Police units operating out of the Homan Square facility would not wear standard blue CPD uniforms or drive marked squad cars, Hill explained.
"Instead, they wear plainclothes, or sometimes green and black clothes reminiscent of a military, not a police presence. They wear bulletproof vests, and ski masks that cover their faces. They drive unmarked police cars and SUVs with dark tinted windows," Hill explained.
The attorney continued that policemen "take people off the street, and instead of bringing them to a police station, they bring them to an unmarked warehouse in an industrial part of the city for interrogation."
The lawyer emphasized that there is no legal justification for taking suspects, political protesters, witnesses, or anyone else, to unmarked locations instead of a police station. In a normal police arrest scenario, a suspect's interrogation is overseen by uniformed commanding officers.
Even without allegations of police physical abuse, confessions obtained in clandestine circumstances are inherently unreliable, Hill claimed.
Reacting to police misconduct and demanding investigation, activists in Chicago organized several rallies earlier in March. Protesters blamed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and US President Barack Obama for for the facility's operations and called for its immediate closure.
The CPD denied evidence that physical violence is used when interviewing suspects and claimed that the facility is a headquarters for a special unit.
