The Torture Machine

Racism and Police Violence in Chicago

By: Flint Taylor

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

With his colleagues at the People’s Law Office (PLO), Flint Taylor has argued landmark civil-rights cases that have exposed corruption and cover-ups within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and throughout the city’s corrupt political machine.

The Torture Machine takes listeners from the 1969 murders of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark - and the historic 13 years of litigation that followed - through the dogged pursuit of commander Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the CPD that used barbaric methods, including electric shock, to elicit false confessions from suspects.

Joining forces with community activists, torture survivors and their families, other lawyers, and local reporters, Taylor and the PLO gathered evidence from multiple cases to bring suit against the CPD officers and the City of Chicago. As the struggle expanded beyond the torture scandal to the ultimately successful campaign to end the death penalty in Illinois, and obtained reparations for many of the torture survivors, it set human-rights precedents that have since been adopted across the United States.

©2019 Taylor Flint (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Excellent, thought provoking, must read!

Excellent, thought provoking, must read! Flints perspective on the subject gives us insight on how to change the system for the future. Should be assigned to every civic and law curriculum for high-school and college.