Cassius Methyl & Nick Bernabe

February 26, 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) CHICAGO, IL — Is this the calm before the storm? We are in the midst of an earth shattering revelation about Chicago Police detaining protestors, minorities, and unidentified enemies of the state in a secret detention warehouse in the Homan Square area of Chicago. From Anti-Media;

The Guardian has reported that Chicago Police are operating a secret detention facility that mirrors the CIA’s “black sites.” From violations of due process to torture, the revelations raise serious concerns about the deteriorating state of freedom and justice in the United States.

Meanwhile, local media outlets continue to downplay the severity of the facilities, literally repeating the department’s PR talking points.

The most important part about this revelation may be the likelihood of there being several more locations like this all across America where police can secretly detain, disappear, and kill people illegally or legally under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

This could be the first instance of the NDAA being put to use; the first time authorities exercise their power to detain or kill anyone they want legally. Or maybe we just haven’t heard about this program because it’s been a closely guarded secret for a long time. There is a possibility that this secret detention center’s practices predate the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA, which was signed into law on New Years Day in 2012. This would mean the program was operating entirely outside of what is considered to be the law. Not exactly surprising.

Not only that, but this detention without due process power was utilized by the police, and likely still is. These are the very people currently under the collective watch of concerned citizens for killing over a thousand people last year. This involves minorities being disappeared and possibly killed at Homan Square. A 15 year-old boy was detained without due process in this warehouse. An unknown amount of activists from the Chicago NATO protests were detained and abused, which happened in May 2012 — only a few months after the NDAA’s indefinite detention language was passed. Who knows how many people have passed through the cold doors of this warehouse since or before then.

Protests and movements to inform people of this ‘black site’ are currently being planned all over the US.

“Groups across the country are coordinating a way to strike back against the rogue police department,” according to a Fifth Column article.

An Anonymous affiliated activist said “This is the moment when Americans have to decide whether they want to live in a police state or if they are willing to fight back against oppression.”

It feels like a threshold has been crossed, and this topic may become a primary issue of 2015.

If you have been watching the NDAA’s progression over the last few years, you have been anticipating this story for quite a while. Well, it’s finally here. The police can detain and kill anyone they want with no due process, for any reason — and it could all be happening legally.

The fact is, we don’t know how many people were disappeared and/or killed in this warehouse. There is at least one documented case of a person dying there, however paperwork documenting the cause of death seemingly does not exist. We don’t know, and as activists and journalists we need to dig deeper to get to the bottom of this secret facility.

Could there be more facilities like this around the country?

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Please share this with as many people as possible. Are we going to stand up and do something — anything about this?

This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune-in to The Anti-Media radio show Monday-Friday @ 11pm EST, 8pm PST. Image credit: The Guardian screen capture

