Chicago cop recorded beating bartender gets probation

June 24, 8:40 AMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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Chicago police officer Anthony Abbate was sentenced
to two years probation and anger management classes
for attacking a bartender half his size.
(AP Photo/Paul Beaty)

If you and I got so blind drunk and belligerent that we beat the stuffing out of a bartender half our size, we'd get buried in some deep, dark hole. And if the attack was captured on a video camera and played to public outrage on the news, they'd pour concrete over the top of that hole. But 250-pound Chicago police officer Anthony Abbate was gifted with a light sentence that includes no prison time after laying a brutal beating on 125-pound Karolina Obrycka that you can watch in all its brutal glory on YouTube.

The February 27 attack sparked instant outrage after hundreds of thousands of people watched video footage captured by a security camera of a man employed by the city of Chicago to protect its residents instead using his strength and bulk to abuse a woman literally half his weight and a foot shorter because she stopped serving him booze.

In the wake of the incident, Obrycka says, "I have a fear of the police. I know they don't want to hurt me, but I have a fear. I can't explain it."

I can explain it. An officer of the law committed a brutal assault on her, only hours after being recorded assaulting a man in the same bar, and even after the world watched his actions, he escaped serious consequences for his crime.

Consequences? He got two years probation, anger management classes, a home curfew and 130 hours of community service. Prosecutors actually asked for prison time. They didn't get it.

Oh yeah. And he's still employed by the Chicago Police Department (although the reform-minded new head of the department does want him gone).

Let's be clear about this. Being employed as a law-enforcement officer, with the inherent powers that come with that job, means you should be punished more harshly than other people when you seriously misbehave.

Because the public needs to know that guns, badges and the license to use them on the rest of us are being entrusted to people who aren't prone to ... well ... beat the stuffing out of petite women (or anybody else) who are calling them on their bad behavior.

email J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com