Chicago’s Grim Era of Police Torture

The Chicago Torture Archive, an online research repository set to open early next year, provides a chilling insight into the grisly period from the 1970s to the 1990s when the Chicago Police Department’s infamous torture crew rounded up more than 100 African-American men who were shocked with cattle prods, beaten with telephone books and suffocated with plastic bags until many confessed to crimes.

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In the Turmoil Over Race and Policing, Children Pay a Steep Emotional Price

By YAMICHE ALCINDOR, New York Times In the past week alone, there was the 4-year-old girl in Falcon Heights, Minn., who was captured on video consoling her mother after they watched a police officer shoot the mother’s boyfriend through the window of a car. And there was the 15-year-old boy in Baton Rouge, La., who sobbed uncontrollably in…

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Study Supports Suspicion That Police Are More Likely to Use Force on Blacks

A new study has found that the race of the person being stopped by police officers is significant in terms of how much force is used. The study of thousands of use-of-force episodes from police departments across the nation has concluded what many people have long thought, but which could not be proved because of a lack of data: African-Americans are far more likely than whites and other groups to be the victims of use of force by the police, even when racial disparities in crime are taken into account.

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Grand Jury Declines to Indict Cop Who Slammed Teen Girl to Ground

A grand jury declined to indict a white McKinney, Texas, policeman who slammed a teenage girl to the ground at a pool party. A bystander’s video showed the officer aggressively tossing the 15-year-old black girl to the ground before pinning her with his knees. Casebolt also pulled his gun on two other youths who came running to help the girl.

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