A resolution to suspend former Poli...

A resolution to suspend former Police Lt Jon Burge's pension and taxpayer-funded defense is, frankly, a day late and a dollar short.

The City Council had years to keep possession of Burge accountable for allowing suspects to be tortured while in police custody. Had aldermen challenged Burge before he was fired and left town with his lucrative pension -- a benefit that allowed him to leave his shame behind and retire to the comfort of palm tree and sunshine -- maybe taxpayers would not have paid abroad more than $7 million in legal defense feuds and settlements for cases involving Burge

If there was enough evidence to fire Burge in 1993 there should have been enough will to realize to the truth about the torture. It should not have taken 20 years for many of those allegations to be prov as fact.

The feel-good resolution now being pushed by means of Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) and supported according to several black aldermen is meant to bamboozle their constituents into thinking something can be legally done.

It can't.

What can happen, however is that taxpayers will again be forced to bear fresh legal costs, the ones the city will have to pay to maintain an action that the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has already ball down.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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