Thursday, October 25, 2012

Chicago Video Beating Puts Code of Silence On Trial

The video was outrageous. The attempted cover-up disgraceful. But was it one drunk cop gone bad, or part of a practice by the Chicago police to cover-up police misconduct?

After the beating of bartender Karolina Obrycka by then-Chicago cop Anthony Abbate, about which there is little dispute despite the controversial sentence of two years probation imposed by Circuit Judge John Fleming on former cop Anthony Abbate, there were allegations of bribes, threats and cover-ups.  Six years later, the case is coming to trial.

Via the Chicago Tribune:

When Abbate left, Obrycka immediately called 911, touching off what her lawyers contend was a cover-up by police concerned over one of their own.

Two veteran Grand Central District patrol officers responded and learned from Obrycka that her attacker was a Chicago police officer and that the entire incident was captured by surveillance cameras. However, the officers didn't mention either detail in their report, according to the court records.

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.

When that didn't work, Abbate turned to threats.

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 was brought to the Office of Professional Standards, which is alleged to have whitewashed the investigation.

According to the lawsuit, OPS investigators did not follow up on the allegations of bribery and intimidation, didn't conduct a meaningful interview of Abbate or recommend his suspension, and submitted incomplete evidence to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

"The OPS investigators set about a concerted and deliberate effort to minimize and conceal from public scrutiny the details and facts of the case," the lawsuit said.

According to the Tribune, the City has a policy of refusing to settle cases involving misconduct by off-duty officers.  Karolina Obrycka's lawyers say the cop have a de facto policy of covering up each other's conduct, and they are going to put the Code of Silence on trial to hold Chicago responsible.

To prove their case, the Plaintiff's intended to call an expert, Dr. Steven Whitman, a statistician and epidemiologist, to provide both quantitative and qualitative testimony to show that the police department treats cops differently than non-cops.  Chicago challenged his expertise, and District Judge Amy St. Eve held that Whitman was qualified to provide quantitative, but not qualitative, opinion.

Dr. Whitman has no education, training, or professional experience in criminology, or in matters involving policing, the CPD, the ways in which citizens file complaints against Chicago police officers, the process by which the CPD investigates allegations of police officer misconduct, or the CPD's disciplinary process. Indeed, at his deposition, Dr. Whitman admitted that he had never reviewed a Complaint Register ("CR") file, and that he does not know — and has not attempted to ascertain — what constitutes a "proper" or "improper" method of conducting a CR investigation. (Citations to record omitted.)

The problem is that combining the education, experience and background to find an expert not only suitably educated and capable, but one who possesses the specific experience of dealing with the issues in a police department, and even more particularly the Chicago police department, isn't easy.

Here, Dr. Whitman lacks foundation for his qualitative conclusions. Despite Dr. Whitman's impressive credentials and experience as a biostatistician and epidemiologist, by his own admission, he knows nothing about police departments, police misconduct, investigations into police misconduct, or the process by which the CPD disciplines its police officers — the subjects that lie at the heart of this case. In response to the City's questions on these points at his February 5, 2010 deposition, Dr. Whitman consistently admitted that his expertise lies in data analysis, and that what he was "trying to do in this [case] is display all the data [he] had, explain what it meant as well as [he] could, and not go beyond [his] professional expertise."

Accordingly, Judge St. Eve allowed the plaintiff to offer Dr, Whitman's expert testimony as to the quantitative piece, but would not allow him to draw inferences from the data to show that the Chicago Police Department engages in a de facto policy of covering up police misconduct.

Many will wonder why it's not enough to show that Abbate's beating was covered up. Unfortunately, the state of the law is that to hold Chicago liable, plaintiff's must show it to be an accepted governmental practice under Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Since there's obviously no written policy, the proof must come from the practice, and the practice isn't so easily proved.

The court's ruling raises a sticky question: Will the jury be able to draw the necessary inferences from the quantitative date provided by the plaintiff's expert?  Data is dry, boring, often obtuse in its detail.  What data means isn't always clear and obvious, and often requires a depth of understanding that jurors lack.  Dr. Whitman may well have the goods to provide the jury with everything it needs to conclude that the Code of Silence is alive and well in Chicago, but it remains up to the jury to draw the necessary inferences.

Given the video in this case, and the rather disgraceful conduct after the beating by Chicago police, the case won't lack for a dramatic basis for the jury to appreciate the wrong done Karolina Obrycka.  Whether that will translate to a verdict that the City of Chicago had a policy of covering police misconduct has yet to be seen. 

But the trial appears likely to put the Blue Wall of Silence on trial, and will certainly prove interesting either way.

H/T FritzMuffKnuckle



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