Imagine for a minute that you are 14 years of age. You and your cousin are Boy Scouts from the Southwest Side of Chicago. You go to visit your Troop leader, a Chicago police officer from the Youth Division, assigned to Area 3, located at 39th and California. Instead of going up to the Third Floor, your curiosity gets the better of you and you venture to the second floor. You come upon a scene that scars you for life. You say a burly white cop with bushy red hair torturing a black suspect who is handcuffed and leg shackled to a wooden chair. You see wires hooked up the subject, a black box with a crank handle to generate electricity, hear the cop screaming racial slurs and hurling threats at the suspect. And then he fixes his eyes on you. You take off and go to the third floor to seek cover from your scout leader but are ordered off the premises. You later learn the name of the officer -- Jon Burge. For thirty plus years, these two teenagers, afraid of what might happen to them, kept silent. But no more. In this compelling interview, Frank Sirtoff tells ABC news what he saw for the first time.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=4186371#scouts
Video of this interview can be downloaded from the above link. Last week, a judge ordered that a Report from a special prosecutor about the systematic torture of suspects by Chicago police officers under the command of Jon Burge will be released in a few weeks.
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