Welcome back to #Fuck12Friday! Today we are talking about Homan Square and lifting up the demands of @BlkAbolitionChi to #CloseHomanSquare! 
This week, we heard about federal agents disappearing protestors in Portland, and preparing to head into Chicago. But Chicago has had a history of disappearing its own, long before this week. #Fuck12Friday
In 2016, an investigation by The Guardian uncovered what many Black Chicagoans already knew -- there was a CPD black site in Homan Square, where people were detained for hours or even days without access to legal counsel or a phone call. #Fuck12Friday.
Homan Square looks like a warehouse - in fact, it's where people pick up evidence (like the bikes stolen from protestors last weekend). But it serves as an illegal interrogation and torture site for poor Black and Brown folks. #Fuck12Friday
For over a decade, CPD snatched thousands of mostly Black men from their communities and took them to Homan Square without processing them or reading them their Miranda rights. #Fuck12Friday
82% of people taken to Homan Square for torture and interrogation were were Black. 53% of arrests made were more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse, most on the South and West sides. #Fuck12Friday
CPD used Homan Square to illegally detain, torture and question people into giving confessions or implicating others. The facility was designed exactly like a CIA black site, so that interrogations could happen off the books. #Fuck12Friday
In a November 2015 deposition, cop William Kilroy admitted that just 3 of the 13 interview rooms at Homan Square had cameras in them. #Fuck12Friday
In the same deposition, Kilroy said that even though thousands of arrested people were brought to Homan Square, it doesn't even “have facilities […] to make pay phone calls,” which means that no one brought there could contact an attorney.
Of the 7,351 people detained at Homan Square between 2004 and 2015, only 86 were allowed to see attorneys. #Fuck12Friday
When we say people were "disappeared" within the city - they literally were. According to Kilroy, arrests and detentions weren't public knowledge until "the booking is complete" aka the person was released. #Fuck12Friday
CPD and federal agents used an arrestee’s inability to notify relatives or lawyers about their whereabouts to coerce people into providing certain types of information during interrogations. #Fuck12Friday
Lt. William Kilroy, by the way, is still on Chicago's streets. Despite having 32 complaints against him and admitting to participating in Homan Square torture, he makes $125K a year. cpdp.co/officer/14616/… #Fuck12Friday
Tracy Siska from the Chicago Justice Project called these types of Guantanamo-style deprivation tactics "touchless torture." #Fuck12Friday
During the course of the Guardian investigation in 2015-2016, CPD lied repeatedly about how they used outright physical torture as well. After repeated FOIA requests, journalists found the truth. #Fuck12Friday
At least 14 people in custody were punched, struck with nightsticks, slapped, tasered, threatened with a knife, or subjected to other forms of physical abuse and violence. Tragically, at least two people died in custody. #Fuck12Friday
And as we know, complaints involving torture are nothing new for CPD. In 2015 City Council approved $5.5 million in reparations to Jon Burge's torture victims and their families, for cases dating back to the 1970s. #Fuck12Friday
Homan Square's increased use as a black site under Rahm Emmanuel was the continuation of a long legacy of Chicago police weaponizing a lack of oversight to harm Chicago's most vulnerable residents. #Fuck12Friday.
Homan Square's increased use as a black site under Rahm Emmanuel was the continuation of a long legacy of Chicago police weaponizing a lack of oversight to harm Chicago's most vulnerable residents. #Fuck12Friday.
Even after the 2016 investigation and public outcry, Rahm's administration (with Lori Lightfoot as the face of police accountability), filed motions to dismiss the lawsuits that ultimately led to the federal Consent Decree. #fuck12friday
And, Homan Square is still operating under the CPD budget today. Beyond the costs to our communities, the fiscal cost of preventing people from accessing their lawyers upon arrest is exorbitant. #Fuck12Friday
One study found that if CPD stopped delaying people's access to a lawyer, Cook County could save between $12.7 and $43.9 million and eventually close approximately 22 jail units throughout the county. #Fuck12Friday.
How could that funding keep us safe by investing in communities rather than police? After the Homan Square story broke, a powerful counterexample of safety arose on the block: Freedom Square. #Fuck12Friday
In 2016, the #LetUsBreathe Collective launched Freedom Square right on the same corner as the Homan Square black site. #Fuck12Friday
Freedom Square started in solidarity with the blockade of police traffic. For 24 hours, the people kept police from moving in and out of the Homan Square facility. #Fuck12Friday
Then, the blockade blossomed into a 41 day overnight occupation, a block party, and a protest all at once that showed how WE keep us safe, not the police. #Fuck12Friday
Freedom Square provided free clothes, books, meals, children's arts programming, and sleeping tents for the residents of North Lawndale, protestors and folks experiencing homelessness. That is what community safety looks like. #Fuck12Friday
Today, 4 years later, Freedom Square is making a comeback. Meet us at 4pm on the corner of Homan and Fillmore to #DefundCPD and imagine a world where we divest from torture, genocide, and slavery...and invest in a collective and beautiful future. #Fuck12Friday
