Chicago's Finest?

By Laura Oppenheimer in News on Mar 22, 2007 6:45PM

The Chicago cop whose savage beating of a female bartender was caught on tape, was charged yesterday with aggravated battery. Officer Anthony G. Abbate, a 12-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department was not arrested until March 14 because he checked into a substance abuse clinic following the Feb. 19 attack. The video of the attack is shocking, not only for the action of Abbate, but for the inaction of several of the other patrons. Dude in the white baseball hat — did you just pretend you didn't see what was going down?

Not surprisingly, the owner of Jesse's Shortstop Inn, was offered money to keep quiet about the attack. When he refused, threats were made again him and the assaulted bartender, Karolina Obrycka. Chicagoist doesn't want to implicate all Chicago cops — we know there are many more outstanding professional members of the CPD than bad apples — but we get a bad feeling when we read "a friend of Abbate allegedly warned the owner of Jesse's that police might find drugs in his car and Karolina's car if they spoke to authorities about the beating."

Which is why we were happy to read that the CPD is working on firing Abbate from the force. And we hope that substance abuse problems or not, he never gets the chance to carry a gun on behalf of the city of Chicago again.