meanwhile, in Chicago

[-Jrabbit]

This is a long-form story, so for the TLDR crowd: Chicago police seem to running their own "black ops" site, where detainees are denied access to lawyers, some are shackled, some beaten, not booked for many hours, and seemingly are not even documented. It also seems to be the spot where the city stores its hundreds of war surplus military vehicles.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site

I don't want to be glib about this, but apparently the militarization of the police has gotten way more serious than I believed. If true, this is some pretty scary stuff. The city got some splainin' to do...

[SlowwHand]

Always something.

[Lorizael]

Someone's getting a dead fish in the mail...

[Sava]

I'll ask Rahm about this

[pchang]

Have you seen LA Confidential? This may be the sequel.

[Boris Godunov]

I'll ask Rahm about this

He's probably preoccupied with the fact that tonight he was unexpectedly forced into a run-off for re-election against a super-left socialist who got 33% of the vote.

[-Jrabbit]

This isn't America. It isn't even 'Murica.
This crap has to stop.

[Alexander's Horse]

disturbing but not surprising, I first noticed the militarisation in Florida, police going into poor neighbourhoods to do drug busts with military style gear and vehicles like they were going into Fallujah

[regexcellent]

disturbing but not surprising, I first noticed the militarisation in Florida, police going into poor neighbourhoods to do drug busts with military style gear and vehicles like they were going into Fallujah

Police with rifles (oh teh noes!) is not the same. Nor is it new. Bonnie and Clyde were taken down in a shoot-on-sight ambush with BARs (something that would rarely or never happen today). "Military-style gear" is a matter of style, not substance.

On the other hand, tuning people up in a "black site" for lack of a better term is a matter of substance.

Connecting this with police having milsurp armored cars is retarded. Having armored cars doesn't have any impact on their ability to torture/interrogate suspects.

Also the fact that the armored cars look like something out of Iraq/Afghanistan says more about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than it does about the police.

[-Jrabbit]

Horse is not connecting disparate concepts; he's relating his own experience to the article.

The article states that this facility is used as a de facto black ops site, and that it also houses 1700 military surplus vehicles.

[rah]

I thought it said 1700 pieces of surplus equipment.
1700 surplus vehicles would take one heck of a lot of space to store.
That would be really hard to keep secret.

[-Jrabbit]

Obviously, there's a lot to learn about what this facility really is and how it operates, but the article is pretty alarming. Especially considering the CPD's history of abusing detainees.

[Donegeal]

A little dramatic calling it a 'Black Ops' site when signs and vehicals clearly identify it as a police facility. Media always trying to make a dollar.

[Sava]

A little dramatic calling it a 'Black Ops' site when signs and vehicals clearly identify it as a police facility. Media always trying to make a dollar.

Pretty despicable that your complaint about this story is about the term used to describe it.

[N35t0r]

A little dramatic calling it a 'Black Ops' site when signs and vehicals clearly identify it as a police facility. Media always trying to make a dollar.

There's even signs announcing that detainees are held there without access to lawyers and with other rights being violated!