- Now, almost six years later, bartender Karolina Obrycka's lawsuit against Abbate and the city of Chicago is set to go to trial on Monday in federal court. While the videotaped beating remains the emotional center of the case, the trial will turn on whether Abbate, other officers and higher-level police officials engaged in a cover-up to try to protect the veteran officer and keep the damaging video from public exposure.
This thing has reeked since day one. No one has ever admitted to, let alone investigated, how Abbate got through the hiring process with his background. Any of a dozen red flags should have kept him off the job. Then his behavior from day one should have gotten him suspended and facing 30-pending on numerous occasions. Nothing though. A career rife with cover-ups, excuses and passing the buck.
Now the entire Department is on trial and the City is fighting so taxpayers (of which every cop is a part of) don't have to pay for this asshole's off-duty bullshit. Quite frankly, we hope the City gets clear of this one, because if you think it's miserable now, just wait if the City has to pay for off-duty shit.
More from the article:
- Obrycka's lawyers said that another bartender, Patti Chiriboga, a friend of Abbate's, warned the officer's girlfriend the day of the beating about the damaging nature of the videotape. Abbate and his police partner made some 150 phone calls to other officers and detectives in the hours after the beating, according to court records.
One-hundred fifty calls? Dude knows he has problems.
- That same evening, Gary Ortiz, another Abbate friend and city employee, went to the bar to ask Obrycka not to press charges, according to the lawsuit. Ortiz relayed that Abbate had offered to pay for Obrycka's medical bills and time off work if she did not complain to the department or file a lawsuit, her lawyers contend. Obrycka declined the offer. According to court records, the city has conceded that Ortiz's action was an attempted bribe.
Duh. Does that guy still have a job?
- In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the bar's owner, Martin Kolodziej, Chiriboga allegedly explained how a desperate Abbate had angrily threatened her to help conceal the beating, even making a veiled reference about her brother at one point.
"He goes, 'Believe me what I tell you.' He said, 'Your life, everybody in the (expletive) bar — this is, this is — I'm backed against the wall,'" a transcript quoted Chiriboga as saying. "'I don't give a (expletive). I did, I did that to Karolina,' he said, 'but I want the tape. I want the (expletive) tape.'
"He calls me — he tells me, 'Do you love your brother?'"
In the same conversation, Chiriboga told Kolodziej that Abbate threatened to falsify charges or plant evidence if necessary.
"You tell Martin to get rid of that tape or there's gonna be people getting DUIs," she quoted Abbate as telling her, according to the transcript. "You might be driving with a pound of (expletive) cocaine on you."
This isn't some "code of silence" or "blue wall" or whatever the media wants to portray it as. This is a desperate drunk who finally realized he went far over any line previously passed and that a video was going to sink not only his career, but a bunch of people's lives and maybe even his ass in jail. Too bad it didn't sink his enablers that got him on the job.
We haven't met one cop yet who didn't think Abbate shouldn't be fired. Not one. And we've been through a number of districts these past 6 years. We also have met dozens who think he never should have been hired and are disgusted with the process that got him past his record into the ranks of the CPD. That's what ought to be on trial - the process and the circumvention of safeguards that should have prevented this jackass from ever having a badge.