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A Chicago police torture victim tells his story

Jaden Amos   | Paste BN

We have a full line-up of stories today. We are leading with Vincent Wade Robinson's story of receiving reparations from the city of Chicago after being tortured by police and wrongfully serving 31 years in prison. We also have a column on why you should limit trans fat and another on America's maternal health issue. Happy reading.

'I was beaten with a flashlight': Chicago police torture victim

By Vincent Wade Robinson

My life before I was picked up by Chicago police was great. I was working as my father's assistant in his sign painting endeavors. Once the police picked me up and tortured me, my life changed overnight, and my battle for survival began. It took years just to get corrective surgery for the damage and physical injuries I received from Chicago officers.

On Aug. 13, 1984, officers arrested me after seeing me sitting inside a friend's car. I was instructed to get out of the car and place my hands on top of the vehicle. That night, I was taken to the police department and for nearly two days I was interrogated and tortured – hit repeatedly in the face, stomach and chest, kneed in the groin. I was locked in a freezing basement. I was beaten with a flashlight – the same instrument officers used to break my nose during the two years I spent in the Cook County Jail awaiting trial on murder charges.

I was tortured into confessing to crimes (murder and home invasion) I did not commit.

Today's Editorial Cartoon

Pearl Harbor attack, 80 years later, still shakes my family

By Sue Sanders

Lizzie, my then-15-year-old daughter, and my dad picked oranges. My dad was carefree as a grandfather in a way he hadn’t been as a father. In the past we had had our differences – as a teen I’d chafed against his control. While my parents planned dinner menus weeks in advance, writing them in spiral notebooks they kept for years, I snuck cigarettes in my room. When I filled their car with gas, I had to pencil the mileage and gallons of gas in a little notebook he kept for this purpose. I’d dutifully jot the information then pick up my friends and sneak into bars. I drank and drove. I did drugs. I was, in short, an angry teenager, and turned my anger both outward and inward.

But seeing my daughter and dad together over the years, from him gingerly holding her as a newborn to playing endless games of Candy Land, I newly appreciated him. Residual anger from my teenage years, woven into adult me, unwound. It took too many decades to realize he had parented the best way he knew how.

I only recently learned the reason for his need to control. Would it have made a difference when I was a teen if I had understood it then? My dad’s childhood, I learned as an adult, had more than his share of unhappiness.

Tackle maternal health disparities, mortality with data and better care

By Chiquita Brooks-LaSure

I’ve been working to expand access to affordable health coverage for children and families for more than two decades. After the birth of my daughter, I heard with different ears the story of my own birth – the nurses sent my dad home “to rest” and left my mother laboring overnight without checking on her because they didn’t want “to disturb the doctor on Sunday.”

I realize now how my or my mother’s life could have ended in tragedy. When a family member of mine recently experienced a stillbirth, I knew well that the health care system might have contributed to her personal heartbreak and how far we need to go to address maternal and child health outcomes. And as a mother, I am reminded that my risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times the risk for a woman with the same education, income level and insurance – just because I’m a Black woman.

What I’ve experienced personally is a symptom of our country’s devastating racial and ethnic disparities in maternal health outcomes. The United States has the worst maternal mortality rate among industrialized countries. American Indian/Alaska Native and Black women are two to three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. And two out of three pregnancy-related deaths in this country are preventable.

Other stories to read today

Columns on qualified immunity

We are doing a series examining the issue of qualified immunity. For more on the series read here. 

This column was compiled by Jaden Amos.

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