Is there a Gitmo effect by the Lake? A team including veteran journo and national security reporter Spencer Ackerman has accumulated testimony and evidence that suggests that bad things, worse than 1960s first-Mayor-Daley infraction-bad-things, are visited upon protesters, arrestees and African-American suspects on the Near West side. As their headline goes, they’re chronicling “allegations of abuse inside a secretive facility operated by the Chicago police department.” Is it possible? Is it plausible? As reported in August by Ackerman and Zach Stafford, “At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal. Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, eighty-two percent were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.“ Skeptics are skeptical, but the dense reporting so far is more portentous rumble than terrible fumble.
