Two top civil rights attorneys argued strongly against efforts by the city to vacate the recent landmark jury verdict that a "code of silence" within the Chicago Police Department in part led to an off-duty officer's infamous video-recorded beating of a female bartender.
"The city should not be permitted to escape a finding that it covered up the misconduct of its officers by allowing it to simply erase that adjudication as if it never occurred, and then go on denying a code of silence," attorneys Locke Bowman and Craig Futterman wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late Tuesday in federal court.
The video of off-duty Officer Anthony Abbate pummeling bartender Karolina Obrycka inside a Northwest Side bar in 2007 marked one of the most embarrassing chapters in recent department history. The jury decision holding Chicago police responsible because of its unofficial code of silence was a rare rebuke for the city, as such policy claims typically don't make it to trial.
The city has sought to vacate the judgment, calling the verdict "ambiguous" and likely to lead to numerous frivolous lawsuits. City attorneys also have argued that the beating happened five years ago, and reforms have been put in place since then.
In their filing, Bowman and Futterman seized on the city's pledge in court last week that the $850,000 in damages awarded to Obrycka would be paid to her regardless of whether U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve agreed to set aside the verdict.
With justice ensured for Obrycka, they wrote, there is no reason to set aside a hard-fought and important jury verdict that could prompt reform within the department given its struggles with police misconduct since the 1980s.
"If the city is allowed to sweep verdicts such as this one under the rug, it will have no incentive to change," the lawyers wrote.
asweeney@tribune.com
Don't let city out of police 'code-of-silence' verdict, judge told
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Don't let city out of police 'code-of-silence' verdict, judge told
