Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 Black Men

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By them not being successful in getting what they wanted out of me, they then did a third treatment, which was they put me in the backseat of a detective car. They unhandcuffed my cuffs from behind, put them in front. John Byrne had a gun to my head and told me, "Don't move," when they redid the handcuffs. They put me sideways in the backseat of a detective car and made me lay down across the seat. They pulled my pants and my shorts down, and that’s when Byrne took an electric cattle prod, turned it on, and proceeded to shock me on my testicles. They did this what seems like forever with me, but it wasn't that long. At one point, I was able to kick the cattle prod out of the detective’s hands, and that knocked the batteries out. He got the batteries, put them back in. One of them tried to take his feet and put it on top of one of my feet, the other one did the same thing, to stop me from kicking. Then this is when they started using the electric cattle prod on me again, while telling me that they knew that I wasn’t the one they wanted, but I had information that could lead them to the other person that they wanted. They continued to do this until finally I agreed to tell them anything they wanted to hear. Anything. It didn't matter to me. You know, if they said, "Did your mother do it?" "Yes, yes, yes." Because the diabolical treatment that I received was such that I had never in my life experienced anything like this. I didn't even know anything like this here existed in the United States.

You know, it wasn't until years later that I heard about torture in Chile and other places. This was after I was in the penitentiary. And it was amazing to me that these things had previously happened to me here in the United States, and the more we screamed about it, the less people cared to do anything about it. You know, and to this day, it is still amazing to me that there is a statute of limitation in the United States on torture, but there is not a statute dealing with arson and other things of this nature here. So, they should not be able to hide behind any kind of alleged statute. Wrong is wrong. Right is right. What these despicable detectives did could never be justified in the United States under any shape, form or fashion.

AMY GOODMAN: Darrell Cannon, what happened after they took you to this isolated area and tortured you in these various ways? Where did they then bring you?

DARRELL CANNON: What? The torture site?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Where did they --

DARRELL CANNON: Is that -- OK, the --

AMY GOODMAN: You were held in this car. They tortured you in various ways. Then what happened?

DARRELL CANNON: Yes, ma'am. From there, they took me back to the police station. Before we went to the police station, they drove around again, looking for another guy that they said participated in this. To me, it seemed like they wanted to keep me away from the police station all day. Keep in mind, they arrested me at a quarter to 7:00 in the morning. Their shift was over with at 7:00 a.m., but yet and still, they didn’t leave my presence until probably well after 3:00 that afternoon.

Why was that necessary? I was already in custody. They had other detectives involved in the case, anyway. It was just a thing where they had fun. They had fun torturing me, and they lost track of what time it was, as a process of this. And like I said, to keep me away from the police station was did intentionally, because I’m pretty sure that they knew that my common-law wife had called an attorney. An attorney probably had came down to the police station looking for me. But until they were finished doing what they wanted to do with me, they didn’t want any interference.