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!

The Duke U. Rape Case

It appears that the case brought by the D.A. of Durham, N.C., against three white, wealthy lacrosse playing students, is falling apart. The D.A. has just dropped the rape charges, but has maintained sexual assault and kidnapping charges, for what is alleged to have happened to a black stripper, who is the accuser.

In a country where disproportionate numbers of black people are targeted by abusive police and prosecutors, this case is an anomaly. Some have said, it was brought because the D.A. wanted to ensure black support in his bid for re-election. Whatever the reason, the D.A. clearly thought he had enough evidence to bring the charges, and he was able to convince the grand jury to issue the indictments.

It is being said by defenders of the students, that they are innocent and their reputations have been irreparably harmed. I say to these students, get over it - welcome to the real world! It's rare that wealthy whites get a chance to see the justice system at the level most blacks routinely see it. As for their reputations, they will just have to get over it as blacks have always had to do. If they are proved to be innocent and all charges are dropped, they have the means (unlike most blacks), to sue for millions in damages as a result of the charges.

At least one of the defendants, has a prior arrest record and conviction for assault. Had he been black, this would have been enough to presume his guilt in this case, even without DNA or any other corroborating evidence.

The media is outraged that the NAACP and other black organizations, supported the D.A. in bringing these charges against these students. One paper branded them as 'appallingly demagogic', 'identity-politics-obsessed', and said the accuser was 'an unstable black "exotic" dancer' (presumably then, unworthy of any legal protections). They also note that the black vote put the D.A. over the top in both the earlier primary and then in the general election last month. To them this means that the fix was in from the beginning, and the accusations by the black stripper against these upstanding sons of the South, should have been discounted, ignored and summarily dismissed from day one.

Maybe the South is changing, and black folks are finally being listened to when they allege that crimes have been perpetrated against them.

If this is so, it's a positive step forward.