Bump and Update: The Associated Press reports that the investigative articles below have resulted in halting confirmation hearings for Ernesto Velasco as the head of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Velasco was the executive director of the Cook County Jail for the past seven years, until last month when he resigned. Illinois residents owe a big thank you to reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley. Credit also goes to Ill. Governor Rod Blagojevich who nominated Velasco and today decided to halt the confirmation until receiving more information.

Chicago Tribune Investigative reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills continue their excellent coverage of the mass beatings of inmates and cover-ups by the Cook County Sheriff's Department they revealed yesterday. It turns out there was a second and separate such incident a year and a half later.

Seventeen months after a team of 40 guards at Cook County Jail allegedly terrorized and beat inmates, another group of guards punched and kicked five other inmates while they were shackled, according to two former jail guards.

The two former guards allege they received death threats from other guards and were harassed into resigning this month after they refused to cover up the July 29, 2000, beatings....

I saw them hitting them with elbows, stomping on their faces and heads, kicking them in the face," Fairley testified. "I yelled at them to stop because what I saw was too violent. But they didn't."

The inmates contend that during a shakedown for contraband and weapons, guards began tossing all of their belongings out of their cells, then forced them to run a gantlet of officers who punched them. That touched off a brawl that ended with the handcuffing and shackling of the five inmates and then the alleged beating....

The Cook County sheriff's Internal Affairs Division ruled that the claims of the inmates and the guards were "inconclusive," a middle finding between sustained and exonerated. Other guards who have been deposed so far have denied the beating....

When the disturbance erupted, Fairley said, he was summoned from another tier in the cellblock to help.

"I heard screaming. I heard people hitting each other, flesh upon flesh," he testified. "I saw blood splattered all over the doors, all over the walls, all over the piles of garbage and the floor of the corridor. A lot of blood."

When the fight ended, the five inmates were handcuffed and four were shackled at the ankles and put in an area known as the "pump room." Fairley said he went to the doorway. The four guards, he said, were "jumping in the air, coming down on their heads with their knees. I saw them kicking them in every part of their bodies with all their might."

....In a telephone interview, [inmate] Fields said the beatings were sparked by a complaint he wrote to the Cook County state's attorney's office and the FBI about the alleged beating of another inmate. Fields said that after he complained, two jail officers told him, "Anybody who don't like what happened, we'll send you to the hospital."

Fields said the guards "beat us like we were savage animals. They beat us down to the ground. They stomped us, kicked us in the face."

....Richard Gackowski, 37, another guard and a friend of Fairley's, testified in a separate deposition that the lieutenant later told him that before the inmates were cuffed, he had grabbed Mitchell, the inmate who had a cast on his leg.

"He stated to me that he grabbed inmate Mitchell's good leg and did everything he could--twisted it, jumped on it, hit it--did whatever he could to get that leg to snap," Gackowski said. "And it just wouldn't snap and he laughed about it. He thought it was funny."

Nathson Fields, one of the inmates quoted in the article, had his death penalty conviction reversed because his trial judge took bribes, for which he was sent to prison. One of the bribes was from Fields' co-defendant. The States Attorney promised a prompt re-trial ( or really a first trial as reviewing judge said) but has done everything he can to drag it out. (Thanks to Rev. Mr.George W. Brooks, Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House for the Fields update.)

Why aren't Ashcroft's federal prosecutors all over this, charging federal civil rights offenses against the offending Sheriffs? Oh, we forgot, they're out busting bong sellers and re-directing websites.