The Windy City is shelling out millions to victims involved in a torture case. Correspondent Ciera Crawford reports: The city of Chicago has paid out $5.5-million to 57 people, whose claims of torture by police decades ago, were found to be credible. The Chicago Sun Times reports the money was paid Monday to victims of a police unit commanded by Jon Burge. Most victims received checks totaling $100,000. Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the newspaper that before righting more recent wrongs in a police department that’s now the focus of a federal civil rights investigation, the city must heal wounds inflicted decades ago. More than 100 men accused Burge and officers under his command of shocking, suffocating, and beating them into giving false confessions. Burge has never been criminally charged with torture, but he served a 4 ½-year sentence for lying about the torture in a civil case. The newspaper reports the months-long claims process included vetting by an arbitrator and by a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Kent School of Law.
