The Guardian began investigating Homan Square — a secretive Chicago police warehouse — in February 2015.
After launching a transparency lawsuit, the Guardian has forced the Chicago police department to disclose internal records. They help to tell the stories of thousands of detainees.
These documents, still incomplete, provide the fullest scale yet of police detentions at Homan Square: the people, their race, their pickup locations, the charges … and the mayor.
Here’s what we know now — and what we still don’t — from the Homan Square disclosures.
- New records acquired by the Guardian reveal 7,185 arrests of people taken to Homan Square between August 5, 2004 and June 30, 2015. This is approximately twice the 3,621 arrest cases documented in August from earlier police disclosures following the Guardian’s lawsuit.
- Homan Square arrestees are disproportionately black. Approximately 82% of known detentions — or 5,906 arrests over nearly 11 years — were of black people.
- 65% of all detentions documented have occurred in the five years since Mayor Rahm Emanuel came into office.
- 53% of arrests were made more than 2.5 miles beyond the warehouse, which sits at the intersection of West Fillmore Street and South Homan Avenue on Chicago’s predominantly black and Hispanic west side.
- 75% of arrests in the Homan Square documents resulted in drug-related charges, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine possession and distribution.
Want to know more? Explore our interactive, read the full report, and watch the video.
(via notime4yourshit)
