'I sat in that place for three days, man': Chicagoans detail abusive confinement inside police 'black site'

Spencer Ackerman in New York
Friday 27 February 2015 20.16 GMT

A Chicago man says he was confined for three days – shackled, interrogated and fed only twice, his whereabouts unknown – inside the police “black site” at the epicentre of public outcry over allegations of abuse said to focus on minority citizens.

Four black Chicagoans have now come forward to the Guardian detailing off-the-books ordeals at the facility, including another who describes being detained in “a big cage” with his wrists cuffed to a bench so he couldn’t move.

The Guardian has now interviewed six people about their detention at the Homan Square police warehouse. With striking consistency, all have described extensive detentions without benefit of legal counsel or public notice of where they were.

The first-hand accounts of two white protesters who “disappeared” at the police warehouse in 2012 set off political and civil-rights outrage this week, and multiple protests have now been scheduled by organizers including the Black Lives Matter movement.

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