Homan Square facility

The Chicago Police Department's Homan Square facility is a former Sears, Roebuck and Company warehouse on the city's West Side. The facility houses the department's Evidence and Recovered Property Section. In 2015, the facility gained worldwide notoriety when the American journalist Spencer Ackerman wrote a series of articles in The Guardian comparing it to a CIA black site. After publication, some activists described it as a "secret torture site."

The Guardian series

In February 2015, Ackerman published a series of articles in The Guardian describing the Homan Square facility as "an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site." Ackerman asserted that the Homan Square facility was the "scene of secretive work by special police units," where the "basic constitutional rights" of "poor, black and brown" Chicago city residents were violated. Ackerman asserted that "Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside."

NATO 3

According to the Chicago Tribune, Ackerman's series, and much of the online activism against the Homan Square facility, emerged initially as a response to several people who were arrested at the 2012 Chicago summit, who became known as the "NATO 3." Claims that the men had been "disappeared" emerged after Superintendent Garry McCarthy denied any arrests had been made, while the men were being held at Homan Square. Lawyers for the NATO 3 challenged the handling of their clients at Homan Square and filed a motion for statements made at the facility to be withdrawn as trial evidence. The incident of the NATO 3 was a crucial moment for the development of Homan Square's reputation.

Reception

Ackerman's characterization of the Homan Square facility as a black site was met with resistance by some defense attorneys and legal researchers in Chicago.