What Does Burge and Vick Have in Common?

Most have not heard of Jon Burge, the Chicago police commander who was fired after it was determined that he and his officers had tortured a total of 146 African-Americans over a 20-year time span. A Chicago newspaper reported on the testimony of a retired black police officer as follows:

"Retired Chicago police officer William Parker told a chilling story to the city council's police and fire committee. In 1973, as one of a handful of African-American detectives, he sat at a desk at Area Two Headquarters typing a report.
"I heard a bloodcurdling outcry, the likes of which I'd never heard before," Parker said.
He told aldermen how he followed the sound into a nearby lieutenant's office.
"I saw seated on the floor in front of me, a male, black, with his pants and shorts pulled down to his knees and his right hand handcuffed to the radiator. Standing over him was Jon Burge. To Burge's right were two other white detectives."
Parker had stumbled into an apparent torture scene, orchestrated by Burge, the Chicago cop accused of beating and shocking confessions out of scores of black suspects for almost 20 years.
"He was whimpering in pain, crying, moaning, obviously in pain," Parker said.
Parker says he was ordered out of the room, and several months later was demoted to patrolman. He waited until he left the force to talk about it. "When the hammer came down on me, there was nobody to go to. Nobody wanted to hear anything I had to say," he said.

The council committee is struggling to find a way for the city to stop paying for Burge's legal fees. One estimate suggests the cost so far for defending Burge and his fellow accused officers is more than $10 million.
Burge was first accused of torture by cop killer Andrew Wilson in 1982. Wilson was so badly beaten after capture he was sent to the jail hospital instead of a cell.
Wilson won a civil case against the city in the alleged torture allegations, which led to Burge’s termination in 1993.

In all, 146 African-American men accused Burge and his subordinates of torture, which included beatings, use of cattle prods, suffocations with typewriter covers, and use of a black box to electrically shock genitals, ears, and lips."

Burge is accused of torturing humans while Vic is accused of torturing dogs. There has been no national outcry by PETA nor non-stop messages calling for Burge's electrocution, castration, or lynching, perhaps because he is white and his victims were black. In fact, after being fired, he was allowed to retire and draw his pension, and has been living comfortably in Florida since then. The scant notice paid to this story versus the orgy of Michael Vick denunciations by every media source, confirms that the public believes Vick who was cruel to dogs, committed a far more heinous crime than Burge, who was cruel to humans.

To the many who say race has nothing to do with the Vick case - you are liars!