THIS IS REVOLUTION>podcast Ep. 149: Examining the Torture Machine w/ Flint Taylor and the Saturday Crüe

“We come to you and ask you to enforce the law because if it is not enforced here, when will it be enforced? Are police officers going to be allowed to shoot from 90 to 100 bullets into an apartment of citizens of this country, whether they be black or white, poor, rich, Panthers or not Panthers, to use the color our laws to do that, to tear the place asunder, to beat people, to shoot them, to maim them for life, to kill them? Are they going to be able to? That is the question that you have to ask yourselves. These defendants, as police officers, are they going to be allowed to violate those rights in the face of the law, in the face of our Constitution, in the face of the Bill of Rights? I say you won’t let them, and you will come back with a just and fair verdict which history will be proud of. That is what we ask and that is what the evidence demands.”

 
That very prescient quote from Flint Taylor was said in 1977 during the trial of the cops that murdered Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Sadly, not much has changed in the demands of the people to the people charged with protecting and serving the public.

Much emphasis has been made in recent history on the unjustified homicide of Black citizens by police malfeasance. Another major source of police abuse has been the use of torture by police to elicit confessions and general cooperation by citizens. In this episode we will talk to former Black Panther Fred Hampton's Lawyer, Flint Taylor about his 50-year battle against police abuse and torture and inquire if police reform is truly possible.

 
About Flint Taylor:
G. FLINT TAYLOR, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for 45 years. Among the landmark cases that Mr. Taylor has litigated are the Fred Hampton Black Panther case; the Greensboro, North Carolina case against the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis; the Ford Heights Four case in which four innocent men received a record $36 million settlement for their wrongful conviction and imprisonment; and a series of cases arising from a pattern and practice of police torture and cover-up by former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, former Mayor Richard M. Daley, former State’s Attorney Richard Devine, and numerous other police and government officials, five of which have been settled against the City of Chicago and Cook County for a total of approximately $26 million. He obtained a multi-million dollar settlement for a seven year old boy who was falsely accused by the Chicago Police of the murder of 11 year old Ryan Harris and has represented, and continues to represent, numerous other wrongfully convicted persons who have spent decades in prison and on death row, including Burge torture victims Michael Tillman, Darrell Cannon, Ronald Kitchen, Alonzo Smith, Anthony Holmes, Victor Safforld, Shawn Whirl, and Jackie Wilson, exonerees Randy Steidl, Paul Terry, Ronald Jones, Jerry Miller, Oscar Walden, Lewis Gardner, Paul Phillips, Terrill Swift, and Jonathan Barr, and the first woman jailhouse lawyer in Illinois, Maxine Smith.

 
Get Flint's Book, "The Torture Machine" from Haymarket Books here:
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1642-the-torture-machine
 
 
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