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‘You should not be wearing that,’ man screams at woman in Puerto Rican flag shirt; cop’s response under investigation

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Fallout piled up swiftly Tuesday after a video went viral showing a man berating a woman for wearing a Puerto Rico shirt — and a nearby Cook County Forest Preserve District officer seemingly ignoring her calls for help.

The officer in question has been placed on desk duty as an internal investigation progresses, a local congressman called for a federal probe into the matter and the video prompted multiple calls for the police officer to resign or be fired. Even the governor of Puerto Rico tweeted about it as views of the video approached the 2 million mark.

The June 14 incident at Caldwell Woods on Chicago’s Far Northwest Side came to light on Monday and also prompted an apology from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who later said she expressed her regrets in a phone call to Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello.

In the video, a man — later identified in police reports as Timothy G. Trybus, 62 — demands to know why the woman is wearing a shirt displaying the Puerto Rican flag. He asks her whether she is an American citizen, even though Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its residents are U.S. citizens.

“You should not be wearing that in the United States of America,” Trybus tells her.

The woman asks an officer for help and asks him to restrain Trybus. The officer is visible in the background of the video, standing several yards from Trybus and the woman, but he does not appear to respond to the woman’s requests for help.

“Officer, I’m renting this area and he’s harassing me about the shirt I’m wearing,” the woman says.

A five-minute video clip of the exchange between Trybus and the woman went viral, but a longer, 36-minute video of the incident and the aftermath showed that after additional officers arrived, the first officer on the scene eventually sat down to take a statement from the woman and her brother.

As the officer wrote in a small notebook, the woman explained what happened, and noted that she asked the officer for help. In a subsequent police report obtained from the Forest Preserve District Police Department, the officer did not include any mention of the woman’s request for assistance.

In the longer video, the officer explained that he had been called to the preserve in response to an alleged incident between a man who was with Trybus and another woman, and appeared to try to assure the victim that Trybus did not pose any threat to her safety.

“So, uh, now that I see what’s going on, I see what’s happening between you and them,” the officer said in the video. “So, uh, at no time was he going to attack you. He’s just a big mouth.”

But the woman was not convinced.

“Well, I guess you just never know,” she said curtly. “You just never know.”

“You never know,” the officer said.

The woman who wore the flag shirt could not be reached for comment later; a relative confirmed the woman was at the forest preserve that day to celebrate her birthday but declined further comment. Trybus also could not be reached.

Trybus was arrested and charged with assault and disorderly conduct, according to the Forest Preserve District, which described the man as intoxicated.

“All people are welcome in the Forest Preserves of Cook County and no one should feel unsafe while visiting our preserves,” the agency tweeted.

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, district officials declined to say what the officer’s discipline should be, citing the ongoing investigation, but they nevertheless expressed criticism of his actions.

Forest Preserve District police Chief Kelvin Pope said the officer now on desk duty, whom he identified as Patrick Connor, “should’ve stepped in, and he should’ve done something. I think that’s the reason we’re here today, because he did not.”

Eileen Figel, the agency’s deputy general superintendent, said there “needs to be a clear and appropriate response in these situations. We acknowledge that’s not what we saw.”

But, she added, there also needs to be “due process to understand the entire context of what happened, including some things that are not captured on that video, and that’s what the investigation is designed to do.”

Cook County Commissioner Luis Arroyo Jr. said he wouldn’t accept less than termination for the officer in question.

He said no one should have to experience the abuse the woman suffered, whether they’re “black, brown, yellow, Muslim, Catholic or (LGBTQ), disabled, no one,” and said the officer’s inaction “will not be tolerated.”

“I have full faith in our system and the process and the investigation that is going underway,” Arroyo added later. “But me, personally, I believe this officer did not do his duty and I will not accept anything else but this officer’s termination.”

State Sen. Iris Martinez, a Chicago Democrat, also added her voice Tuesday to the call for Connor to be fired.

“A woman being verbally abused for simply wearing a shirt with the Puerto Rican flag is another example of how racists feel emboldened in their attacks on minorities and immigrants thanks to the current administration,” Martinez said in a news release. “But beyond that, it is inexcusable that a peace officer whose main responsibility is to maintain order and protect the safety and well-being of individuals visiting the forest preserve property would ignore a call for help from someone feeling threatened, no matter their race.”

Rossello, the Puerto Rican governor, commented on the incident in four tweets on Twitter. He called the incident “undignified” and said he was “appalled, shocked & disturbed.” He said Puerto Rican officials were contacting authorities in the Chicago area and Illinois “demanding that this officer be expelled from the police force.”

Rossello also tweeted that he was sure Preckwinkle “will take matter(s) into her hands as justice and diversity have been central to her exemplary career.”

He tweeted: “This is not the America we believe in.”

Preckwinkle on Tuesday called the incident “completely unacceptable” and offered her apologies to the victim for the “terrible experience.”

“I’m troubled by the response of the initial officer on the scene,” Preckwinkle said.

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Chicago, on Tuesday wrote a letter to the federal Department of Justice asking for an investigation.

“I understand this incident on a gut level because almost exactly the same thing happened to me when I was a freshman in Congress,” Gutierrez wrote. “I was denied entry into the Capitol complex by U.S. Capitol Police despite being a Congressman with identification, because my daughter was carrying a Puerto Rican flag and the officer doubted that I could possibly be a Member of Congress.”

Gutierrez declined to run for re-election and has said he plans to move to Puerto Rico after his term ends in January.

Preckwinkle said the Forest Preserve District intends to use the video in future training exercises.

About five minutes into the footage, a man with the woman can be heard yelling at the officer that he wanted the alleged offender arrested.

“You won’t come talk to me,” the man says to the officer. “How is that justice?”

The officer responds: “Just relax.” A little later, the officer tells them to “just wait. Wait a minute. All right?”

The woman is asked by the man off-camera why the man approached her.

“Because I’m wearing a Puerto Rico shirt,” she said. “That was it. He started saying, ‘Why are you wearing that here? Why are you wearing that here? This is America.’”

When the man off-camera asks what the officer was doing, she says, “He was watching. Literally watching. And I told him multiple times, I’m like, ‘I do not feel comfortable. Can you please grab him?’ I said it multiple times and he was just standing there, and I have it on camera too.’’

Later, a second police vehicle pulls up.

“Hopefully this police officer will actually do something,” the woman says.

By this point, Trybus is seated at a picnic table and is arguing with a female officer who has come upon the scene.

That officer says, “People have a permit for this area, OK? And you don’t need to be badgering them …”

The officer later says: “People have just as much right to be here as you do, and when you’re drunk you don’t belong here.”

Trybus responds: “When I’m drunk, I don’t belong here.”

“That’s right,” the female officer says. “It’s called disorderly conduct. OK? You wanna argue?”

When the female officer approached the woman, she complained that the initial officer did not respond to her pleas for help. “He was just watching, literally was just standing there watching the whole thing happen, like nothing,” she said.

Cook County court records indicate that Trybus has arrests dating to 1997, when he was charged with criminal trespass to a residence a few days after an order of protection was issued against him. The same year, he was charged with domestic battery, but both cases were later dropped and the order of protection dismissed, records show.

In 2001, he was again charged with domestic battery, but that case was also dismissed; five years later, he was convicted of battery, causing bodily harm, and was sentenced to probation, according to the records.

Irvin Kaage, 90, said he and his wife have known Trybus for more than 20 years and said Trybus has helped them out since they moved to a condo four years ago.

Kaage said he was aware Trybus has had “trouble” in his past but added “he’s excellent to us,” and “he’s never done anything nasty.”

Pioneer Press’ Kathy Routliffe contributed.

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