By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune –
CHICAGO — Former Chicago Police Officer Anthony Abbate, testifying Tuesday in a federal civil trial, denied he plotted with friends and other cops to cover up his 2007 beating of a female bartender that was captured on videotape and went viral.
Abbate told the jury that on the day of the attack he was despondent that his dog had cancer and was “on a mission to get totally inebriated.”
He recalled attacking a friend at Jesse’s Shortstop Inn earlier in the day on Feb. 19, 2007, after the friend made a flip remark about killing the dog. But Abbate said he could not remember much of his attack on bartender Karolina Obrycka or the approximately 24 hours that followed.
Obrycka has filed a federal suit against Abbate and the city, alleging that Abbate, his friends and fellow cops — including high-ranking officers — tried to cover up or downplay the assault.
Abbate, who was convicted of aggravated battery and fired from the department, gave mostly one-word answers while being questioned by Obrycka’s attorney, Terry Ekl.
Ekl pressed Abbate about dozens of phone calls, some as long as 25 minutes, that the officer made to friends and cops in the hours after the assault.
Abbate said he couldn’t remember the calls but later referred to them as “drunk dialing.”
Under questioning by his own attorney, Abbate backed off a claim he made during his criminal trial in 2009 that he had acted in self-defense during a “bar fight” with Obrycka. After looking recently at the videotape, Abbate said, he would no longer characterize it in the same way.