DBS
Case 005
The Chicago Through-Line
Above the surface — the public claim
Three separate chapters, each investigated on its own terms and each closed. A 1969 raid ruled a justifiable homicide and later settled. A torture scandal answered by a firing and, eventually, a perjury conviction. A warehouse the federal government declined to investigate. Each is treated as its own aberration.
Below the surface — the record
Hampton v. Hanrahan settled for $1.85 million after thirteen years of litigation. The Chicago Police Board fired Jon Burge in 1993; he was convicted in 2010 of perjury, not of torture. The Guardian documented 7,185 people held at 1011 S. Homan Avenue between 2004 and 2015. The three sites sit inside the same stretch of the West Side.
The question this file is built to answer
Is Homan Square a continuation of the Burge apparatus? Same stretch of the West Side, same operational logic, possibly some of the same personnel. Whether that continuity is traceable in the public record is the open question, and if it is, the answer sits in the deed and permit history of 1011 S. Homan Avenue and in the forward career records of the officers who were there on 4 December 1969.