Jon Graham Burge (December 20, 1947 – September 19, 2018) was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department. He was found guilty of lying about "directly participating in or implicitly approving the torture" of at least 118 people in police custody in order to force false confessions.
Burge was a United States Army veteran who served in Asia during the Vietnam War. When he returned to the South Side of Chicago, he began a career as a city police officer, ending it as a commander. Following the shooting of several Chicago law enforcement officers in 1982, the police obtained confessions that contributed to convictions of two people. One filed a civil suit in 1989 against Burge, other officers, and the city, for police torture and cover-up; Burge was acquitted in 1989 because of a hung jury. He was suspended from the Chicago Police Department in 1991 and fired in 1993.
In 2002, a four-year review revealed numerous indictable crimes and other improprieties, but no indictments were made against Burge or his officers, as the statute of limitations for the crimes had expired. In 2003, Governor George Ryan pardoned four of Burge's victims who were on death row and whose convictions were based on coerced confessions.
In 2008, Patrick Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for Northern Illinois, charged Burge with obstruction of justice and perjury in relation to testimony in a 2003 civil suit against him for damages for alleged torture. Burge was convicted on all counts on June 28, 2010, and sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison on January 21, 2011. He was released on October 3, 2014.
Early life Raised in the community area of South Deering on the Southeast Side of Chicago, Burge was the younger son of Floyd and Ethel Ruth ( Corriher) Burge. Of Norwegian descent, Floyd was a blue collar worker for a phone company while Ethel was a consultant and fashion writer for the Chicago Daily News.Conroy, pg. 61. Burge attended Luella Elementary School and Bowen High School where he showed interest in the school's Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC). There he was exposed to military drill, weapons, leadership and military history.
He attended the University of Missouri but dropped out after one semester, which ended his draft deferment. He returned to Chicago to work as a stock clerk in the Jewel supermarket chain in 1966.
Military career In June 1965 , Burge enlisted in the army reserve and began six years of service, including two years of active duty. He spent eight weeks at a military police (MP) school in Georgia. He received some training at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he learned interrogation techniques. He volunteered for a tour of duty in the Vietnam War, but instead was assigned as an MP trainer. He served as an MP in South Korea, gathering five letters of appreciation from superiors. On June 18, 1968, Burge volunteered for duty in Vietnam a second time, and was assigned to the Ninth Military Police Company of the Ninth Infantry Division. He reported to division headquarters, where he was assigned to provide security as a sergeant at his division base camp, Đồng Tâm. Burge described his military police service as time spent escorting convoys, providing security for forward support bases, supervising security for the divisional central base camp in Đồng Tâm, and serving a tour as a provost marshal investigator.
During his military service, Burge earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and two Army Commendation Medals for valor, for pulling wounded men to safety while under fire. Burge claimed to have no knowledge of or involvement in prisoner interrogation, brutality or torture in Vietnam. Burge was honorably discharged from the Army on August 25, 1969, aged 21.
Police career
Burge became a police officer in March 1970 at age 22 on the South Side of Chicago. In 20 years of service, he earned 13 commendations and a letter of praise from the Department of Justice. In May 1972, he was promoted to detective and assigned to Area 2 (Pullman Area) Robbery.
From 1981 to 1986, he served as the commander of the Area 2 Violent crimes Unit until he was promoted to commander of the Bomb and Arson Unit in 1986.
In 1988, Burge became Area 3 (Brighton Park) detective commander.
Torture According to The Guardian, between 1972 and 1991, Burge "either directly participated in or implicitly approved the torture" of at least 118 people in police custody. Federal prosecutors stated that Burge's use of torture began in 1972.Guarino, Mark (October 2, 2014). "Disgraced Chicago police commander accused of torture freed from prison". The Guardian. Burge was the leader of a group of police officers known variously as the "Midnight Crew", "Burge's Ass-Kickers", or the "A-Team", who abused suspects to coerce confessions. Federal prosecutors stated that the "Midnight Crew" used methods of torture including beating, suffocation, burning, and electrical shock to the genitals, among other methods.
Response to 1982 police shootings The most prominent events related to his abuses occurred in winter 1982. In February 1982, there were several shootings of law enforcement officers on Chicago's South Side: two Cook County Sheriff's Officers were wounded and a rookie Chicago police officer was shot and killed on a CTA bus on February 5.Conroy, p. 23.
On February 9, 1982, a person on the street grabbed a police officer's weapon, and shot and killed both the officer and his partner.Conroy, pp. 21–22. This last incident occurred within Burge's jurisdiction; he was a lieutenant and commanding officer of Area 2.
Burge was eager to catch those responsible and launched a wide effort to pick up suspects and arrest them. Initial interrogation procedures allegedly included shooting pets belonging to suspects, handcuffing subjects to stationary objects for entire days, and holding guns to the heads of minors. Jesse Jackson, Operation PUSH spokesman; the Chicago Defender; and black Chicago Police officers were outraged. Renault Robinson, president of Chicago's Afro-American Police League characterized the dragnet operation as "sloppy police work, a matter of racism." Jackson complained that the black community was being held under martial law.Conroy, pp. 23–24. The police captured suspects for the killings on February 9 through identification by other suspects. Tyrone Sims identified Donald "Kojak" White as the shooter, and Kojak was linked to Andrew and Jackie Wilson by having committed a burglary with them earlier on the day of the killings.Conroy, p. 24.
Torture of Andrew Wilson Andrew Wilson was arrested on the morning of February 14, 1982, for the murder of the last two police officers. By the end of the day, he was taken by police and admitted to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center with lacerations on various parts of his head, including his face, chest bruises and second-degree thigh burns. More than a dozen of the injuries were documented as caused while Wilson was in police custody.
Both Andrew Wilson and his brother Jackie confessed to involvement in the February 9 fatal shootings of the police officers. A medical officer who saw Andrew Wilson sent a memo to Richard M. Daley, then Cook County State's Attorney, asking for his case to be investigated on suspicion of police brutality.
Criminal trials During a two-week trial in 1983, Andrew Wilson was convicted of the killings and given a death penalty sentence. His brother, Jackie, was convicted as an accomplice and given a life sentence. Both appealed their convictions. In 1985, Jackie Wilson's conviction was overturned by the Illinois Appellate Court because his right to remain silent had not been properly explained by the police.
As Andrew Wilson had been given a death sentence, his case was not reviewable on the same grounds by the Appellate Court, and it went directly to the Illinois Supreme Court. In April 1987, the Supreme Court overturned Andrew's conviction with a ruling that his confession had been coerced involuntarily from him while under duress. It ordered a new trial.
In October 1987, the appellate court further ruled that Jackie Wilson should have been tried separately from his brother. He was convicted as an accomplice at his second trial. The court also ruled that evidence against Andrew Wilson, regarding other matters for which the police wanted him, was incorrectly admitted at his trial on murder charges.
His case was remanded to the lower court for retrial. Andrew Wilson was convicted at his second trial in June 1988. After five days of deliberation, the jury was unable to agree on Wilson's eligibility for the death penalty; ten women were in favor of imposing this sentence and two men opposed it. The following month Andrew Wilson was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Wilson's civil suit against officers and city In 1989, seven years after his arrest in 1982, Andrew Wilson filed a civil suit against four detectives (including Burge), a former police superintendent, and the City of Chicago. He said that he had been beaten, suffocated with a plastic bag, burned (by cigarette and radiator), and treated with electric shock by police officers when interrogated about the February 1982 murders; he also had been the victim of the pattern of a police and city cover-up.Conroy, pp. 60–61.
Jury selection for the civil trial began on February 15, 1989. The original six-person jury (as was customary for civil trials in Illinois) consisted of two women and four men. By ethnicity it was made up of three African Americans, one Latino, and two whites.
When Burge took the stand on March 13, 1989, he denied that he injured Andrew Wilson during questioning and denied any knowledge of any such activity by other officers.
Wilson's legal team, led by G. Flint Taylor of the People's Law Office, received anonymous letters during the trial from a person claiming to be an officer who worked with Burge. This person alleged that the Wilson case was part of a larger pattern of police torture of African-American suspects, which was sanctioned by Burge. U.S. District Judge Brian Barnett Duff did not permit the jury to hear this anonymous evidence.
Gradually, the cases of the other officers named in Wilson's suit were resolved. On March 15, 1989, Sergeant Thomas McKenna was acquitted of brutality, and on March 30, 1989, detectives John Yucaitis and Patrick O'Hara were each acquitted of charges by a unanimous jury; however, the jury was at an impasse regarding Burge.
Duff ordered a retrial for Burge, former Police Supt. Richard J. Brzeczek, and the City of Chicago on two other outstanding charges (conspiracy and whether the City of Chicago's policy toward police brutality contributed to Wilson's injuries). Burge was acquitted of these charges in a second trial, which began on June 9, 1989, and lasted nine weeks. In the verdict of the civil case, jurors found that Chicago police officers employed a policy of using excessive force on black suspects.
Increasing reports of torture and new civil suits The first lengthy report of torture by the Chicago police was published beginning in January 1990 in the alternative weekly Chicago Reader. Through that year, as additional material was published by the Chicago Tribune, civil activists and victims of Burge pushed for disciplinary action against the officer.
Danny K. Davis, who was running for Chicago mayor in the Democratic primary scheduled for February 26, 1991, made police brutality and excessive force an issue in the campaign. He sought an independent citizens' review of the police department. On January 28, 1991, Amnesty International called for an investigation into police torture in Chicago. When the city's mayor, Richard M. Daley, seemed reluctant to initiate an investigation, his opponent Davis questioned whether there was a police and city coverup.