Female bartender Karolina Obrycka who was brutally beaten by off-duty cop finds justice

A female bartender who was brutally beaten by a drunken off-duty cop twice her size was awarded $850,000 in damages on Tuesday.

Karolina Obrycka of Chicago was attacked by Anthony Abbate, a Chicago police officer, in February 2007, while his friends watched.

A surveillance video of Abbate pushing Obrycka to the ground and then repeatedly punching and kicking her behind the bar she worked at went viral online.

The surveillance video, which became a major embarrassment for Chicago police, shined a spotlight on allegations of abuse by the city's officers.

Amid accusations that police dithered in the weeks after the beating, then-superintendent Phil Cline retired and the department vowed to clean up its image.

Chicago police adhered to a strict code of silence protecting fellow officers as a federal jury awarded the $850,000 in damages Obrycka at her civil trial on Tuesday.

The civil trial in federal court in Chicago was the first of its kind to focus almost wholly on the question of whether there is such an ingrained code - with most of the 2 1/2 weeks of testimony devoted to that question. But he said he never presented himself as an officer that night or asserted he had special off-duty privileges.

Abbate was convicted of aggravated battery in 2009, and sentenced to probation. Testimony during his criminal trial suggested that he attacked Obrycka after he walked behind the bar and she told him to leave.

At the civil trial, Obrycka was asking jurors to hold Abbate and the city liable for damages to compensate her for any pain or distress she suffered. Jurors sided with her after listening to weeks of testimony.

'I'm still in shock,' Obrycka said outside the courtroom after the verdict, adding that she hopes she can move on with her life now.

The brute: Anthony Abbate, a former Chicago police officer convicted for the 2007 beating of Obrycka, leaves a federal building after the first day of a civil trial stemming from a lawsuit filed against him and the city by Obrycka

Obrycka's attoey, Terry Ekl, heralded the verdict as a landmark, precedent-setting decision.

'We proved the code of silence at every level of the Chicago Police Department,' from the first officers who responded to the beating to then-Chief Phil Cline, Ekl said after the verdict.

Ekl said the onus was now on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to end that culture of protection and silence.

'The question now becomes, what are they going to do about it?' he said. 'If there's going to be change, it has to come from the mayor's office.'

Justice served: Obrycka hugs her attoey Terry Ekl after she was awarded $850,000 in damages by jurors

During the civil trial, her attoeys alleged that police sought to downplay and cover up the beating, in part out of an ingrained but shadowy culture among police of protecting their own. They said that culture emboldened Abbate and created an environment that led to the beating.

City attoeys countered by telling jurors there was no evidence that such a secret code existed. The fact that Abbate was eventually charged and convicted, they said, proved that the system worked.

But some police officials who testified contradicted each other, which Obrycka's attoey said proved their point about alleged cover-ups.

Debra Kirby, who headed the department's inteal affairs division at the time, testified that she recommended during a phone call three days after the beating to a Cook County prosecutors that Abbate be charged with a serious felony.

Pressed by Ekl about whether she told the prosecutor she actually thought a misdemeanor battery charge was appropriate, Kirby emphatically denied it.

'Absolutely incorrect,' she said firmly.

But less than an hour later, Joseph Stehlik, who was an inteal affairs detective under Kirby's command, said he was next to his boss at the time of the call. Stehlik testified Kirby recommended the lesser charge.

Then when the prosecutor in question, Tom Bilyk, took the stand, he told jurors the call never happened and that he never talked with Kirby about charges.

Because Abbate was off duty during the beating, Obrycka's attoeys needed to persuade jurors that the silence code exists, that it was sanctioned by the city and that it led to the beating and an attempted cover-up.

Abbate was on the witness stand for two days and asked by Obrycka's attoey about phone records showing he made dozens of calls to fellow officers in the hours after the beating. He said he was so drunk before the attack that he couldn't remember calling anyone or what he might have said, though he insisted he 'didn't tell anyone to do anything regarding the incident.'

Abbate claimed he was bent on drowning his sorrows that day because he had just leaed his dog was dying from cancer, telling jurors: 'I was on a mission to get inebriated.' But he said he never presented himself as an officer that night or asserted he had special off-duty privileges.