Patterson, Orlando. "The Real Problem With America’s Inner Cities." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 May 2015. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

        Thompson, Heather Ann. "Inner-City Violence in the Age of Mass Incarceration." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

By the early ‘80’s, the drug link strengthened to such a degree that inner city shootings began to crack 500 a year in major cities. Mass death on this level was met with harsh punishments for small time drug dealing and use from authorities. This only added a feeling of constant danger in violence affected communities, and although it decreased inner city violence in the first decade of the 2000’s, those numbers appear to be increasing all over again. Quite simply, they were not effective long term decisions to combat urban violence. Urban communities became pockets, barely supported with failing infrastructure and largely ignored in practice by white, detached politicians. From these pockets, music began to spark. Funk and soul rose, and then puttered out because they were seen as too happy for a community jaded by generations of targeted oppression. This is the climate into which gangster rap entered and became the definitive voice of a people, so varied in texture and style that it polarized everyone and entered national politics. Black expression, of all kinds but especially of violence and poverty, has always had a passive dual relationship with popular culture. It is shunned, rejected, and then gentrified in a disgustingly cyclic pattern. Jazz, funk, tap dance, gospel, minstrels, and rock all lie in the graveyard of black expression.

In conclusion, race and violence and poverty in cities are all linked inexplicably but irrevocably. We can not break the pain of these facts, but we can help. The assault on the black body, on the poor mind, is not an unstoppable force. It just requires immediate and drastic mental change in the mind sof the rich and privileged.

Immediately following, the trickle of whispered torture claims against Area 2 police became a flood, and (usually black) sympathetic cops, along with innocent and guilty victims, released statements detailing the abuse they’d faced at the hands of Burge and his flunkies. All victims had similar, if not the same, stories and the evidence to back it up. Many, including Wilson, discussed having plastic bags placed over their heads to almost the point of suffocation, and then removed. Many claimed Burge had taken them to the roof and dangled them over, threatening all the while to let go. Others described cattle prods and flashlights in rectums, and bolt cutters or garden shears removing fingertips. Burge was not convicted of a crime until 2010, when all this first came to my attention. 

Burge is the perfect example of an American sociopath that slipped through the cracks. He graduated a Chicago high school with decent grades in 1966 and dropped out of University of Missouri his freshman year. He then volunteered to go to Vietnam, where he was allegedly taught “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the Army. In fact, an old Army interrogation technique is to use a hand cranked telephone to deliver shocks, a technique allegedly used by Burge in the 80’s. He was given the Bronze Star, two valor commendations, and a Purple Heart during his two tours. He returned to Chicago in 1969 and became a policeman in 1970, earning 13 commendations and a letter of service from the Justice Department in his 25 year long career. Beneath all that, a darker side began to surface. Claims that Burge tortured or killed Vietnamese civilians in the late 60’s filtered throughout the city. Accusations from cops claimed that almost everyone in the department knew some level of Burge’s discrepancies, and yet no one acted. Others said moving Burge from Violent crimes to the Bomb Squad in 1986 was the city silently attempting to subvert this problem. Darrell Cannon, a victim of Burge and his constituents, claimed Burge repeatedly spouted ethnic epithets and racist rhetoric. 

Burge was only part of Chicago’s systemic problem with police violence. Across the city, another detective named Richard Zuley carried on Burge’s torture torch. In 1989, he kept a witness to the murder of a white woman by four black men comfortable for months, and then turned and arrested him based on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch. He falsified a confession and then kept the suspect cuffed and isolated for two days. The suspect remains in jail to this day. The next year, he arrested a Latherial Boyd for murder. Upon searching Boyd’s large and comfortable home, he remarked “no n****r is supposed to live like this.” He then forcibly coerced 2 female witnesses to pick Boyd out of a lineup. Boyd was convicted and released in 2003 after an investigation into his conviction. Lastly, he arrested Benita Johnson for murder, cuffing her to a wall at two points for more than a day. She eventually gave up her boyfriend, Andre Griggs, who was arrested the next day. Griggs was also cuffed to the wall for thirty hours, even as he went through severe heroin withdrawal without methadone. He allegedly confessed during this period.