer for physical brutality against a civilian-;gay or straight, transgendered, black, brown or white-;since Devine was elected in 1996. We question why a community which claims to fight for human rights would invite Devine to our parade. Thanks to our actions, he'll have much less of a free ride in the future.
The problem of Devine's complicity in police brutality is not something which arose just in the last few months. From 1980 to 1983, Devine was the No. 2 man to then-State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, when 27 African American men were tortured with the use of electric shock, suffocation and Russian Roulette at Area 2 Police Headquarters to extract "confessions" from them. As State's Attorneys, Devine and Daley approved the use of these "confessions" against these black men to get convictions. As a result of the torture and "confessions" 13 were sentenced to death and dozens more received very long prison sentences.
Thanks to protests in the early 1990s, a 1990 Amnesty Int'l report, and the City's own Goldston Report which found that the physical abuse at Area 2 was "systematic" and "methodical," the City finally fired the lead police perpetrator, Commander Jon Burge, in February 1993. Unfortunately, many of Burge's cohort cited in these reports have been promoted.
In private practice, Devine and his law firm represented Burge in his termination hearing with the City, fought for Burge's "right" to his police pension, and defended Burge against Andrew Wilson's civil-rights suit for the torture inflicted on him. Devine's firm ended up collecting over a $1 million of taxpayers' money for these services.
The outrageous part of this story is that not only have Devine and his predecessor refused to criminally prosecute Burge, et. al., but Devine has actively fought against the 12 men on death row from getting new trials. Devine is now actively fighting an effort to get an independent prosecutor to investigate the torture at Area 2 police headquarters. For details on this scandal, check out Jon Conroy's articles in The Reader.
Devine's and Daley's direct and lengthy history of association with extreme police brutality demonstrates the hard nut we need to crack in Chicago. When the Ramparts scandal in L.A. and the scandal in Philadelphia involving hundreds of tainted cases arose, the local political establishments in those cities, while shaken, were able to deliver a measure of justice because they were able to safely deflect the criticism of their administrations by having underlings take the fall. That can't happen here. Any cursory look at police violence in this city can't avoid the Burge corruption, and in so doing, all roads lead to the top—Daley and Devine. The level of protest, and yes, inconvenience to innocents, is necessarily going to have to be quite high if we are going to win.
The bold nature of our coalition meant many thousands along the route readily took our leaflets. Walking down Halsted after the march, a group of us did not see a single one of our leaflets lying on the ground amid the mountain of confetti left by the politicians and commercial establishments. We also got plenty of indications that many in the LGBT community now take a much more jaundiced view of Devine's character, and those employed to front for him in our and other communities. In spite of having to wait along the route in the sun, many roundly booed him and yelled shame as he went by, a first for our community. We might also note that many of the great Civil Rights protests of the '60s, most notably the Montgomery Bus Boycott, involved considerably more inconvenience to innocents than on Sunday [ June 24 ] .
Finally, for the record, it was Devine and his staff who held up the parade-;admittedly because he was trying to keep as far away from us as possible. He tried to keep more than a block between us and him, and he used another contingent as a pawn, inserting them between us, slowing the march considerably. A Sara Feigenholtz staffer said as much in Monday's Sun-Times.
For all the talk about "inconvenience," no one is asking how the victims of Devine, et al, felt about the protest. Not only did those in our contingent greatly appreciate it, but we got calls from people like Joann Patterson, mother of one of the African-American torture victims, on Illinois' death row for 12 years. She and a few others with a deeply personal interest in this struggle expressed extreme gratitude for Sunday's action.
The amazing thing is that the scores of police brutality victims in all oppressed communities have shown as much patience as they have. We have been in demonstration after demonstration not only with LGBT police bashing victims, but with African American and Latino family members of unarmed people KILLED by police, who have made countless call to him, but still this man does not prosecute the police.
We invite everyone to participate in the next coalition effort highlighting Devine's and attacks on the LGBT and other communities. At 11:30 a.m., Wednesday, July 11, he is scheduled to receive the "Abraham Lincoln Award" at the Union League Club, 67 W. Jackson Blvd. ( between Clark & Dearborn ) . We intend to greet him in the manner he so richly deserves.
Chicago Anti-Bashing Network,
Queer to the Left, trans/action
