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Anthony Abbate, center, a Chicago Police Department officer who has not worn a badge in a year, walks to his trial at the criminal courts building at 26th and California, Monday, June 1, 2009. He was caught on a security camera beating a female bartender. (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune)
A lawyer for a Chicago police officer accused of beating a woman bartender in February 2007 contended at the start of the trial Monday that the bartender was the aggressor, saying she tossed the beefy cop “around like a rag doll.”
Meanwhile, the bartender, Karolina Obrycka, took the witness stand but appeared reluctant to watch as the infamous videotape of the incident was played in Criminal Court. She said she was “tired of looking at him kicking me.”
The lawyer for Officer Anthony Abbate, 40, a 12-year police veteran who was then off-duty, elected to have Circuit Judge John J. Fleming, not a jury, decide his fate.
In a surprise in his opening remarks, Abbate’s lawyer, Peter Hickey, tried to portray Obrycka as the aggressor even though she was about half the size of Abbate.
“Defenseless? I think not,” Hickey said. “She grabbed him, she tossed him around like a rag doll. If not for a garbage can that held him up against the bar, she would have had him on the ground.”
The crime was recorded on surveillance video and provoked a firestorm of criticism for the department.
The security video allegedly shows Anthony Abbate, a 12-year police veteran who was then off-duty, pummeling the bartender inside a Northwest Side bar after she refused to serve him more drinks.
The bartender, Karolina Obrycka, suffered injuries to her head, arms and ribs.
The beating more than two years ago was aired widely on the Internet and cable news and ultimately contributed to the sudden retirement of then-Police Supt. Philip Cline and the overhaul of the agency that investigates allegations of wrongdoing by officers.
