'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to WashingtonShocked politicians and rights groups call for inquiries into Homan SquareRahm Emanuel faces questions as top supporters examine ‘outrageous’ abuse‘ I hadn’t heard of the sort of CIA or Gestapo tactics that were mentioned in the article until it was brought to my attention,’ Cook County commissioner Richard Boykinsaid in an interview outside Homan Square. ‘We are calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these allegations.’ Photograph: Chandler West for the Outsidethe red-brick Homan Square compoundon Wednesday, a young mother ushered her two children to the sidewalk on West Fillmore Avenue. “I am at the police station,” she yelled into her phone, over traffic noise. “Can I call you back?”The woman held her children close, shivering against the wind as plain-clothes officers and pedestrians scurriedacross the busy four-way intersection. Until this week, the Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin only knew of the warehouse next-door – like themother – as a police facility in a struggling Chicago neighbourhood.“I hadn’t heard of the sort of CIA or Gestapo tactics that were mentioned in the Guardian article until it was brought to my attention,” Boykin said in an interview outside Homan Square. “And we are calling for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into these allegations.”Thereported on Tuesday that police in Chicago detain suspects at Homan Square without booking them, thereby preventing their relatives and lawyers from knowing their whereabouts, reminiscent in the eyes of some lawyers and civil-rights activists of a CIA black site.While people are held at Homan Square, which lawyers described as a process that often lasted between 12 and24 hours, several attorneys said they had been refused access to the facility, and described entrance to it as a rare occurrence. One man interviewed by the Guardian said that ahead of a Nato protest in 2012, he washandcuffed to a bar behind bench for 17 hours inside Homan Squareand refused a phone call before police finally permitted him to see his attorney.
