April 24 marks the fifth anniversary of the appointment of special prosecutors Edward Egan and Robert Boyle to investigate police torture in Chicago under former Chicago police Commander Jon Burge. Although Burge was fired in 1993 for the torture of Andrew Wilson, and although he and his
minions have been implicated in the torture by electroshock, suffocation and Russian roulette of nearly 200 African-American men, Burge is still collecting a full police pension, and the city continues to pay his legal fees. None of his underlings were dismissed from the police department for their crimes. After spending $7 million in taxpayer money, Egan and Boyle
concluded that while torture happened, it was too late to prosecute Burge or any of the officers under him. Meanwhile, Egan and Boyle let Mayor Richard Daley completely off the hook for his role in the torture.

Mayor Daley was States Attorney between 1980 and 1989, and his office prosecuted victims who had been tortured during his entire tenure despite the fact that he received evidence of the torture. Just recently, Daley was embarrassed enough at the videotaped beating of a white female bartender to accept the resignation of police superintendent Phil Kline. Meanwhile, he
has reneged on promises to pay $14 million in civil suits to pardoned torture victims and former Death Row inmates Leroy Orange, Madison Hobley and Stanley Howard, who had years of their lives stolen from them. And the City refuses to entertain any settlement to Aaron Patterson, also pardoned from Death Row. At the same time, Daley is not above spending $500 million to bring the Olympics to Chicago. To this day, at least 24 men remain behind bars based on confessions built on torture.

In July, Daley said he would apologize and take responsibility for the torture under Jon Burge. But actions speak louder than words. Our public money deserves to go to the victims of torture, not on cover-ups. Now, it¹s time for the city to pay! On April 24, come tell Mayor Daley to take responsibility for his crimes and:

* Pay out civil suits to torture victims with outstanding claims, instead of wasting millions of dollars in Jon Burge¹s pension and legal fees
* Call on the federal government to jail Jon Burge and his minions
* Call on States Attorney Dick Devine and Attorney General Lisa Madigan to throw out the confessions of all Burge victims and grant them new trials.

"I'll take responsibility for it. I'll apologize to anyone. Yes, I would. It should never have happened." Mayor Daley, July 2006, on the Chicago police torture scandal.

Sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Amnesty
International-University of Chicago chapter, Citizens for Earned Release, Comite Exigimos Justicia, Committee for a Better Chicago, DePaul Students Against the Death Penalty, Hands Off Assata-Chicago, International Socialist Organization (List in Formation)

For more information or to co-sponsor, contact the Campaign to End the Death Penalty at (773)955-4841 or email julien (at) nodeathpenalty.org