Justice in America

This is from 2007.

This is an off duty police officer from the city of Chicago.

You can rejoice alongside myself to hear the (not so) recent great news that this public servant did not serve any jail time.

Read on and be happy that justice has been served;

chicagobreakingnews.com, this is from June 23, 2009:

A Chicago police officer avoided jail time today for pummeling a woman who was tending bar, even though prosecutors produced a previously unseen video showing him beating someone else at the bar hours earlier.

Anthony Abbate was sentenced to two years probation for beating Karolina Obrycka in February of 2007. He could have gotten up to five years for the attack, which was captured by the bar's security camera and shown around the world.

Did you catch that?

even though prosecutors produced a previously unseen video showing him beating someone else at the bar hours earlier.

Don't worry, this is just a isolated example, a bad apple, and we still should trust our glorious peace officers who protect and serve us.

Lets continue with justice, American style:

Judge John Fleming said he decided against jail because he did not believe the crime was serious enough and throwing Abbate behind bars would not be a deterrent to others.

"If I believed that sending Anthony Abbate to prison would stop people from getting drunk and hitting other people, I'd sentence him to the maximum," the judge said. "But I don't believe that is the case."

Obviously throwing people in jail for beating up somebody is not a deterrent.

I encourage you to find a beautiful blonde woman and beat her up - I assume a judge presiding over your case will have similar views.

After all, justice is blind and impartial... ?

In arguing for prison time, prosecutors produced a previously unseen video from the bar hours before Obrycka was attacked showing Abbate beating someone else.

In the video, a man in the bar can be seen speaking with Abbate for a few seconds, after which Abbate grabs the man, slams him against a wall and then throws him across the room. The man crashes to the floor and into the bar stools, and Abbate stands over him as the man tries to shimmy away on his back.

Just an isolated example, it's not like our cops have anger management, err...

Assistant State's Atty. LuAnn Snow said the attack was one of three unprovoked assaults in the span of 6 hours, a violent window into "a day in the life of Anthony Abbate." Authorities did not charge Abbate with the other two alleged attacks.

Err, right, this man is a good man, a pillar of the community, like most police officers...

As time passed, "I thought about the beating a lot," she said. "I had nightmares about it, I try to avoid thinking about the beating, but I was helpless again... I pulled away from people close to me. I was irritable and angry, [and] I was fearful of other people. If someone walked behind me, I would jump and unexpected noises made me jump, too.

"The world didn't feel like a safe place anymore," Obrycka said. "I also started to have anxiety attacks which I never had before. When something would remind me of the beating, I would start to feel nauseated, then vomit. My head hurt, my hands became numb and then I would start to sweat and shake."

What a pissant little bitch, an immigrant no less, daring to besmirch the good name of our civil servants!

Before handing down his sentence, Fleming said "any adult in the world" would know better than to act as Abbate did, but said he did not believe that a term of imprisonment was appropriate.

Right on, judge!

A correct decision, as I am sure that this officer just needed to let off a little steam, err, three times, in his very stressful job... Thass'all.

Again, isolated exa...

Chicagomag.com, from May 6, 2011:

You likely recall the case of Anthony Abbate, the Chicago officer who beat bartender Karolina Obrycka; the fallout, and worldwide attention, led to the resignation of superintendent Phil Cline and the brief tenure of outsider Jody Weis. "He's tarnished our image worse than anybody else in the history of the department," Cline said at the time.

The Abbate tape doomed Cline and put the CPD on its heels. But for me, a worse tape, and much worse bureaucratic malfeasance that followed, was the tape of Michael Pleasance, the unarmed man accidentally shot by CPD officer Alvin Weems. I played a very small role in the coverage, editing the tape to my then-colleague (and now Better Government Association senior investigator) John Conroy's narration. I watched Pleasance get shot a good hundred times over the course of a day; Eric Zorn did a frame-by-frame breakdown.

I admit that I might be biased, knowing I'll be unable to get that video out of my head.

Yesterday, one of the most tragic Chicago stories of the decade added another tragic chapter: Weems was found dead in his home, and suicide is suspected.

I'm not sure why the Pleasance shooting never got the attention that the Abbate beating did. Perhaps because Abbate's offense was malicious, whereas Weems's was a tragic mistake. Perhaps because it's complex—the degree to which Weems was negligent is dependent on the interpretation of a chain of minor events. I recommend you read Conroy's definitive Reader piece, "Killed On Camera," to see how a series of errors—some small, some serious—led to Pleasance's death. There's a Rashomon-like quality to the story, and it can't be properly understood without the details.

But the errors didn't end with the shooting. As Conroy details, Weems's story changed, as did the CPD's, as information came out. The Office of Professional Standards recommended Weems be fired on the basis of ten charges, encompassing both the shooting and its aftermath. He was suspended for 30 days, and later promoted to detective.

It reminds me a bit of what caused John Kass's break from Mayor Daley, as described in his widely discussed column from yesterday: not the errors that led to the man-made Chicago Flood, but the victims of the bureaucratic ass-covering that followed:

One reluctant head belonged to Jim McTigue, a low-ranking North Side city worker, a Cubs fan and tunnel inspector. Daley held a news conference to rip on McTigue, saying McTigue didn't warn his superiors of the breach in the tunnel that led to the flood. It turned out that Daley was wrong, that McTigue had indeed warned his bosses, and they had ignored him.

"I don't want to become the Mrs. O'Leary's cow of the flood," McTigue told me.

I think citizens have a greater tolerance for terrible mistakes than bureaucrats believe, and a lower tolerance for them not being dealt with honestly, for obvious reasons, but the spread is something I'll never really understand.

There are three systems of law in this country.

One is for the elite - the top 1%, the hedge fund babies, the banksters.

Think back to the S&L financial scandal - no, not the one currently ongoing, in which the banksters not only are not facing prosecution but are reaping record breaking bonuses for destroying this country and much of the world's economy.

I said the S&L scandal from the 1980's.

Read up the pretty good wikipedia page on that scandal here.

If you are impatient, skip to the Scandals section and start reading from there.

There is a pattern of the powerful abusing the system for personal gain - especially one Rep. Jim Wright (D-TX), who was "implicated him in a number of influence peddling charges, such as Vernon Savings and Loan, and attempting to get William K. Black fired from deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) under Gray, and Rep. Wright resigned May 31, 1989 after being found guilty by the House Ethics Committee."

William K. Black is my fucking personal hero.

He is one of the good guys, who lost the fight (well, we ALL lost the fight, but he was one of the few who was in a position to fight and tried to do so, the rest of us are sheep in line in the slaughterhouse)

What's that saying - history repeats itself?

The current financial crisis is the S&L crisis, on a GLOBAL scale - similar methods, similar "financial products", the real estate market used for manipulation (note to self - an article about the S&L comparing it to the current calamity simply writes itself).

How many of the current banksters were prosecuted and went to jail - you can count those on the fingers of no hand...

That's the top 1% justice system.

The second tier is the enforcers - the FBI, the police, the DEA.

While sometimes the pawns are sacrificed, usually they are defended by the bureaucracy tooth and nail, and in worst cases, they are let go - but usually no jail time, no prison time, just a slap on the wrist.

The media dutifully regurgitates the "isolated case", "few bad apples".

The third tier is the niggers.

Yes, I used the "N" word, and I will not apologize for it.

Because, even though I am a pasty white, non muscled, thin except for the gut sticking out, even though I am making over $100,000 annual take from my consulting activities, with no record (nor any attempts at) criminal activities, after my experiences at a safety checkpoint and some other incidental run-ins with the "bravest" and "best", you see, I realized that,

I am a nigger too.


We ALL are niggers.

So there you go.

The three tier system of justice.

Oh, and that fat piece of shit Abbate?

He was fired from CPD on Tuesday, 15 Dec 2009, a few years after the scandal.

God speed, you magnificent animal.

God speed and good luck in your new career!

Comedy Gold

Bluemustbetrue.com, quoting Chicago Sun Times:

Testifying in his own defense against charges he beat a petite female bartender, Chicago police Officer Anthony Abbate told a Cook County judge this afternoon that the woman threatened him and that he threw her to the ground, lunging at her with his arms and legs, only in an effort to “get her off of me.”

“She grabbed me and threw me against the wall,” the 250-pound suspended Chicago cop said of the 5-foot-3, 115-pound Karolina Obrycka, who is seen on the bar’s surveillance cameras pushing and pulling the burly cop in what she described Monday as an effort to get him to leave the area behind the bar at Jesse’s ShortStop Inn.

“I hit my head,” Abbate testified before his attorneys rested their case this afternoon in a case that became an Internet sensation because of the video. “I’m trying to get away from her.”

Abbate's attorney, Peter Hickey, said that Abbate was "tossed around...like a rag doll" by Obrycka. "She grabbed him (and) almost had him on the ground."

Back on the day of the incident, immediately after Abbate left, a friend of his came in the bar and offered money to Obrycka if she would not prosecute. Police just might “find” some drugs in Obrycka’s car or the bar owner’s car if she didn’t keep quiet, Abbate’s friend allegedly said. Obrycka declined the bribe, ignored the threat, and called the police.

Four uniformed officers arrived. One sat at the bar and ate pretzels while another one recorded license numbers off the jukebox and other machines in the bar. The bar is not allowed to operate the jukebox and other accessories unless they pay for city licenses to do so. Perhaps it was important for the officer to make sure the city was getting it’s cut.

Well, the article started off funny...

Be very careful out there, everybody.

Remember - you have no rights, and this whole system of laws is but an illusion - something you will see on TV and in the cinemas, but something which does not seem to exist in our day to day world.