Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
Ex-Chicago cop Jon Burge, recently sentenced to four and a half years in prison for lying about a police torture ring that may have victimized more than 100 black men, will be allowed to keep his $3,039 per month pension, the police pension board has ruled.
Their reasoning is absolutely ludicrous: Burge's conviction, they decided, had nothing to do with his job as a police officer.
That's like saying LeBron James' job has nothing to do with dunking basketballs or that a teacher's job has nothing to do with whether students learn.
Related Articles
- Ex-Chicago Cop Jon Burge Gets 4 1/2 Years for Lying About Torture of 100 Black Men
- Ex-Chicago Cop Convicted of Lying About Torturing More Than 100 Black Men
- Former Gang Member Describes Alleged Abuse in Chicago Cop Torture Trial
Kenneth Hauser, president of the pension board, said Burge's conviction "had nothing to do with things he did when he was on the job. He was retired 10 years when they convicted him. ... It wasn't on charges of what he did when he was a police officer. It was on a lie that he made in front of a civil jury," the Chicago Tribune reported.
Another member of the board, Micheal Shields, had this to say: "This question all comes down to one issue: Did Jon Burge have any law enforcement duties when he was accused of this perjury? In 2003, he did not."
You see, although dozens of men have accused Burge of leading a ring of officers that took black men to a secret location and tortured confessions out of them by doing things such as shocking their testicles with a cattle prod or placing loaded guns in their mouths, Burge could not be put on trial for torture because the statute of limitations has expired.
And why did the statute of limitations expire? Simple. For years, Chicago ignored the complaints of dozens of black men who said they were victims of abuse.
I'm not sure how being implicated in leading a heinous criminal enterprise while still on active duty as a police officer does not have anything to do with Burge's duties as a police officer.
Now, Burge, if he survives his prison term, will have a nice pension to come home to based on his years of police work.
Nevertheless, Burge has long been suspected of being involved in the abuse, a charge he continues to deny. A 2006 investigation found that Burge and a fellow officer coerced confessions from at least 12 men, but that statute of limitations on the abuse had expired.
Burge was fired from the police department after one such allegation and some of the victims have filed and won lawsuits based on their charges of abuse against Burge and other officers. One of the reasons Illinois' death row was emptied was because of some of the allegations against Burge.
If that is not proof enough that Burge committed activities that violated the public trust and forfeited his pension as a result, then I do not know what is.
It is a benefit he does not deserve because he abused the badge and made a mockery of the powers -- literally, life and death -- vested in him by the state that thousands of officer across the country take seriously.
"To say that he should still be paid is mind-boggling," Flint Taylor, an attorney who represents some of Burge's victims, told the Tribune. "It is a total slap in the face to the entire city and particularly the African American community."
The four officers who voted in favor of Burge keeping his pension are retired officers who were appointed by the Chicago police. The four members who voted against Burge were appointed by outgoing mayor Richard Daley. It would have taken five of the eight votes for Burge to lose his pension.
Now black residents in Chicago have another reason to believe that police who are hired to protect and serve them are unwilling to do so. Someone who witnessed a crime has another reason not to cooperate. The healthy relations between the community and police that are needed to help rid our neighborhoods of crime has just suffered another devastating blow.
All for a lousy $3,039 per month.