A federal jury's judgment that a "code of silence" in the Chicago Police Department protects rogue officers will stand, the trial judge ruled Thursday, rejecting the Emanuel administration's attempt to erase the verdict from one of the department's most notorious scandals.
The ruling amounted to a second legal defeat for the city in the case of a drunken off-duty police officer whose video-recorded beating of a female bartender in 2007 went viral on the Internet.
A federal jury ruled last month that the city should pay former bartender Karolina Obrycka $850,000 after finding that fellow officers covered up for Anthony Abbate, who eventually was convicted of a felony and fired. The city then cut a deal with Obrycka, offering to pay her the settlement immediately if she agreed to join in asking the court to vacate the judgment.
U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve, who presided over the six-year legal case, acknowledged the city's concern that the verdict could be used in other lawsuits alleging a culture of self-preservation in the Police Department. But she refused to erase the jury's finding, noting that the city chose to fight the lawsuit even though Abbate had been found guilty and Obrycka was willing to accept a "reasonable" offer to drop her lawsuit.
"This was a highly publicized case involving a considerable amount of public resources, including taxes paid by the people of the city of Chicago to defend this lawsuit. This case touched on the public interest of whether the city has a widespread custom or practice of failing to adequately investigate and/or discipline its officers and whether there is a police code of silence," St. Eve wrote. "The judgment in this case has ramifications for society at large, not just the city's litigation strategies."
Evidence that rank-and-file officers protect bad cops and that Police Department supervisors overlook misconduct have surfaced in many court cases as well as federal investigations of the Chicago Police Department. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police Superintendent Garry McCarthy have asserted that they are cleaning up the department and that such problems are in the past.
That point is disputed by attorneys for past victims of police abuse who are also pursuing current cases. Two such lawyers filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the city's move in the Abbate case.
"I think the code of silence is alive and well in the Chicago Police Department today and the disciplinary apparatus is not vigorous in cases of this type," said attorney Locke Bowman, a Northwestern University law school professor. "Part of this process is that the city has to accept responsibility and has to face the consequences, both morally and politically."
The city is currently defending the Police Department in a lawsuit over Officer Gildardo Sierra, who shot three men -- two fatally -- in separate incidents in a six-month period. Lawyers for the family of a man Sierra is accused of killing in June filed court documents Thursday showing that Sierra drank multiple beers before his shift that night but was not given an alcohol test by the Police Department for more than five hours after the shooting.
The city's top lawyer said the motion in the Abbate case was based on the city's concern that plaintiffs' lawyers would bombard the city with unfounded attempts to use the verdict in other cases and that the mayor's administration was just trying to protect taxpayers.
"It was never, ever, about, 'Is the city against ... rooting out misconduct and disciplining misconduct when we find it exists?'" Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton said.
He took some solace in the judge's ruling, noting that she agreed the facts of the Abbate cause would limit the ability to apply the verdict in other cases. "In that sense, her decision was very affirmative," Patton said.
St. Eve said the jury's finding of a code of silence was ambiguous because Obrycka's lawyers made multiple arguments to prove their claim and it was unclear which one the jury found persuasive. But those issues were outweighed, St. Eve found, by the public's interest in having the verdict stand, as well the need to respect the amount of time and resources that the court system and the jury committed to trying the case.
The city argued that vacating the judgment would keep the courts from wasting time in the future determining whether the precedent from the Abbate case should be allowed in other lawsuits. But St. Eve used the city's own arguments against its motion. "As the city has persuasively argued, however, the likelihood that the judgment in this matter would have any preclusive effect in future cases is likely minimal."
The beating in a Northwest Side bar in 2007 was another black eye for an already scandal-plagued Police Department, contributing to the end of then-Superintendent Phil Cline's career. Nonetheless, the city fought the lawsuit for six years, arguing that the department was not responsible for Abbate's off-duty drunken behavior.
But it was what happened after the beating that tripped up the city, the jury eventually found. Officers who responded to the 911 call from Obrycka didn't write down in their reports the details of what she told them -- that she was attacked by a police officer named "Tony," and that there was video of the incident.
Her lawsuit alleged not just a beating but a cover-up by police made possible by a code of silence.
Shortly after the Nov. 13 jury verdict that sided with Obrycka, city lawyers approached her with a deal. They would pay her now and not appeal if she supported their motion to remove the verdict from the books.
The judge said her decision was influenced by the city's agreement to pay Obrycka now and not appeal, regardless of the outcome. Because of that, St. Eve wrote, the needs of the parties in the case were less important than the public's interest in a judgment that puts the "code of silence" on the law books as a fact.
She also noted that the city decided to take the case to trial "knowing that an adverse judgment was a risk." To let the city set aside the outcome after the jury has spoken could set a bad precedent that would deter parties from settling cases before the public expense of a trial in the future, she wrote.
Obrycka's lawyer, Terry Ekl, said the city has to pay her by the end of the month. The only remaining issue to be settled is a decision by St. Eve on what Ekl's team is to be paid by the city.
He billed more than 5,400 hours, and the legal fees are likely to be in the millions of dollars.
Copyright 2012 - Chicago Tribune
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
