Accountability
Forest Preserves
Public Safety
Cook County Budget
Forest Pres. Budget
Property Tax Appeal
Health & Hospitals
Policy Resolutions

The release of a special prosecutors report on torture allegations under former Area 2 police Lt. Jon Burge was further delayed last week after a former prosecutor named in the report requested the document remain sealed.
At a status hearing Friday, Cook County Criminal Court Judge Paul Biebel said it will be at least another two weeks before the report will be released to the public. Last month Biebel ruled to release the results of the four-year, $5.5 million report to the public over the objections of some police officers named in the report.
Again, advocates for the alleged torture victims insisted the report must be made public - in large part because the issue concerns Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was Cook County's chief prosecutor when many of the alleged incidents of torture occurred.
"We are concerned about what, if any, hand the mayor has in this delay that seems to be stopping the release of this report which will deal, we hope, not only with the torture of Area 2 but also with the role of the mayor when he was state's attorney of Cook County," said Flint Taylor of the Peoples Law Office, which has battled police in court for several years.
Biebel said Friday he wanted to give the Illinois Supreme Court time to act on a former prosecutor's appeal. He set a hearing for June 30 "to see what, if anything, occurs in the Supreme Court" on an appeal seeking to block the release of information about the former prosecutor, known in court papers only as John Doe.
Taylor has said he believes he knows the John Doe prosecutor's identity. Friday he said the man was a lieutenant to Daley when the mayor was state's attorney. He wondered if the former prosecutor, in pushing for his name not to be released, is "acting as a surrogate for Mayor Daley's office and the city of Chicago in attempting to hold up this report."
Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's law department, said Mayor Daley, the police department and the city's law department all agree the report should be released.
"Not only do we not oppose the release of the report, but we filed a motion for the release of the report as soon as possible," Hoyle said.
Taylor called the delays in releasing the report a continuing conspiracy.
"They can no longer stall to try to avoid the inevitable. They have to be prosecuted," Taylor said. "If it takes 30 years, we'll do so."
Burge and at least 20 officers under his command allegedly tortured at least 192 Black men. Advocates for the alleged torture victims are hopeful the details of the report will be a prelude to indictments.
Allegations include officers using suffocation techniques, such as placing a typewriter cover over a suspect's head, along with electric shocks, beatings and mock Russian roulette to elicit confessions.
And while the statute of limitations may have run out on many of the crimes Burge and other officers could be face federal statutes, which are broader, and those charges could include perjury and civil rights violations.
No one has ever been charged, but Burge was fired after a police board found that a murder suspect was abused while in his custody.
Attorneys pushing for the release of the report said Supreme Court justices can have a conference on the issue at any time. They said nothing prevented Biebel from releasing the report and that it was time to do so.
"Two weeks from now this has got to get off the dime," Locke Bowman of the MacArthur Justice Center told reporters after the hearing. "Despite the enormous importance of the matters that the report covers and despite the fact that the community is demanding the release of this report ... we still come down here and dance around every two weeks."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.