Guards use ‘sadistic violence’ at US jail

US inmates live in fear due to physical abuse by guards as “sadistic culture of brutality and violence” is spread at the largest single-site prison in the United States.

Cook County Jail in Chicago remains a “civic embarrassment,” according to lawyers who filed a lawsuit against the prison on Thursday.

A civil rights complaint by MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University criticized a “culture of lawlessness” at two of the jail’s maximum-security divisions that includes stomping, kicking, punching and slamming detainees to the floor, the Chicago Tribune reported.

David Shapiro, an attorney for the legal clinic, called the jail an ongoing bloodbath and said “If you think it is safe, you might as well think the world is flat.”

He said that officers take inmates on “elevator rides,” which is a code for beating them out of view of security cameras.

The lawsuit alleged that “a violent, sadistic, cruel and sometimes racist and homophobic bravado pervades the ranks” of correctional officers.

“The sadistic violence and brutality in… the Cook County Jail are not the work of a few rogue officers,” the suit said. “Instead, these violations demonstrate systemic problems that have remained unchecked at the highest levels of Cook County government.”

In 2010, a court ruled that Cook County should provide prisoners with reasonably safe conditions but lawyers say little has changed ever since.

Attorneys have interviewed more than 100 inmates and have so far collected 88 signed declarations of victims of abuse or witnesses.

The overcrowded prison now holds 8,800 inmates behind its bars and is the largest jail in the country.

In the last three years, Cook County taxpayers have paid more than $9 million for about 250 civil rights lawsuits over jail abuse, Sheila Bedi, another MacArthur attorney said.

Sheriff Tom Dart, who runs the jail, denied all allegations and called the federal lawsuit a “fictitious novel.”