By Emile Schepers

Chicago - Amnesty International has sharply criticized the behavior of the Chicago police toward gay and minority residents of the Windy City. The denunciation was based on several years of data on Chicago police practices, but took on added urgency because of the recent filling of two multi-million-dollar lawsuits against the city because of alleged anti-gay violence by city police officers.

At a recent press conference here, Amnesty International Midwest Regional Director Nancy Bothne called for an independent investigation of the two cases she characterized as violations of basic human rights. Denouncing what she called a "culture of impunity" in the Chicago police establishment, she demanded the videotaping of all police interrogations to make sure that police are not trying to get confessions by torture or other illegitimate forms of coercion. She called for an adequate monitoring system on police abuse so that sadistic officers can be weeded out.

Police picked up Freddie Mason Jr., a young gay African-American man, last summer when he got into a verbal altercation with his landlord.

When the police took Mason to the stationhouse, one of the officers allegedly sodomized him with a nightstick while shouting racist and homophobic comments. Mason's lawyer, Standish Willis, told the press conference that there is ample medical evidence of this incident and that police are lying when they deny it. Mason is suing the police for $1,750,000.

The landlord claims the police pressured him against his will into signing a complaint against Mason about a broken window. The charges were dropped when the landlord refused to testify. Mason, 31, is a Navy veteran with no criminal record.

Willis said a federal civil lawsuit will not solve the fundamental problem of police impunity. He called for the creation of an independent, civilian controlled police board to deal with abuse allegations, and for policemen who engage in acts of criminal violence to be prosecuted as the criminals they are.

Willis denounced Cook County States Attorney Richard Devine and his federal counterpart in Chicago, Scott Lassar, for "simply refusing to prosecute police" in cases like this.

The second victim, Jeffrey Lyons, is white and not gay. Ironically, he is the son of a policeman killed in the line of duty. Last November, some officers who had been drinking emerged from a West Side tavern and decided that Lyons was gay, perhaps because he wore his hair long and they saw him embrace a departing friend. They beat him so badly he had to be hospitalized.

When Lyons' friend tried to get the license plate number of the car in which several of the officers departed, they tried to run him down. Lyons is suing the individual policemen, the city of Chicago and the tavern for $3,000,000.