The torture letters : reckoning with police violence
(Book)

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Published
Chicago ; The University of Chicago Press, 2019.
ISBN
9780226490533, 022649053X, 9780226650098, 022665009X
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Published
Chicago ; The University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Format
Book
Physical Desc
xxiv, 242 pages ; 23 cm
Language
English
ISBN
9780226490533, 022649053X, 9780226650098, 022665009X

Notes

Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens - and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square "black site" show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds--perhaps thousands--of Chicago residents. Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public's complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge's Area Two and follows the city's networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay -Ralph's story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism.

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Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Ralph, L. (2019). The torture letters: reckoning with police violence . The University of Chicago Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Ralph, Laurence. 2019. The Torture Letters: Reckoning With Police Violence. The University of Chicago Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Ralph, Laurence. The Torture Letters: Reckoning With Police Violence The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Ralph, Laurence. The Torture Letters: Reckoning With Police Violence The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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