The police officer who resigned Wednesday after refusing to help a woman who was being verbally harassed for wearing a shirt with a Puerto Rican flag on it believes that he hasn’t gotten a “fair shake” and took the appropriate action at the time.
Cook County Forest Preserve District Police Chief Kelvin Pope said that Officer Patrick Connor shared his thoughts in a face-to-face conversation Wednesday while Connor turned in his resignation. Connor’s inaction was captured on video by the woman, and it went viral, sparking international condemnation for the loud mouth who berated the woman and the cop who did stood by doing nothing.
“He was very remorseful and he just considered it being a really unfortunate incident where he really wasn’t given a fair shake,” Pope said at a Thursday news conference.
“With all the publicity hype, with the video that was shown, shows that he was inattention to his duty, that he was very inactive, and it was just that type of disposition that he took,” Pope said.
Arnold Randall, the general superintendent of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, wasn’t buying it.
“Although he clearly has an opinion about what happened and he thought he took the appropriate action that day, we vehemently disagree that he took the appropriate action . . . he should should have stepped in much sooner.”
Connor didn’t explain why he didn’t step in during his conversation with Pope, nor did he do so in his resignation letter.
He would have been required to provide his side of the story at a disciplinary hearing scheduled for Thursday, but he resigned instead.
“When he came in yesterday about 10 minutes to four, he tendered his resignation, and we really just kind of wished him well in whatever other endeavors that he happens to go in, whatever other direction he happens to take,” Pope said.
Details on whether the incident and his resignation in the face of discipline will effect Connor’s eligibility to receive a pension were not immediately available, Randall said. Reached Thursday, a spokeswoman for the pension fund said policy precluded her from sharing details about Connor’s pension eligibility.
The fact that he resigned under pending disciplinary proceedings will be noted in his personnel file — a red flag that means he can never be re-hired at the forest preserve, Arnold said.
An investigation into Connor’s behavior began the day of the incident — June 14 — after the women in the video, Mia Irizarry, posted the footage she recorded of the encounter to Facebook. Comments and complaints by social media users came to the attention of forest preserve police officials almost immediately.
Connor went on vacation June 15, Pope said. When he returned to work on June 26 he was placed on desk duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
Connor’s decision to quit came as a surprise.
Hours before his resignation, Tamara Cummings, the top lawyer for the union that represents forest preserve officers said that Connor was eager to cooperate with the investigation and get the whole story out there.
She added that Connor had been “very stressed” in the wake of the viral video.
“The video does not look good, but anybody who is a football fan knows that the video does not tell the whole story,” said Cummings, general counsel for the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council. “We still don’t know what happened outside the video. We don’t know what was going on inside his head.”
After Irizarry posted a 36-minute video of the confrontation in Caldwell Woods on Facebook, edited versions began bouncing around social media platforms. Millions of people watched the flap, before it reached a critical mass that resulted in even the governor of Puerto Rico calling for Connor’s firing.
At the hearing, Connor would have had to clarify why he didn’t respond to Irizarry’s pleas for help as 62-year-old Timothy Trybus berated her. And officials wanted to know why Connor apparently stopped Irizarry’s brother when he tried to intervene.
More officers eventually arrived and the woman was able to file a police report. Trybus, who according to the police report was drunk at the time, was charged with assault and disorderly conduct. Authorities are considering whether to upgrade the charge to a hate crime.
Irizarry told the officers Trybus “approached her and made rude comments” while she was setting up for a picnic, and then Trybus “got in her face while pointing a finger at her,” according to the police report.
In the video, Connor watched as Trybus said things like “Are you a citizen? Then you should not be wearing that,” and “I would like to know is she an American citizen? Why is she wearing that s—?”
Irizarry had rented a forest preserve pavilion to celebrate her 24th birthday and was issued a permit for the event. After the ordeal, she was issued a refund, and the county gave Irizarry zoo passes to the Brookfield Zoo, which is owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District.
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