Q&A: Retired Chicago cop weighs in on Homan Square, alleged “black site”
An interview with Detective Michael Hammond
In 2015, The Guardian broke the story of Homan Square, a Chicago Police Department (CPD) facility where detainees were reportedly held and interrogated off the books and concealed from attorneys and loved ones.
The British newspaper relied on documents, activists, lawyers and former detainees to substantiate its reporting. But one kind of source The Guardian didn’t get an in-depth perspective from was that of police who worked at the facility.
Noir News is for the first time publishing an extended on-the-record interview with a former CPD officer who worked at Homan Square about operations at the facility. The interview is with Detective Michael Hammond, whose 20-plus years on the force included stints with two units that operated out of Homan Square: the now-defunct Special Operations Section (SOS) and Narcotics. He later became a homicide detective. After retiring, he founded the true crime podcast Detective Story: True Crime Insights with Mike Hammond and Chris Kafcas.
In his interview with Noir News, Hammond provides an in-depth, thoughtful, and first-hand perspective on Homan Square. Hammond challenges The Guardian’s use of the “Black Site” analogy to describe the facility, while simultaneously confirming much of the substance of the original Homan Square reporting. He confirms that police at Homan Square likely intentionally made it difficult for outsiders—including loved ones and attorneys—to find detainees, in ways that were unique to the facility. Namely, Homan Square’s secure nature made it challenging for outsiders to access, and the narcotics and gang units used paper arrest logs inaccessible even to other police officers checking the CPD’s electronic system. Still, he disputes The Guardian’s description of detainees being “disappeared” in the facility.
Hammond confirms the secretive and opaque nature of operations at Homan Square, as originally reported in The Guardian, which facilitated the CPD’s ability to acquire confidential informants in large-scale gang and narcotics investigations. He also confirms that police at Homan Square often worked with federal agents, such as members of DEA and FBI Task Forces, although he contends they were not frequently operating inside the facility. Noir News originally revealed the Department of Justice, and not just the CPD, worked out of Homan Square and was aware of its use as a covert detention center.
Just as worthwhile is Hammond’s explanation of why he believes these practices were necessary. He explains that Chicago was a city mired in gang violence and drug trafficking, and that the covert interrogations performed at Homan Square were crucial tools in combatting these ills. Hammond argues the facility’s secretive nature served to protect cooperating witnesses from retaliation in Chicago’s violent gang environment.
The following interview with Hammond has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Journalist:
How was it working in Narcotics and SOS in the early days of Homan?
Interviewee:
Working in SOS was a really good experience for me. I was there—got to ’95 or ’96—it was a citywide unit, which was nice because I came out of the academy, worked in the 11th District on the West Side, and for a short time in the 25th District. We were much smaller at that time. We worked out of Harrison and Kedzie. We’d get requested from district commanders as a supplemental kind of force when they were having issues—mostly it was gang violence issues, right? So it’s all over the city, and that was cool. I really loved that environment. Then they moved us over to Homan Square, and they got a federal grant and tripled the size of that unit, and kind of became two different entities. We arrested people in the districts and went to the district lock-up. So I never took any prisoners back to Homan Square.
Then I go right from there to Narcotics. I worked there for a year, and that was a different experience. We were doing longer-term investigations. We would bring arrestees in there, we would bring informants in there sometimes. We did more work out of Homan Square directly. Then I made detective in September of 2000, went to Area Four Homicide and worked there for several years, and then got the opportunity to go to a citywide Cold Case Homicide Unit funded by a federal grant. And I got the opportunity to go there in 2003 or 2004, and because one of my buddies worked there, his partner got promoted, he needed a partner, so I got assigned there. That unit never brought anybody into Homan Square.
Journalist:
Did you see the reporting about Homan Square in 2015 from The Guardian? One of the interesting things about it for me was the absence of Homan officers’ perspective on the “black site” description. What was your take on the reporting and the way Homan operated?
Interviewee:
I did read a couple of those articles, and I thought this is just absolute nonsense. This is all clearly taken from the perspective of gangbangers being interviewed. The Homan story is mainly talking about narcotics and gang intelligence in that whole black site thing. There’s a lot of units in there, but you’re actually talking about a small group of small units that actually bring prisoners in there. So the way that works is: you’re doing your narcotics, right? All the arrestees come to Homan Square first and they’re processed, and then, once they’re processed, they’re taken to a lockup in a district. Here’s how this becomes a problem: gang and drug activity are hand in hand. When you take somebody down in narcotics, the whole game is you’re trying to work up the ladder. You’re grabbing the guy who’s got the dope, see if he will walk you up the ladder—who he got it from, where it comes from.
So do they really disappear? No, they don’t disappear. You’ve got them. You documented they’re there. The rooms up there—you always have an officer sitting outside watching, so as to make sure that they don’t hurt each other, to make sure that everything is legit, because it just has to be, right?
Now, if you’re a guy on the street and you know your people are being taken down, and they go to Homan Square—you can’t get to them. And that’s a big problem. Because you don’t know who’s talking to the police, who’s giving you up, who’s laying out your thing. And that’s really how that gets started.
It sounds like I’m doing the anti-conspiracy thing, but that’s just the truth. They call their attorneys and say, “I cannot get access. How can they just hold them?” You know, “I need to talk to him—I need to talk to him.” And so the attorneys start beefing to judges and saying, “Wait, what?” You know, filing habeas corpus, this and that. And so we’d sometimes go to a judge and say, “You know, subject is—we’re still talking to them. We’ve got 48 hours.”
The idea of Homan Square being the black hole where people disappear—that’s a game that the players and defense attorneys are trying to play to get access to these people faster. How do you make somebody freaking disappear? I mean, we’re not the Outfit in 1970.
Journalist:
Was there a policy of not allowing attorneys to enter the facility?
Interviewee:
We did have attorneys come up there, and certainly if you had an attorney there, we would let them talk to people in the room. But I can’t think of any specific examples of that.
But I recall that when you had a civilian on the floor, you let everyone know: “Hey, there’s a civilian on the floor, civilian on the floor,” or “attorney on the floor.” That way the undercovers stay in their office, right? So they’re not all walking around, and the civilians aren’t seeing people that are potentially undercover officers. If an attorney’s on the floor, and is there to speak to somebody specific, as hard as it might be to believe—not all attorneys are 100% legit. So he comes up and says, “I want to speak to my client. He’s here,” whatever. You want to make sure whatever other arrestees are behind closed doors, because, like anybody else there, they may be checking to see who’s who and who’s up there.
But to answer your question directly, I don’t recall it being a policy, because I’m certain that we did have attorneys come up and speak to clients up there. But I can’t give you a specific example. So I’m giving you kind of a half-assed answer there. I don’t ever remember anybody telling me, “Never bring an attorney up,” or “Attorneys don’t speak to arrestees here.”
Journalist:
Do you remember there being many federal agents in Homan? Did it have more federal agents than, say, a district or something like that?
Interviewee:
So we always—we often worked with federal agents, right? DEA task force, FBI task force would be involved in investigations. I don’t remember feds being at Homan Square all that much. I mean, mostly if it was a federal operation, it would go to—especially if it involved the FBI—it would go to the FBI headquarters, and everything would be done there.
I think the DEA may have occasionally had a guy or two up there as part of an investigation. I mean, there just aren’t that many DEA agents, right? That’s one of the common misunderstandings—that the DEA is a really strong organization and does very good investigations—but they’re not that big. I think there’s only 2,000 agents or something, right? So they work across the country, and they work predominantly with task forces—local officers, local detectives, local narcotics people—which makes sense both logistically and also like, you know your area, right?
Journalist:
Would you say it was more difficult for attorneys and loved ones to find a detainee at Homan than at other facilities? What I’ve heard, at least, is that most of the time, an attorney can either find out where they’re being detained through central booking, or they can call the district station and eventually persuade someone to let them know someone’s been taken there. Would you say it was different at Homan Square? I remember reading that officers at Homan used paper logs instead of an electronic system, so other police might not know that someone was being detained at Homan. And that also made it more difficult to find detainees. Any thoughts on that?
Interviewee:
That’s certainly possible. When we would bring someone up to the area as a homicide suspect or witness or whatever—so people and attorneys know to call the lockup, the 11th District desk, and they have them or they don’t, right?
And now, in the area upstairs—attorneys especially are sharp enough, and even families—they know that if someone’s picked up for something serious, they know enough to call upstairs and see if we have them. And you’ve got to answer that honestly. “Yep, he’s here.” “Can we talk to him?” “No, not until we’re done processing him.” “Can his attorney talk to him?” “If he wants his attorney—yes, he can talk to him.”
It could be a point of contention sometimes. Because you’d have attorneys show up and say, you know, “I’m representing this guy, this guy, and this guy. I want to speak to all three of them.” Okay, counselor, wait here—you go in and say, “Do you have an attorney?” “Yeah.” “What’s his name?” “Yeah, he’s here.” “You want to talk to him?” “Yep.”
But it’s a very fluid, dangerous environment on the West Side of Chicago. I can’t tell you how many times I’d say to someone—even a suspect—like, “Do you have an attorney?” and they’d say, “No.” “Okay, do you know this guy? There’s an attorney here saying he’s representing you.” And they would tell me, “I don’t want to talk to that guy. He is the bad guy’s attorney. He wants to front me off. He wants to know what I’m saying. I don’t want to talk to him.” Right?
Well, then that attorney doesn’t have a right to talk to that guy. You know what I mean? It’s not his guy. He doesn’t want to talk to him. It’s just that simple. Now, of course, attorneys scream and they go to court and say, “Oh, they kept him from me.” But then we just go and tell our side of the story. Like, “They wanted to speak to the guy. He didn’t feel safe.” You know what I mean? I can’t force that on him, right?
But now, on the other hand, if the guy says, “Yeah, that’s my attorney. I want to talk to him,” you gotta let him do it. You’re causing yourself a big problem if you don’t.
Homan Square has a different dynamic in exactly that—not everybody knows who or where to call. And there are multiple agencies over there, and you’re always dealing with the covert nature of narcotics investigations or gang intelligence investigations, where you either know someone’s cooperating, believe they’re going to cooperate, or you have audio—wiretap information—of them talking. You’re at play for them, you know. You want to give them an opportunity to respond to that.
You still read them their Miranda warnings, and they still have the right to all those things. And if they do it, they do it, and that’s that. But often in those investigations, they want to cooperate. Especially in those conspiracies, which they jack everything up significantly—you know, minimums of 10 years, 15 years sometimes—those small players are like, “No, no, you got me. I’ll tell you exactly. What can you do for me?”
Well, then we have to get the State’s Attorney. I can’t do anything for you, but we can talk to the State’s Attorney and see what they’ll do. And then that’s based on a lot of factors: their culpability and their background, all kinds of things. But that becomes the State’s Attorney’s decision at that point as to how they’re going to play that game.
Nobody really walks out the door unless—any time anybody walks out the door—it’s if they agree to be an ongoing cooperative witness. You still run it by the State’s Attorney.
In the meantime, could people be looking for them? Probably. Certainly. Are they harder to find sometimes over there? Yeah. Is that by design? Probably. You know what I mean? Tacitly, at least. Because you want to keep people safe, you want to garner information, you have to protect people’s rights all the time. Don’t care what The Guardian says—we have to be aware of that. Because ultimately, we’re the ones looking at lawsuits and prison and all that stuff if we violate people’s rights. So it is not the Wild West that they would like to paint, you know?
So is somebody at Homan Square harder to find than somebody in the district lockup? Yeah, probably, right? Because it was paper logs back then. Maybe that’s changed. I don’t know. But I don’t know why you would change that. I mean, you have to do the job. You know what I mean?
You always have to walk this line between doing these jobs and conducting these investigations, trying to make communities safer, and respecting the Constitution and people’s rights, right? It’s a real thing that you have to be aware of all the time. You can’t just do what you want.
If a person is cooperating, and the investigation is a little harder for the bad guys to find, there’s no downside to that. The downside is that the family’s worried, trying to find them—yeah, that’s a legit thing. But, you know, they don’t know it necessarily, but they’re as safe as they can be if they’re up there with us. You know, nobody wants to believe that, but that’s the truth.