Cop Block is a decentralized project supported by a diverse group of individuals united by their shared goal of police accountability. www.facebook.com/CopsKnowBest.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Karolina Obrycka, outside the Dirksen Federal Building after testifying Tuesday. October 22, 2012 | Scott Stewart~Sun-Times
***********************************************************
On Tuesday, it tripped up another veteran Chicago officer.
Peter Masheimer — the cop dispatched to investigate Abbate’s February 19, 2007 attack at a Northwest Side tavern — endured a torrid afternoon on the stand in Federal Court as clips from the security camera footage were played by Obrycka’s attorneys in an attempt to show that he was part of a police cover-up.
“I did not remember,” Masheimer testified repeatedly.
At the same time, he was presented with video evidence showing that within an hour of the attack at Jesse’s Short Stop Inn he was given Abbate’s full name on a piece of paper by Obrycka, told that Abbate was a Chicago Police officer and told that there was a video of the entire incident.
None of those details made it into a police report that Masheimer filed, which described the attacker as an unknown man named Tony.
Nor does audio recording of the barroom match sworn testimony Masheimer gave an internal police probe of his conduct in which he told investigators he “never had [a] conversation” with Obrycka about the cameras, claimed Obrycka “never made that statement” about Abbate being a cop, and denied he was given Abbate’s last name, he admitted.
Masheimer — given a 30-day unpaid suspension for his handling of the report — said he only recalled the damning details much later “after reviewing the tape.”
He left them out of his report because he knew detectives would follow up, because he was given three versions of the spelling of Abbate’s last name and could not verify that Abbate was a cop, he said, adding that he did not know Abbate and was not asked by anyone to hush up the incident.
Masheimer’s uncomfortable testimony came on the second day of a civil jury trial expected to take three weeks. It could cost Chicago taxpayers millions if officers — including cops far above Masheimer’s pay grade — are found to have conspired in a cover up before the video of the attack went viral and Abbate was eventually slapped with felony charges.
Earlier Tuesday, Abbate, whose testimony began on Monday, told the jury that he was having “a bad day” and had decided to get drunk on the day of the assault because his dog had been diagnosed with cancer.
“I was on a mission to get totally inebriated ... blacked out,” Abbate said.
He said he was so drunk on Canadian whiskey, Rumple Minze schnapps and blackberry brandy that he could barely remember any details of the attack, nor of the next 24 hours, during which phone records show he and his close friends and fellow officers exchanged hundreds of calls.
Obrycka’s attorneys allege those calls were part of the cover-up but Abbate testified that he had never asked anyone to do him any illegal favor. The lengthy calls he made in the hours after the incident were merely cases of “drunk-dialing,” he said.
Asked what he meant by that, he answered, “Just acting like a jackass.”
Abbate dialed back his previous claim that he was acting in self-defense when he attacked Obrycka, saying he was only acting in self-defense at the start of the confrontation.
He acknowledged that he had been investigated for four previous complaints made by fellow officers or by the public, including for allegedly dragging a pregnant, handcuffed woman along the ground.
Amid the sometimes heated exchanges with Obrycka’s attorneys, he also attempted a joke.
Asked by city attorney Barrett Rubens why the video shows him flexing his biceps so often, Abbate said, “I guess that’s what you call ‘beer muscles.’”
Friday, November 9, 2012
The legal fate of James Patrick Wonder, the Miramar man accused of manslaughter in the shooting death of federal agent Donald Pettit, is in the hands of a Broward judge.
Assistant State Attorney Michelle Boutros and defense lawyer Frank Maister delivered closing arguments in Wonder's Stand Your Ground hearing Thursday, asking Broward Circuit Judge Bernard Bober to decide whether Wonder, 69, is entitled to immunity from prosecution.
Wonder admits shooting Pettit, 52, in the parking lot of a Pembroke Pines post office on Aug. 5, 2008, but claims he acted in self-defense as Pettit, a special agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was charging at him following a road rage incident. Older, smaller and more frail than the agent, Wonder said he was worried that any physical confrontation would put his life in danger.
A dialysis patient, Wonder has a surgically placed fistula in his left arm that could burst if handled carelessly. While he mentioned the fistula when he was arrested the day after the shooting, he did not explicitly tell the detective interviewing him that he was afraid Pettit would kill him.
"I just can't take a punch in the mouth no more," he said. "I just can't take a punch anywhere."
Boutros has argued that Wonder was as angry as Pettit the day of the shooting, but where Pettit committed no crime and issued no threat when he confronted Wonder, the defendant seemed prepared to use deadly force before Pettit got out of his car.
According to Wonder, Pettit charged at him "like a football player," crouched with his head down, when Wonder opened fire. But drawing his weapon, disengaging the safety, aiming and firing would have taken longer than the time it would have taken Pettit to run 12 feet from where his car was parked to where Wonder was standing, Boutros said.
"He had his gun out, he took the safety off, and he was ready," Boutros said. She characterized the shooting as the overreaction of an angry man, not the reasonable response of someone who felt his life was in danger.
Maister presented Pettit as the only angry one, itching for a fight over a minor traffic dispute, ignoring the needs of his 12-year-old daughter, who was in the car with him, and disregarding his training as a federal law enforcement officer.
"There was only one of these two men who wanted to have a confrontation in that parking lot that day, and it wasn't James Wonder," Maister said. "This guy [Pettit] is fuming! He's lost it! At what point is [Wonder] entitled to defend himself? Does he actually have to take that first punch?"
Bober said he would issue a written ruling. While he did not say when it would happen, he set a court date for Nov. 29 — Wonder's birthday, coincidentally — with a promise that the ruling would come before then.
Either side can appeal Bober's eventual ruling.
raolmeda@tribune.com
Ex F.B.I. Agent Gets Sentense For Child Porn!
Anthony V. Mangione, who headed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's South Florida office for four years, possessed up to 150 images of child pornography, some depicting the "extreme abuse of children," according to federal prosecutors.
The stunning case against the decorated law enforcement veteran left many wondering how he became immersed in the dark world of child pornography, trading illicit images on the Internet and pretending to be a mother sexually abusing her children.
Mangione, 52, offered no clear explanation on Friday why he started viewing child pornography. He said that about three years ago he began having drinking problems and stealing his wife's prescription pills.
"I'm pretty much a broken guy," Mangione told U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra. "I feel like I'm in a hole eight feet deep with six feet of dirt on top."
Mangione, of Parkland, pleaded guilty in July to e-mailing child pornography to a former school bus driver in Delaware during a six-month period in 2010. After serving his 70-month prison sentence, Mangione will spend an additional 20 years on supervised release.
The FBI and Broward Sheriff's Office seized Mangione's laptop computer in April 2011 after his Internet provider detected him sending child pornography. He quickly retired from ICE and was arrested in September 2011.
Prosecutor Michael W. Grant urged the judge to sentence Mangione to 87 months in prison, arguing that the former law enforcement officer knows the toll child pornography takes on its victims yet was circulating images of children suffering.
"He took the worst moment in (a child's) life and he capitalized on it," said Michael W. Grant, a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
Mangione had no supporters speak on his behalf after discouraging family and friends from showing up at the court hearing. Family members and friends wrote letters describing him as a devoted father of three and a dedicated law enforcement officer.
As the Special Agent in Charge of ICE's South Florida office, Mangione supervised more than 400 employees in nine counties. He was regularly at the forefront of arrests of child pornography suspects, vowing to see them punished.
ICE has refused to address questions about Mangione, issuing a statement Friday that the agency "continues to hold our employees to the highest standards of ethical and moral conduct and are proud of the thousands of agents and offiers who exemplify these ideals."
Handcuffed and in a blue prison uniform, Mangione said Friday he takes full responsibility for what he described as "a terrible mistake." But when it came to why he would betray his oath as a law enforcement officer, he didn't come up with an answer.
jburstein@tribune.com,
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)