By MEGAN REICHGOTT
Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO- A special prosecutor investigating allegations of police torture primarily against black men said he hopes to finish his investigation by year’s end, while impatient community activists have asked an international human rights group to intervene.
Special prosecutor Edward J. Egan has been investigating claims of torture against a unit led by former Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge, who has denied any misconduct but was fired in 1993 for mistreating a suspect.
“We do see light at the end the tunnel,” Egan, a former judge, told The Associated Press on Monday. “We are working as diligently as we possibly can. Nobody is as anxious to end this investigation as we are.”
Frustrated by the three-year investigation’s pace, a coalition of lawyers and community activists on Monday sent a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, asking the international community to put pressure on officials to file charges against the police, including Burge.
“The special prosecutor has been working on his assignment for three years and we’ve been patient and hopeful and continue to be, but until criminal charges are brought the status quo remains the same,” said Locke Bowman, legal director for the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago.
The torture allegations include suspects who said they were beaten, dunked in water and questioned with a plastic typewriter cover over their heads during the 1970s and 1980s. Bowman claims 135 black men were tortured by police between 1971 and 1992.
Burge attorney James Sotos said he welcomed an end to Egan’s investigation because it has prevented police officers from defending themselves against at least six civil lawsuits, including two filed on behalf of former death row inmates Aaron Patterson and Madison Hobley.
In January 2003, then-Gov. George Ryan of Illinois pardoned the men and two others as one of his last acts in office, saying there was no credible evidence against them. Patterson, recently convicted of drugs and weapons violations in an unrelated case, said he was tortured by Burge’s unit into confessing to a double murder he did not commit.
More than two dozen current and former police officials and homicide detectives have taken the 5th Amendment and refused to testify because Egan could charge them criminally as a result of the civil suit testimony, said Sotos, who also represents several former officers who are defendants or potential witnesses.
Coalition members claimed Monday that a fraternity among prosecutors and police officers has delayed action in the case. It is a claim Egan denied.
“I have defended police officers and I have prosecuted police officers successfully. ... I think we have approached this in an evenhanded way,” he said.