Ep. 51 – The Torture Letters – Reckoning with Police Violence: A Conversation with Laurence Ralph

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy. A podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Okay, on today’s podcast, we’re talking with Dr Lawrence Ralph, who is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He’s the author of Renegade Dreams, Living With Injury in Gangland Chicago, and of a new book, The Torture Letters. Reckoning With Police Violence, which is about, uh, the torture in Chicago that was uncovered. Um, and it’s written in a really interesting way as a Siris of open letters to different people who are connected with those torture cases. Lawrence. Ralph, welcome to race and democracy.

[0:01:00 Laurence] Thanks. Thanks for having me. Now,

[0:01:03 Peniel] Um, you know, I remember reading your first book, and, you know, I think you’re such a great writer. And it was interesting to read this book because it’s, uh, organizes a Siris of open letters, everything from, uh, Superintendent Eddie Johnson, uh, to Doris Bird to the late William Lacy. Just different people who were connected, uh, to, um, torture and police violence. Uh, in Chicago during really a 50 year period. I wanted to ask you why did you decide? Even before getting into what this book is about to write and organize it, Um, in this way.

[0:01:45 Laurence] Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it was mostly because of the subject itself. Um, you know, as an anthropologist and as a research and write researcher and a writer, I always try toe like, do justice to the different projects I’m interested in and think about what is the best way to convey the messages that I’m receiving and in the information that I’m learning. And I think in this case I had to grapple with that problem while also wrestling with the question of torture and torture. It’s such a difficult thing to write about because, you know, like violence more generally, there’s a way in which you can write about it and contribute to a kind of voyeurism and a kind of spectacle that you’re trying to critique at the same time. And so how do you write about the spectacle of torture without reproducing it? That’s that’s one of the biggest questions, the biggest challenges of the book. And so letters came about because as I was doing the research, I thought a lot about what made something voyeuristic or not, and when I was talking to people who had been impacted by torture. It never felt voyeuristic, and I started thinking about why that was. I think why that was is because there was a purpose. There was an intent. There was an intentionality about why we were discussing something. If we were talking about the marks on someone’s body, it was because those marks had become important for court case. They had become evidence they had allowed torture survivors to see each other within a wider network and gain recognition. And so I wanted my message to be purposeful. And so the thing about letters is that they’re addressed to a particular purpose person. They have a particular message. They have a particular intent, and it kind of kept me on track and allowing to write about torture without reproducing the spectacle of it. Who

[0:04:22 Peniel] is John Birch? Because he plays such a huge role here and we’ll talk about Anthony Will Wilson and Door spurred and some. There’s so many indelible characters that you sketch out here in this book. But who is Jon Burge and why is he so important? Um, to now, the whole history of Chicago, the city

[0:04:50 Laurence] Yeah. I mean, I got introduced to John Birch when I was doing research for my first book, which was on gang violence in the issue of policing, you know, obviously came about, came up, And the issue off police shootings was a hot topic in that moment before, you know, the black lives matter movement where, you know, kids were getting gunned down in the street by police officers being shot in the back, and people were talking about this and there was a heavy skepticism about whether or not, you know, police officers would be held accountable. And a lot of the reason why people were saying that police officers wouldn’t be held accountable was because of Jon Burge. So Jon Burge kept coming up in these public meetings as someone who basically no, had lived a life of impunity. People knew he had done horrific things. It was widely publicized that he had been accused of torturing criminal suspects, and yet nothing happened to him. And so there’s a part of your question when you’re asking me about who is John Birds. Part of it is just like that, that larger than like folklore, there’s ascension, which Jon Burge is basically the Boogeyman in Chicago. And then there’s another sense of who he actually is as a police commander. And so he was a police commander of area to an area three precinct in Chicago in the eighties and nineties. And so he was, um, widely decorated. He was a Vietnam vet, and he, you know, was a basically the ringleader of ah torture operation in which criminal suspects would be brought into the precinct. Um, and he either tortured them himself or oversaw their torture with a select few of officers that he trusted. Sometimes they’re called the midnight crew because they operated under the cover of darkness. Sometimes they’re called the 18. Uh, you

[0:07:31 Peniel] have a great You have a great great disquisition on the A team. It reminded me of my youth. You get us back to B. A. Baracus and Hannibal, and I thought that was great. I’m so into popular culture where you really get in, tow the television, a team, and then sort of juxtapose that against what? What Burge and his team did,

[0:07:56 Laurence] right? I mean, I think that there’s a large part of it in just our culture, where we learn to accept torture. We don’t even realize it, Um, how ingrained it is in our psyche. But just to see police officers trash transgressing the law in a way because we’ve already deemed the people who they’re chasing down to be the enemy and the bad guy. And I think that’s the kind of logic that allowed torture to to pervade the streets of Chicago for so long.

[0:08:32 Peniel] And you talk about the black box and very poignantly in the open letter to Chicago’s youth of color. What was the black box? And you know, in this letter you talk about, you know, basically trying to imbue hope but also giving them sort of the depth and breath and sketching out what? What so many youth of color face in a city like Chicago. What was the black box under under Burge and why is that so significant?

[0:09:04 Laurence] Yeah, So the black box is really you know, it’s ah, it’s a device of torture device, literally, but it’s also a metaphor for what I’m trying to get at when we think about how to understand, please torture. And so, in terms of the the actual torture device, I think it relates to the kind of the militarization of the police and the way that please violence isn’t just a domestic problem. It’s a global problem. It has to do with the way that we are thinking about security internationally. And so I mentioned before that Jon Burge was, uh, Vietnam Vet. And so, uh, it is rumored that, um, he game knowledge of how to torture people from his experience in Vietnam in in Vietnam, Um, the military would take thes telephones and rewire them into torture device with the, uh, with electricity exposed in in putting it on people who they wanted to extract information from. And so the black Black. The black box in Chicago is a similar kind of device in that it is a new electrical device with a hand crank. And when you crank the device, it sends electricity shots of electricity to the victim whose attached to it. And that was, ah, major breakthrough of thes torture cases. Because that marks that they left on the body were so unique that it became hard to deny that what people were describing, uh, as what happened to them was just made up because they could prove that these marks were created from an electrical current that scar them for life in numerous people had these same mark. So then this is how, through court evidence, we can see a community of torture survivors begin to emerge. Now, why do I say that the black box is also a metaphor? It’s because it stands in for everything that we cannot know about police violence. There’s a lot of things that we cannot know, even the black box itself. It’s recreated from how what the victims described in what police officers who worked with John Bird saw. But the the actual device itself is disappeared. There’s birds. There’s people who say birds threw it into Lake Michigan. Mhm. And so how do we piece together information? How do we discuss what is unknowable? How do we then re create the theme of a crime when the evidence doesn’t exist in a material fashion? Those are questions I oppose because oftentimes we don’t have those things that are necessary that we deem necessary in a court of law. All we have is people’s word. All we have is the way that they describe what happened to them, and all we have is a choice. Do we refused to give officers the benefit of the doubt and believe the community? Or do we continue to give officers the benefit of the doubt and allowed what happened to them to disappear into a black box? And that’s a major question I posed in the book

[0:13:27 Peniel] now in part to you. Look at the what you call the B team, but I think of the B team as Burge in the city of Chicago, and you write about this in terms of capitalism and how torture was good for people’s careers. But even people who tried to resist Burge and sometimes were transferred to other stations. You talk about Doris Bird and other people, but and William Lacy, one of the first Chicago police officers who came on the force in 1957 when they were less than 100 officers out of 10,000. But it seems that Burge and torture and the prerogatives of capitalism or racial capitalism set up these supply chains of power and privilege and then misery and grief. And when you look at the B team, you see that it’s larger than just the a team of the five or six people that bird really counted on. It seems like one of the things that Lacey recounts is in 1973 walking in on Burge, torturing somebody against the smoking hot radiator at a station. But all these other detectives are just typing away and for interrupting. He’s later demoted and sort of humiliated, and you have a very moving letter to him. Um, but let’s talk about that. The B team. What do you mean by that? And what’s going on there where you go beyond sort of Burgess this bad guy? And look at the rial sort of structural problems that led for this to happen and for people to actually be promoted to make money by torturing people, to have higher public standing. The superintendent’s all the Burj becomes a commander, But all the administrators who let this happen

[0:15:17 Laurence] Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. I mean, I think this part of the book that you’re talking about is really about power and complicity and the relationship between those things. And I think when we think about torture, it’s easy toe vilify birds and say, Oh, he was just, you know, psycho. A lot of people say he was just crazy or he was a bad apple, you know, And the people who work with him are also bad apples. But then the question becomes okay. How did this happen? You know how to torture become an open secret for decades. Then you know, And so what we see when we asked that bigger question about secrecy about what people knew at the time is that even people who weren’t close toe bourj were made to feel intimidated by him. And so what I described with the B team, who is a group of black officers who were basically marginalized in the force. And they were in this position this, you know, really hard position of being token ized, at times being, you know, regarded as exceptional professionals, on the other hand, but not, you know, given getting the credit for what they did and not being able to rise within the ranks. And so oftentimes they felt like they couldn’t, you know, blow the whistle. But what I describe is not merely an absence, uh, or just sitting on their hands and refusing to do something What I describe is a active learning to know what not to know. They have toe learn how to navigate their space without getting any more knowledge of torture. Because if they do get knowledge of torture, then they are conflicted heavily. Then they have to act so they avoid birds. They hear the rumors, but they don’t go in when he’s working the midnight shift, they hear the rumors. They hear noises, but they don’t go into those rooms where they hear the noises coming out of and in doing this and bearing their heads in the sand. In this way, they are allowed to stay in the force because they see what happens when people blow the whistle and their careers air destroyed. And so when we think about power and complicity, it’s not just about the people who are doing evil things. It’s about how we learn to know what not to know about that, how we learn to navigate our world by turning the other way how we believe that if it isn’t us doing the torture, then we are somehow absolved. But this is how torture I was allowed to grow. This is how it grew from a few people to hundreds of people over the course of a decade. And this is how people, as you said, rose within the ranks because after a while it became not just about protecting birds but protecting everyone who could have had any kind of knowledge about torture. And so the the district attorney who heard allegations of torture in the 19 seventies and 19 eighties but didn’t say anything. He also rose up the ranks. That district attorney eventually became a judge, and when he was a judge, he didn’t hear any cases about torture because that would implication implicate him or that district attorney then becomes the mayor. When they become the mayor, they squash or try to squash the political mobilizations around torture because they’re also implicated. And so when we have these kinds of injustices, they become systemic because the people who are in close orbit to them also become implicated in the scandal.

[0:20:11 Peniel] And when I read that part too, I also thought about this idea of somehow black cops or representation could save us in the criminal justice system, and I saw that in a real devastating way, what you show in the torture letters is that’s just not true. And it’s not even possible on git doesn’t mean these black people were bad people. But you show how they really get caught up in a system of self preservation that ultimately reeks riel harm on black communities.

[0:20:43 Laurence] Exactly Thank you for that

[0:20:47 Peniel] now. I thought Part three was very hopeful on it. Could be because I know the history of African Americans charging genocide, Um, whether it’s William Paterson or Malcolm X and other n double A C p towards the United Nations. But let’s talk about the eight students that you you describe and characterize in terms of charging genocide. And you you have a great open letter toe. The late William Paterson, who did the 1951 we charge genocide petition. United Nations charging United States with human rights violations. And and let’s, um, in your opening it with this letter to Josephine Grayson and I want you to talk about Part three because I thought this was very, very hopeful that you had young people who were this organize and this trenchant and this resilient to actually, you know, fight back in this way. I thought That was remarkable.

[0:21:50 Laurence] Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, I think, um, just to go back Thio where we started. I think when we talk about not reproducing the spectacle of torture, uh, in it of itself without a purpose. I think part of that has to do with, uh, how we talk about activism as well. Or if we talk about activism as well, because it can seem total izing when we think about how long people have suffered and how deeply they suffered in terms of police violence. And so we also have to ask the question, What have communities done to mobilize against these forces? And, you know, doing that’s important because it shows that the forces aren’t, You know, that destruction isn’t inevitable, that it isn’t total, that there are kind of lines of flight that people can imagine in terms off, um, seeking liberation. And there’s also a long tradition of that. And so, in part three, I describe you know what could be called a contemporary? We charge genocide movement because it draws on the 1951 petition with William Paterson in which you know it’s a really similar toe. What is going on today about thinking about white supremacy and police violence and the political infrastructure of the United States that allows us to happen. And so, in 1951 you know, a group of activists go to the U. N and talk about these issues on the international stage and inspired by that, you know that call for really you know, a language to discuss disproportional punishment in the US and its disproportionate impact on African Americans. And really, with the goal of shaming the U. S. On the international stage in 2014, you know, a group of activists from Chicago do the same thing. They create a petition in order to go to the U. N. Uh in charge, genocide, and the group itself is called. We charge Genocide after the 1951 petition, and Part three discusses the trip. It discusses it kind of tax back and forth between key actors in the 1951 petition, like Josephine Grayson, whose husband was, um, charged with raping a white woman and then put to death. And it talks about those issues of the death penalty, the disproportionate impact on African Americans and kind of political mobilizations around them, with the goal of pointing to the contradiction between a rhetoric of democracy and, um, a systematic annihilation of black bodies. On the other hand,

[0:25:43 Peniel] and they also you talk about the stops, transparency, oversight and protection act. These these young people were really interested in policy, Really interested in in, um And so I want to know, how effective have they been subsequently? Because they seemed like they were. They were doing these these great things. Um, and I and I know there’s, you know, there’s been some policy transformations which I do want to talk to you about, but this specific group from part three, we charge genocide. Um, how effective do you think they they were there? They’re organizing.

[0:26:23 Laurence] Um I mean, I think it XYZ continues to be effective. You know, Chicago has a very rich tradition off grassroots organization and activism. And a lot of the people who were in that original group are some of the leaders of the current movements right now, going on like page made with the side of daughters around, just trying to think about, uh, abolition and de funding. And so I think, and also now kind of mentoring and growing on the next generation of young activists in Chicago. And so I think those lessons air vitally important in the work continues, Um, on a you know, uh, expansive scale. And I say that because I think without that that work, uh, in 2014 was going on now, in terms of organizing around, uh, the possibility of abolition wouldn’t be possible for for them.

[0:27:45 Peniel] And now, in part four, with bad guys, you really, um, even set where you look at what past presidents in the way in which they vilified Muslims and this idea that we’re always in search of bad guys and I know on the streets Now there’s, ah term which I love Coppa Ganda instead of propaganda. And in a lot of ways, the torture letters really moves away from that propaganda where the cops are always right and they’re the good guys. So they can torture and kill and murder and maim people. And everything’s fine because they’re protecting. They’re protecting the society, especially against black people. But I want you toe explain to us. What do you mean by bad guys and how How does the construction of that term. Bad guys on multiple levels because you really go from the local to the global impact torture and police violence and this criminalization against black communities in Chicago but also elsewhere.

[0:28:49 Laurence] Yeah. I mean, I think it’s you know, how we construct the other in order to kind of justify, uh, yeah, occupation, brutality, um, killing, injuring in the name of the quote unquote greater good. I mean, I think that’s the core of the idea with this the bad guys part how we need bad guys in order to, uh, perpetuate an idea of safety that’s premised on killing people in his premised on force. And I think for me, it’s important to frame in that way because, um, we have to see it outside of just the politics of race in the US as they manifest. Because it then we get trapped in the the discourse in the histories of racism in our particular country and aren’t able to see the way that the same tactics air policing are impacting the globe. And so, even if you know, magically weaken, waiver, wind and say, you know the police won’t brutalize anymore black people, they won’t kill any more black people next year. I just waved the wand. I don’t think that solves the problem because then we can just look for another bad guy to crucify. Then it becomes, uh, the people who just came over the border that we need Thio separate from their families, you know, And there’s a danger of then black people becoming implicated in that structures of annihilation. And so we have to kind of eradicate the notion that, uh, bad guys in any kind of whatever shape and form they come in are not worthy of protection and not worthy of rights. And we can just, uh, to spend those rights in our own search for safety as a country. And so part of the reason why I want to show that is because the way that please violence manifest itself in the U. S. Is borrowing from all of these other operations in which our country is searching for bad guys all over the world. And that’s a particularly important when it comes to the war on terror. We’ve refined our techniques of repression and occupation, uh, from the war on terror, and we’re kind of there’s a pendulum that swinging back and forth between the US and all these other places that we’ve occupied in the recent decades, and that’s making please power become even more entrenched. And the last thing I’ll say about that is that, you know, we can see that in how Portland is looking, how Kenosha is looking, where there are these military tactics that are taking place in American soil that are, yes, disproportionately impacting black people. But those tactics were refined bye, occupying the enemy abroad. And so we have to see how those relationships are connected.

[0:33:03 Peniel] Now you conclude with a very poignant, open letter to the late Andrew Wilson, who was Andrew Wilson. And I would also say who was Marcus Wiggins? Because that’s very, very important to, um yeah,

[0:33:21 Laurence] yeah, I kind of beginning in with Andrew Wilson because I think the case of Andrew Wilson really test the reader. So Andrew Wilson is a black man who in 1982 was accused of killing two police officers. What ensued after that was a manhunt and which was at the time, the largest manhunt in the history of Chicago, in which black communities were occupied and really harassed and people were brutalized in the search for the quote unquote cop killer. And Andrew Wilson was taken in by Burge and tortured. And it was Andrew Wilson who, with the help of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, a really famous, um, law firm, dedicated thio, civil rights and Social Justice. Um, they worked with Andrew in order to bring these allegations of torture toe light. And ultimately it was the Andrew Wilson case that created the legal standard that allowed for other people to make claims that they have been tortured, too. I start with injury Wilson because I don’t know if he killed those police officers. And I think that we have a tendency in the US to really look for the clean example the person who was above reproach, the person who was innocent and wrongly accused and who suffered horrific things as a result. But I want to challenge again the good guy versus bad guy kind of tropes that we’ve put in our cultural psyche. The question is, even if Andrew Wilson did do it, does he still deserve to be tortured? And I say that because the way that birds was allowed to get away with torture is by vilifying Andrew Wilson and saying that he was a cop killer and saying that he was a criminal and saying that he would always be a criminal. So if we allow torture to be excused because we believe the person is bad, then how do we stop someone like Bird from torturing again? How do we confine it to those people who seem to be deserving? And so that’s really the kind of heart of the book. I mean, it comes down to a simple premise, theoretically, that no one ever deserves to be tortured no matter what they’ve done. But when we look at the history of the U. S, we see that that premise is really difficult to hold on to. That premise really divides people that premise, you know, excuses, systematic violence and abuse. And so I want to keep that example, because despite what Andrew Wilson may have done or may not have done, what ensued is hundreds upon hundreds of people being tortured and without Andrew Wilson. Those people would have been in the shadows for we don’t know how long, maybe forever. And so he plays a crucial role in our history and understanding the impact and effects of police

[0:38:01 Peniel] torture. Alright. My final question. I want to move us to the present. And this year of 2020 black lives matter, protests, the murder of George Floyd and really, even recently, um, the police police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Subsequent protests and vigilante white supremacist murders of protesters in this case, white protesters, Um, on the eve of the march on Washington anniversary and the march on Washington 2020. Um, how are you? How are you feeling? Is somebody who you’ve traveled to Geneva? You’ve done work in Chicago. You’ve done so much research on, um, not just police violence, but ending this police violence, but also this idea of repair acknowledgement. Um uh, compensation as well, both in Chicago and other spaces. How are you feeling now when we see these global protests for, um, not just racial justice, but black dignity, Black citizenship, really reimagining public safety calls to abolish prisons, defund the police. How are you feeling? Is somebody who works and has been in this space for for a long time. How are you feeling about this? present moment.

[0:39:27 Laurence] Yeah, man. I mean, it’s really it’s really tough to grapple with the present moment, you know, as as you know, Pennell, my first book, Renegade Dreams, deals with people who have been paralyzed as a result of gun violence. And when I see what what happened with Blake, it just it brings back, You know, all of the people who I’ve come to know who have had that experience and I know what what’s going on in his in his life right now and what will go on that long road of just, you know, learning a new body, you know, learning how to hold a fork. Okay. Learning how to, uh, stay healthy and lift him off. Lift himself off his chair so he doesn’t get ulcers. How his family probably will have toe reorient themselves in order. Thio provide for him in the long term. And it’s a difficult, you know, it’s a diff really difficult time where a lot of the things that I’ve been thinking about for a long time are coming to a head, and I think it’s a time where difficult things are being put on the table because it’s impossible to ignore the social problems that we face today. What I hope is that people are seeing the human connections in this moment. I hope that people are connecting the pandemic to please violence and realizing that at the same time that police officers air equipped with every technology, state of the art, weaponry and governmental support to enact deadly violence and suppressed communities on a large scale. Okay, we can’t get test to everybody who needs them. Our schools can’t open in person. Everyone doesn’t even have mask. We don’t know when our economy is gonna open again. People are homeless. We’ve experience the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. And so these stark realities of inequality are manifesting themselves. Yet what is being protected? Wealth and property and privileges being protected in this moment nevertheless, and so I think it. I hope this moment sheds light on our priorities as a country, not what people are saying, but what what’s actually being done, what we can observe with our eyes in terms off whose wealth is growing and who is becoming under protected in this moment. And you know, I hope that it will lead to a transformation in the way that we think about public safety and the way that we think about providing for everyone who needs protection. And that’s economic protection. That’s psychological protection player. I think you know that that moment is it’s becoming such that no one, you know, unlike you know what I’m describing in the book. You know, it’s impossible to bury your head in the sand in this moment in American history. And so, you know, I hope that provides the opportunity for for us to create a radical change and in the way that our society works.

[0:44:43 Peniel] Okay, well, Lawrence, your book and your work, your books plural and your work is a big part of that hope and translating that hope into policy and tow riel life transformations for both victims of torture. But also just all of us are citizens are undocumented, just all of us, um, in this country and on this planet. So thank you for for joining us. We’ve been having a terrific conversation with Lawrence Ralph, who is professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He’s the author of Renegade Dreams, Living With Injury and Gangland Chicago. He’s also a good friend and and, uh, one of the most brilliant minds of his generation and really are our our country. His latest book, Everyone Should Get It’s Out in paperback now is the torture letters reckoning with police violence on. But really, is this transformative read about the history of torture in Chicago on bond the way in which, um, that torture impacts not just the criminal justice system, but impacts American democracy. So, Lawrence, Ralph, thank you so much for joining us.

[0:45:59 Laurence] Thanks for nail. It’s been a pleasure, man.

[0:46:01 Peniel] Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.