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There’s a fascinating new podcast series from NCS’s Omar Jimenez about systemic torture carried out by the Chicago police division over a few years beginning within the Nineteen Eighties.
There had been startling revelations, cops put in jail and tens of millions in damages in the end paid by the town.
Jimenez first realized in regards to the tales when he was in faculty. Years later, after his personal experiences overlaying tales just like the homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis, he and a staff have produced an enticing take a look at American justice.
The podcast focuses on a few totally different characters, together with James Gibson, who was wrongly convicted and tortured, Andrew Wilson, whose guilt for killing two police officers has not been questioned at the same time as individuals realized of his torture, and Jon Burge, a police commander who oversaw torture.
The podcast additionally comes at a time when President Donald Trump is threatening to ship the National Guard into Chicago, ostensibly to wash up the town, it doesn’t matter what native officers need.
I talked to Jimenez in regards to the venture and justice in Chicago. Our dialog, edited for size, is under.
WOLF: This is just not your typical NCS venture and also you got here to it in an atypical means. It sounds prefer it’s been years within the making.
JIMENEZ: When I used to be a scholar at Northwestern, I used to be interning and dealing with the Chicago Innocence Project, the place they reinvestigate potential wrongful situations. I got here throughout this man who labored with that group who informed me about being tortured by this police commander and his unit in Chicago. He had spent many years in jail and was ultimately exonerated.
I couldn’t imagine what he was telling me. I bear in mind on the time going and taking a look at this police unit, seeing the precise scale of what this period of policing in Chicago had created. This is Jon Burge and the detectives beneath him, referred to as the “midnight crew.” They actually tortured over 100 individuals, generally into false confessions, over the course of many years. I bear in mind considering, “Why don’t more people know about this?”
Years go by. I had tried to pitch varied variations of this in varied kinds. Nothing actually got here collectively in the appropriate means. But then this yr, 2025, I acquired linked with somebody who was making an attempt to get a civil settlement from the town of Chicago for being wrongfully arrested and despatched to jail again in 1989 and 1990. Here we’re, over 30 years later, and this man’s nonetheless making an attempt to get justice from the town.
WOLF: The phrase torture is used repeatedly all through the podcast. It’s a phrase that has nice impression. How did you resolve to make use of the phrase torture versus police abuse? What is the road?
JIMENEZ: The line is actually impression. When you don’t use the phrase torture, you run the danger of sanitizing the brutality of what was performed right here. It was a very acutely aware resolution. There’s even a second in a single of the episodes the place we take a second to speak about what the phrase torture means, and even how that phrase has been normalized in what we watch on TV and in motion pictures — you torture the unhealthy man to get the data it’s worthwhile to save the world.
That is like a very traditional trope that you just see play out in motion pictures, however when it occurs in actual life, the implications and the impression that final are one thing that isn’t fairly as recognized or seen.
When you hear the phrase torture, I believe individuals have the tendency to say, “Well, that doesn’t happen here in the United States.”
But it occurred. It occurred within the US. It occurred in Chicago. It occurred over an prolonged interval of time.
As we present within the podcast, there have been many alternatives for individuals to step in and cease this, and it simply didn’t occur.
WOLF: What are you hoping to perform with this story?
JIMENEZ: The query we needed individuals to wrestle with is, “What is justice?” Depending on what facet of the battle you’re on, justice was convicting our foremost individual, James Gibson, again in 1990 since you noticed the double homicide, so to talk. And we spoke to the son of a individual that was killed in that double homicide, who mentioned, yeah, that was justice for him. That closed the e-book in his file.
When Gibson acquired out and won almost $15 million — is that justice? What’s the greenback quantity on dropping nearly 30 years?
The police commander, Jon Burge, he ultimately is arrested, serves a few years in jail and dies and by no means actually has to reply legally for the torture claims that had been levied in opposition to him for many years, however he did undergo the justice system. Is that justice? People searching for a satisfying ending will discover that there’s no excellent ending right here. And I needed to individuals to consider how they view justice in their very own lives, as they study the world round them.
WOLF: Is this a historic story in that Chicago has fastened this drawback? Or are these sorts of allegations nonetheless occurring?
JIMENEZ: These sorts of allegations are nonetheless occurring. The individual we featured within the story, James Gibson, we had been with him as he lastly acquired his $14.75 million settlement this yr.
What’s not within the podcast, as a result of it was after we had performed the majority of our interviews, is one other man whose identify is Jackie Wilson (Andrew’s brother). He acquired a $17 million settlement tied to the identical period and what occurred again in 1982. And then in present-day Chicago, there may be a $90 million settlement that’s set to maneuver ahead, tied to a single former Chicago police sergeant. This was somebody that was accused of primarily shaking down residents in a Chicago neighborhood within the early 2000s.
WOLF: There’s a peel-back-the-onion component to the story you current — there are these dogged reporters, there are nameless letters. In different phrases, individuals didn’t know this was occurring in actual time. Was there one factor that in the end introduced this scandal to mild?
JIMENEZ: The unlikely individual that helped convey this to mild was Andrew Wilson, somebody who shot and killed two police officers and whose guilt was by no means questioned. He killed two police officers. He was tortured extensively when he was arrested for that crime. That torture was documented in a means that actually was unmistakable. People who noticed the pictures of what occurred mentioned one thing occurred right here, one thing past the pale. Bit by bit, reporters began paying consideration. This individual then launched a civil swimsuit. Even although he couldn’t get out of jail as a result of of the legal conviction, he nonetheless may doubtlessly get cash from the town for the way he was handled. That stored issues within the information. And then as a result of of that publicity, the folks that had been overlaying that case and defending Wilson in court docket began getting recommendations on different individuals.
It wasn’t essentially one factor. I believe this story actually encapsulates the drip, drip, drip of one factor occurred right here which led to this, which led to that. Even after Burge was fired within the early ‘90s, there have been nonetheless extra names being uncovered by means of the early 2000s and other people had been slowly beginning to determine how deep this really ran.
WOLF: There’s an necessary second in right here the place you describe being arrested live on TV in 2020 whereas reporting from a protest, and the way even then, authorities had been saying they wanted to confirm who you had been and that it was a troublesome course of, despite the fact that it was fairly apparent you had been reporting for NCS. You distinction that with what it’s like for any individual to be arrested when no person’s watching them dwell on TV. How did you come to incorporate that distinction? It’s actually putting.
JIMENEZ: One of the themes by means of all of that is that issues didn’t actually change for the parents on this story till eyes, extra eyes, began getting on what they had been seeing. That concept of witnesses being your biggest advocate, and being this protector, in a sense, in opposition to somebody who would possibly attempt to plant a narrative on you. That was a huge half of how I believed and mirrored on what occurred to me personally. As we had been constructing this podcast we had been coping with some of the identical dynamics, and I began considering it’s necessary for me to indicate a little bit extra connection to this story, but additionally present that the weather of what we’re speaking about right here, though they actually occurred many years in the past, are nonetheless prevalent in our trendy occasions.
There wouldn’t have been cameras to the extent that we’ve now, clearly, but when there was somebody looking for James Gibson, if he got here from a totally different neighborhood, and there was extra consideration possibly placed on what he was saying that he didn’t do that, and possibly his final result would have been totally different. But he didn’t have that. It linked to me. He didn’t have dwell TV. Even if cameras weren’t there, I felt fairly assured that NCS would come to my protection, and there simply wasn’t somebody of that caliber that was coming to James Gibson’s protection.
How does Chicago view Trump and the National Guard?
WOLF: The podcast comes out at a time when Chicago policing is within the information as a result of President Trump is threatening to ship within the National Guard, one thing the native officers don’t need. Part of his argument is that the individuals of Chicago need to have extra security. Does Trump’s declare have any resonance there, given the connection between the police and the area people?
JIMENEZ: I believe typically individuals in Chicago are cautious of authorities overreach. The governor didn’t need the Guard despatched in and it will not be authorized with out the governor’s approval. And so simply that combat to start with made no less than the parents that I spoke to skeptical that this was occurring for genuine causes, versus political causes. So you can begin there.
As far as wanting assets to assist with the actual problem of violence that they proceed to cope with, the bulk of individuals needed extra assets, however they didn’t want the National Guard, and that’s what I believed was so fascinating.
I went to the neighborhood that sees extra shootings per capita than another neighborhood within the metropolis, and I spoke to a girl who’s misplaced a shut member of the family, who informed me she will be able to’t have her grandkids and nieces sit on the kitchen desk as a result of she worries a bullet would possibly come by means of the window. And she mentioned she doesn’t need the National Guard, as a result of what are they going to do? She needed the assets that may have gone towards sending the National Guard to assist fund neighborhood facilities to assist in giving the children in her neighborhood extra pathways.
And then after I sat down with the police superintendent in Chicago, he didn’t remark to me in regards to the National Guard particularly, however he did acknowledge the longstanding problem of bridging belief between the communities they serve and the police division, however he says they’ve been making progress on them, and he did additionally shout out the federal partnerships that they’ve, that they use on a each day foundation – that’s the ATF, that’s the crime gun intelligence facilities, however not the National Guard.
If I needed to guess, that is me guessing right here, he would most likely take extra assets on and a few of these federal partnerships that assist them course of crimes faster.
There was one individual that one of our groups spoke to that mentioned that she needed the National Guard to be right here, and that intuition may be very comprehensible when individuals are seeing movies of smash and grabs of, you understand, individuals getting shot at locations within the metropolis, individuals getting robbed. But after I went to some of the neighborhoods, once more, they had been most affected by each day gun violence and each day threats of violence, I simply didn’t see the overwhelming push for the National Guard in a place like Chicago.