An open letter to
the boy and girl
with matching
airbrush book bags
on the corner of Lawndale
Avenue and Cermak Road.
I began to worry about
police violence in Chicago
back in the summer of 2004.
That’s when I saw
you on your knees
at the corner of South
Lawndale Avenue and West
Cermak Road.
It’s been more than a decade.
I know you’re much
older now, and yet
when I see black and brown
teenagers of today’s Chicago,
I always return to that scene.
Four police cars were
parked along the curb.
Six officers patted you down.
Your bags were both white,
each with a different word
airbrushed in
graffiti letters.
Your names, I assumed, though
I couldn’t make them out
from where I stood.
I had moved to Chicago two
weeks prior to this incident,
and it scared me
for two reasons.
I was worried that
this was something
that I too might face.
At the same time, I
was reliving a scene
from my past.
When I was around the
same age as you were then,
I found myself in
a similar position.
My two older brothers and I
had just moved from Baltimore
to Columbia, Maryland.
We decided to go to the mall.
Before long, we realized a
plainclothes police officer
was following us
from store to store.
He eventually
ordered us to stop.
He frisked both of my
brothers, who were 15 and 16,
against the rail on
the second floor.
The cop took my eldest brother
Wolé through one of those
doors that you never notice
along the corridors of a mall
until all of your
senses are heightened,
and you notice everything.
It would take four long hours
for Wolé to be released.
When the police
released you, I
felt a similar kind of
relief as I felt then.
But I also felt the familiar
combination of anger,
frustration, and, yes, fear.
I cannot change the anger and
frustration and fear you must
have felt. All I can say is
that if I could press rewind
and go back to the moment
that you too were released,
this time I will say
a few words to you.
It was not your fault that you
were stopped by the police.
I know they probably
suggested it was,
but those accusations are
just a way of concealing
the open secret.
The open secret is this:
The kind of police
harassment you faced
has grown into
torture, and has even
resulted in death, all
because police violence is
rooted in fear.
Another open letter
to the boy and girl with
matching airbrush book
bags on the corner of Lawndale
Avenue and Cermak Road.
It’s been so long since I saw
you detained on that corner
in Chicago.
Even though I still don’t
have all the answers,
and I still don’t know
how to solve this scourge,
I have at least
done something.
I’ve done as an
academic the thing
I know how to do best,
research, and study
and write.
So I started a
research project
about the history of
police violence in Chicago.
For this project, I’ve
interviewed black youth
in Chicago and talked
about their experiences
with the police.
Their stories would probably
sound familiar to you,
given that they are your
younger brothers, sisters,
nieces, nephews,
friends, and in a way,
your younger selves.
During one of our
conversations,
for instance,
Nakia explained
to a group of
teenagers that when
her brother was around 15,
the same age she was then,
he got arrested.
My mom was there,
so of course she
was trying to calm me down.
But she was
distracted, because I
have older siblings.
Nakia’s brothers and sisters
were angry and getting more
and more agitated, which
put pressure on
Nakia’s mother
to make sure no one
else went to jail.
I definitely
didn’t understand
what was happening.
There was a lot going
on, and I was just like,
where’s he going?
When Nakia finished
sharing her story,
Phillip spoke.
My first memory of the
police is from when I was 13,
and there was a
shooting on the block.
Phillip had been walking in a
large group with his brothers
and cousins, eight
of them in all.
An unmarked police car braked
right in front of them,
and an officer jumped
out and told everyone
to put their hands
above their heads.
He started groping us
in our private parts
to look for guns and stuff.
I was 13.
What would I be
doing with a gun?
Like Phillip, what happened
to you on Lawndale
and Cermak is probably
something you’ve
worked hard to move beyond.
But I vow to make sure that
your experience will impact
a younger generation
of Chicagoans who
are searching for a way
to process their feelings
about the police.
I cannot change that day,
and I cannot change the pain,
and frustration and confusion
you must have felt walking
home with your
heads hung low.
I hope that if you
could read this letter,
you would feel the pain
of that day, the burdens
of that mistreatment
growing into something
else, a greater sense
of purpose, perhaps.
When I think about that,
I can’t help but smile.
An open letter to the 
late Dominique “Damo” Franklin.
I didn’t know you
while you were living,
but I do know you in death.
You died at 23,
and were much loved
by your friends and family.
But as a teenager
and as a young adult,
you experienced run-ins
with the Chicago police
that instilled in
you a healthy fear
of the cops — a fear familiar
to many African-American
youth.
I also know that
on May 7, 2014,
you allegedly stole
a bottle of liquor
from a convenience store.
When the police
showed up, you ran.
The officers chased
and then caught you.
Once they handcuffed you,
they used a taser on you
two different times.
The second time, you
fell and hit your head,
lapsing into a coma, from
which you never awoke.
When I think about the
circumstances of your death,
I can’t help but
remember the first man
to expose police torture
in Chicago, Andrew Wilson.
His life and your
death lead us
to question: what kinds
of police violence
are we willing to accept?
The police electrocuted Andrew
with a mysterious device
called the black box.
A police commander Jon
Burge supposedly engineered
that box for the sole
purpose of inflicting pain.
The City of Chicago
has now apologized
to more than 100 black men
who were tortured in this way.
What Burge did to them
and to Andrew Wilson
is now considered
unacceptable,
unlike what the Chicago
police did to you.
The police electrocuted you
with the weapon we’ve all
become familiar with.
The taser company
engineered the device
for the purpose of
incapacitating people
who are deemed dangerous.
The police tased you just
past midnight because
of your alleged actions.
But the City of Chicago
has never apologized to you.
When it comes to
you, our government
believes that the police acted
within the scope of the law.
And therefore what
those officers
did to you, 
how they killed you,
has been deemed reasonable.
I want to tell you that a
growing number of Americans
disagree.
From the taser
to the black box,
police violence
exists on a continuum.
And the violence
on that continuum
has one thing in common.
It represents the ways our
country injures and kills
its most vulnerable groups.
And we must change
our country’s tendency
to systematically kill and
deliberately control people
in honor of you, Damo.
An open letter to the 
late Andrew Wilson.
You passed away on
November 19, 2007,
while serving out your
life sentence in Menard
Correctional Center.
But in Chicago, your
memory is very much alive.
I don’t know where your
soul or your spirit resides.
But in this world,
your name will forever
be linked to that of Jon
Burge, given that you filed
the civil suit that marked
the beginning of the end
of his reign of torture.
I’m writing because I
want you to understand
the magnitude of the evil
you helped thwart, though
at great personal
cost to yourself.
I thought about your
sacrifice recently
when I reread the famous
letter that Martin Luther
King Jr. wrote
to his fellow clergy
from a jail cell in
Birmingham, Alabama.
It was quoted in
a court ruling
that described the scene
of a black boy’s torture.
In 1991, that boy,
Marcus Wiggins, then 13,
was brought into
Burge's Precinct
for questioning
about a murder.
A few hours later,
Wiggins was electrocuted
with a torture device.
Several years
later, he sued Burge
and the City of Chicago.
After the trial,
the police wanted
evidence related
to the Wiggins case
kept confidential.
But Judge Ruben
Castillo disagreed.
He ordered the
public release of
numerous disciplinary
files containing
allegations of torture.
His rationale was
that the files
must be exposed to the
light of human conscience.
In making his case,
Judge Castillo
referenced King’s letter.
“Like a boil that
can never be cured
so long as it is
covered up, it
must be open with
all its ugliness
to the natural medicines
of air and light,
and justice must be exposed
with all the tension
its exposure creates to
the light of human conscience
and the air of
national opinion
before it can be cured.”
I could not agree more
with King’s sentiment
or with Castillo’s
application of it.
And yet, comparing the torture
of a 13-year-old to a boil
doesn’t do justice
to the suffering
that people like
Wiggins experienced.
A boil can be cured
relatively easily,
but the scars left by
torture can last a lifetime.
Because torture is
so deeply rooted
in the culture of the
Chicago Police force,
I think that we require
another more apt metaphor.
Police torture is
more like a tree,
a hideous and disfigured
tree, a tree that blooms death
rather than life, a tree that
casts a long and dark shadow.
You helped me see that our
country bears responsibility
for the torture tree, Andrew,
and that our country’s
investment in fear
is what has allowed
the torture tree to grow.
