Man who harassed woman wearing Puerto Rican flag shirt charged with hate crime
The drunken Chicago man who harassed a woman for wearing a Puerto Rico flag on her shirt has now been charged with a hate crime after his bigoted comments went viral.
In addition to the charge of assault and disorderly conduct, 62-year-old Timothy Trybus, got “hate crime” added after his racist rant and combative interaction with Mia Irizzary and the officer’s failure to deescalate the situation got attention on social media, reports the Daily Mail.
—Police officer who didn’t help woman being harassed for wearing Puerto Rican flag shirt resigns—
The Illinois police officer, Officer Patrick Connor, who stood by and did nothing while watching the helpless woman get verbally attacked over wearing the shirt, quit his job and decided against a meeting with his superiors to explain his inaction.
The racist harassment started with a hateful Trybus aggressively getting in Irizzary’s face and yelling: “Why is she wearing that s**t?” and asking “Are you a citizen?”
“Are you educated?” Trybus asks her in the clip. “Why are you wearing that?”
Connor, a Cook County Forest Preserve Officer, was standing nearby and Irizzary asked him for help repeatedly. Connor stopped and watched Trybus continually harass the woman and ignored her pleas for help.
“Officer, I’m renting this area and he’s harassing me about the shirt I’m wearing,” said.
Still Connor does nothing.
“You’re not going to change us, you know that,” Trybus yells out. “The world is not going to change the United States of America. Are you a citizen?’”
Irizzary replies: “I’m an American citizen…I’m not trying to change anyone, I just came here for a birthday party,” Irizzary tells him as Trybus gets in her face.
“Officer, I feel highly uncomfortable, can you please grab him, please?” she asked Connor again.
“If she’s an American citizen, why is she wearing that s**t?” Trybus shouts.
“As you can see the police are not even, he’s not even grabbing him. This guy is just walking up to me, he basically got in my face,” Irizzary said to her Facebook Live viewers.
—After bogus 911 call, cop pulls gun on unarmed Black kids who were being harassed—
Irizzary pleads: “Officer, I paid for a permit for this area, I do not feel comfortable here, is there anything you can do?”
Connor still ignores her.
“That officer did absolutely nothing he did absolutely zero,” she says in the clip. “I told him I felt uncomfortable multiple times and he did not do anything.”
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle offered her apology to the woman. He called the governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rossello, who said he wanted Connor fired.
Officer Connor, a 10-year veteran, was scheduled to explain to his superiors why he did nothing as the woman was berated but he quit his job late Wednesday over the encounter that quickly went viral on social media.
Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia called Connor’s resignation “a commonsense decision after his inaction and failure to serve Cook County.”
