US Police Have Off-Record 'White Site' to Detain, Torture and Disappear

In a twist of non fictionalized domestic terror, the Guardian has gone on the record breaking news of a Chicago warehouse, known as Homan Square, used for non-legal detention of people captured by police. The secret-prison has been used by CPD for off-the-books interrogation often with abusive methods.

As the story unfolds more persons have come forward with experiences of abuse while being detained at the site. Stories range from detainees being beaten, shackled for long periods of time without food or water, no access to phone calls or lawyers, and possibly one account of someone who was found unresponsive and died.

While waiting for a politician to accompany them on a tour outside the Homan Square facility, a reporter and photographer for the Guardian were encircled twice by a masked man in an SUV (pictured) who said, "You can take a picture,” and then offered what he considered a joke: “We are all CIA, right?” (Thursday, February 26)

The story broke with accounts of protesters being held at the site in the case of the NATO-3 who were eventually moved to a booking station and charged with terrorism, mob action and arson. 

But as usual with police terrorism, it's not news until it happens to people with privilege or people with privilege begin to care about it. So that begs the question, why did it take us so long to find out about it if this site has been in operation since the late 1990's?

The brunt of police terrorism is not on protesters but on black, brown and poor communities targeted for criminalization for their very existence in the white supremacist economy. The warehouse, which "disappears" people usually making it impossible to find them in any police databases, has been used as a compound in the war-on-the-poor for drug raids and to detain people profiled in street organizations or "gangs" for decades.

These communities are not only targeted by law enforcement for state violence, but the violence against these communities is both legitimized and invisiblized by even the most progressive of liberals, extending from black and brown poor communities to the treatment of undocumented and migrant communities the world over.

Not only is there no data on police harassment, stop-and-frisks, brutality or detainment that doesn't result in arrest or charges, but the communities most targeted by the police (and most likely to be executed) are less than likely to come forward about instances of police abuse. 

This is because most talk about "accountability" is designed to protect law enforcement, and contain any concerns that may threaten the credibility of law enforcement making it severely unsafe for people to come forward. 

Which leads me to this conclusion: the unquestionable credibility surrounding the actions of police is why we haven't heard about this warehouse used for illegal detainment till now. It's why it took the Guardian UK to come and break a real story about police terrorism, because that's what it is.

It's also time for us to talk more about how police are not only individuals subject to their own racism, but participants and beneficiaries of an organization that operates on the methodology of racism. This site, if anything, can be seen as an extra-legal method of practicing violence and applying racism to achieve the objectives officers felt would be delayed by working within the already non-transparent mechanisms of policing.

This should not be seen as vigilantism. That would presume there is something to be restored about the practice of policing, ignoring how policing works within a larger framework of racism, social control and various other enforcement agencies in an agenda to use terrorism to achieve political objectives that preserve profit and authority. It should also call into question our reliance on the 'law" which is not neutral, but founded on violence and colonialism, and left up to the interpretation of those who practice it such as police and politicians. 

People elected to positions of authority have since been reacting to the news of the Chicago "white site", some calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice, others fearing this will affect their credibility in calling for improved police and community relations in the wake of the Ferguson insurrection and growing tide of black resistance and solidarity globally. Which is true, you can't improve your relationship with an organization intent on terrorizing you.

Whatever the lip service paid by people with positions in the governmental hierarchy, the actions taken by the Chicago police in using this site are not limited to the site itself. The practices and mentality that goes into the creation of an intentional site like this are present in the logic of policing and occupation everywhere. 

The representatives stepping forward with outrage would be better served by making this an anomaly, a one-time-thing, a sore-spot soon to be covered up with a town hall or press conference. This is why accountability (and justice) cannot be in their hands. 

How many people passed through the bars of Homan Square, shackled for days? Both violated and erased by a system that systematically incarcerates and devalues or executes lives of color. How many people felt that their suffering was invisible because of the untouchable credibility of policing? in a world that entraps, punishes and shames peoples response to an out of touch competitive economy that deprives people of resources and the means to live.

It is not up to the police to reform themselves or accept the reforms pushed on them by the politicians and DA's who are essentially collaborators in policing on a mass level.

This is why we have to collect the data. We have to research and expose the "white sites" used by the state (both locally and federally) to invisiblize its own methodology of violence. We have to be the investigative journalists, the whistleblowers, the agitators- not to use this information to petition for reform of a power structure that exists to affirm itself, but to create centers of trust to open up space for people to come forward with their own experiences about systematic racism and policing. 

To pressure for abolition of these systems of power that make state violence acceptable and profitable.

Where are the LAPD off-record "white sites"?