Chicago Police Smashed Up Apartment, Captured Suspected Protesters

Officials Initially Denied Holding Anyone

by Jason Ditz, May 18, 2012

Update: Officials revealed that at least two of the “suspects” being held were undercover police, while three people were charged as “terrorists” for possession of beer-making material, on the assumption that they could theoretically fill empty beer bottles with gasoline and use their bandanas to light them on fire.

 

With an upcoming NATO summit in the next few days, Chicago police are taking the opportunity to kick down doors and arrest “suspected protesters” in a bizarre series of night raids that appeared to occur entirely without warrant.

The National Lawyers Guild reported that police attacked an apartment complex in Bridgeport late Wednesday night, smashing down the doors, tackling tenants and berating one suspected of planning to participate in a public protest against the summit, describing him as a “Commie faggot.”

The captive “suspects” were eventually led off in chains, and the guild says search warrant for the apartment, which wasn’t even written until several hours after they broke the doors down, was never signed by a judge.

The “suspects” were marched out to a police station where they remained, for over 30 hours, shackled at the hands and feet. Police initially responded to inquiries about the raid by denying that it had ever happened, and saying that they weren’t holding anybody. Later, they eventually admitted that they had captured the “suspects,” and said four of them were later released without charges. The other captives are being held pending a bond hearing, though it is still not clear what, if anything, they have been charged with.

Incredibly, Chicago officials are still refusing to comment on the details of the raid, and the States Attorney declined to say what the charges would be, saying that it was “still developing.”

The Obama Administration was seen as extremely keen on crushing any visible dissent at the Chicago summit, and at one point Illinois was even said to be considering opening a special prison for all the detainees they planned to capture.

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