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| NEWS > 21 July 2006 |
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Chicago Police Board fires cop
Anthony Abbate was formally fired Tuesday, nearly three years after his off-duty pummeling of a female bartender was caught on video and blasted around the world, tarnishing the image of Chicago police.
The decision, by the Chicago Police Board, was long expected and brought relief to Karolina Obrycka, the woman he attacked, said her attorney, Terry Ekl.
But Ekl also said that without the videotape, Abbate's actions at the bar likely would have gone unpunished.
"What strikes both Karolina and myself is but for this video and the fact that the media ran with it the wa... Read more
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Seattle Post Intelligencer - U
21 July 2006
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Daley defends actions in polic
CHICAGO -- Mayor Richard M. Daley said he acted properly as a prosecutor decades ago when he learned of allegations that Chicago police had severely beaten a murder suspect and bristled at the suggestion that he would ever knowingly allow police brutality to occur.
"Do you think I would sit by ... that I had knowledge about (police brutality), that I would allow it, then you don't know my public career, you don't know what I stand for," he told reporters.
Daley's comments were his first since Wednesday's release of a report by special prosecutors that found that members of a detective unit tortured dozens of suspects, most of them black, into giving confessions in the 1970s and 1980s.
The report barely mentions Daley, who was Cook County State's Attorney at the time much of the alleged abuse occurred. Special Prosecutor Robert D. Boyle offered only the mildest criticism of him, saying his only mistake was "perhaps relying on the judgment of others."
The mention of Daley concerns a letter in which then Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek informed him that a doctor who examined Andrew Wilson, suspected of killing two Chicago police officers, found that Wilson had suffered bruises, radiator burns, swelling and abrasions. Wilson was later convicted of the murders.
On Friday, Daley said he passed the letter on to subordinates to investigate, although he acknowledged that he does not recall receiving or reading the letter or whether he followed up on it with those to whom it was forwarded.
"Basically a letter came in ... 1982, then in turn we referred it to the special prosecution unit (of the state's attorney's office) and that's what we did," he explained.
Police Lt. Jon Burge, former commander of the Area 2 violent crimes unit, was fired in 1991 after a police board found that Wilson was abused while in his custody.
The report released this week found evidence that Burge and his unit beat suspects, shocked their genitals with electricity, put plastic bags over their heads, stuck guns in their mouths and inflicted radiator burns. The authors said they found evidence that police abused at least half of the 148 suspects whose cases were reviewed.
The report's authors said they found enough evidence in three of the cases to justify charges against Burge and four other members of the unit, but added that no charges could be filed because the statute of limitations had run out.
The report put much of the blame on Brzeczek, blasting him for failing to investigate the allegations involving Wilson and allowing Burge to remain as commander of the unit.
While Daley accepted some responsibility Friday - "I'll apologize to anyone, yes I would" - he made it clear he believes Brzeczek bears much of the blame for any failure to investigate allegations about its officers.
The mayor said Brzeczek "is trying to say that he had no responsibility as a police chief ... That's erroneous."
Brzeczek defended his actions, saying that not only did he send the letter to Daley about Wilson, but he also launched an internal department investigation that was still going on when the chief resigned in 1983. He said he never heard a word from Daley or anyone else in the state's attorney's office.
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