If a person pops the intersection of “Homan and Fillmore” into Google, the search engine returns an innocently named “Chicago Police Department Evidence and Recovered Property Section” via Google Maps. The former warehouse hovering nearly Roosevelt Road and Western Avenue has become the center of a big debate and protests, however, with the hashtag on Twitter known as # Gitmo2Chicago offering an eye-opening lesson on what has rumored to have gone on at the Gitmo-styled facility, according to the Guardian .
As reported by the Inquisitr , the video interview with Brian Jacob Church on the Guardian website offers a firsthand report of a man who says he’s been on the inside of the “Gitmo Chicago” warehouse, after being taken to Homan Square after protests at a NATO summit. According to Church, he was held for 17 hours, handcuffed to a bench at the secret site, and not processed, booked, charged, or allowed to use the phone. What’s more, he was denied access to a lawyer in all those hours.
Worse yet, three additional men — Kory Wright, Deandre Hutcherson, and David Smith — told the Guardian that they were either held in the # Gitmo2Chicago location for lengthier amounts of time, or that they experienced more abuse whilst in custody. Reports of police stepping on one young man’s groin as if he were stomping out a cigarette, along with testimonies from those who say they remained in the secret location for three days without access to a lawyer or phone, are setting social media on fire about the site.
As the demands surrounding the #Gitmo2Chicago hashtag grow, with the central demand of the social media movement calling for the closure of the CIA-styled secret black site, the Chicago Police have released a “fact sheet” on Homan Square , as reported by ABC News .
In the fact sheet, the police claim there has been no death inside Homan Square, even though reports of a drug overdose are still in question. The CPD also claimed that allegations of them turning up the heat in Homan Square aren’t physically possible. The accusations of violence inside the so-dubbed Gitmo Chicago facility were also denied by cops in the newly-released fact sheet, but that did little to deter the 150 activists who gathered on Saturday to protest a #Gitmo2Chicago place in their neighborhood.
The fact sheet also claims that the public have accessed Homan Square when retrieving returned merchandise, and states that the media has regular access to the facility, although the Guardian reports otherwise. The Guardian reports that their journalists were denied access to the controversial facility.
[Image via #Gitmo2Chicago Twitter photos]
