Chicago Art Exhibition Next Week Will Raise Awareness of Police Torture

Chicago City Hall will host an interactive art exhibition and teach-in next week to raise awareness of police brutality in the wake of the Burge torture scandal, the Chicago grassroots organization, Project NIA, said on the campaign's Facebook page Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The event is scheduled for midday of March 18. Project NIA, which seeks to end youth incarceration, said its campaign is now "in high gear" to push through a reparations ordinance that calls for a formal apology to the survivors of police torture.

Reports that transpired in British media in late February revealed that over a hundred African-American men and women had been brutalized by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his detectives.

According to Project NIA, the Burge team used electric shock, sexual abuse, suffocation and beatings as they sought to coerce confessions from suspects held at a remote warehouse in the city's Homan Square.

The Chicago administration has reportedly acknowledged the torture, but Mayor Emanuel's office has failed to provide reparations to the survivors of Chicago police torture.

Under the ordinance, the city is to pay the torture victims a total of $20 million in compensation, which is the same amount that Chicago spent to defend the disgraced detectives and former Mayor Richard Daley. The ordinance has been stalled for a year in the Council's finance committee.

Reacting to police misconduct and demanding investigation, activists in Chicago organized several rallies earlier in March. The Chicago Police Department has denied any wrongdoing.