Hate Crime Trial Begins In Puerto Rico Flag Shirt Case

SKOKIE, IL — The hate crime trial of the Des Plaines man recorded berating a woman for wearing a shirt with the flag of Puerto Rico on it began Tuesday in Skokie. An cellphone video of the incident, which also showed a Cook County Forest Preserve police officer appearing to ignore pleas to intervene, garnered national media attention last summer after it was widely shared online.

Tim Trybus, 63, was arrested at the scene and initially charged with two misdemeanors, assault and disorderly conduct. But after the video went viral and a detective reviewed the tape, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office upgraded the charges to two counts of hate crime, both class 3 felonies because they were alleged to have occurred in a public park.

"Hate has no place here. Hate has no place in any community in the United States of America," Assistant State's Attorney Sharon Kanter told the jury in her opening statement. "Hate has no place in the state of Illinois and certainly hate has no place in any community in Cook County."

On June 14, 2018, Mia Irizarry planned to celebrate her 24th birthday at Caldwell Woods, a Cook County forest preserve near the intersection of Milwaukee and Devon avenues in Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood. Irizarry, a veterinary technician, purchased a permit for one of the picnic areas at the forest preserve and arrived early in the afternoon to set up with her cousin, Nathan, and her 4-month-old puppy, Starlight, she testified. Her birthday and Flag Day fall on the same day.

"I like to say that two legends were born on that day," she said.

Irizarry said the two men and one woman who were in the sheltered picnic area when she arrived were in the process of leaving when Trybus asked if her shirt — a sleeveless polyester jersey-style shirt featuring a Puerto Rican flag design and the words "Puerto Rico" — was a Texas flag. Irizarry said she chose the shirt to display pride in her heritage during the week of the Puerto Rican Festival, which she had been unable to attend.

"I never in a million years would have thought a flag would have been a problem," she said.

When Irizarry informed Trybus of what kind of flag it was, his demeanor changed, she said. He began shouting at her. She began recording him with her cellphone and streaming video of the exchange on social media "in the event that something would have happened," she testified.

"It's just one of the facts of being a woman of color," Irizarry said, testifying she did not want the incident to become a "he said, she said" dispute.

The video shows a seemingly intoxicated Trybus repeatedly approach Irizarry as he questions why she is wearing her shirt.

"You're not going to change us, you know that? The world is not going to change the United States of America. Period. And you should not be wearing that in the United States of America," Trybus says. "Are you a citizen? Are you a United States citizen? Then you should not be wearing that. You should be wearing United States of America flag. Not Puerto Rico."

Irizarry tells Trybus she is a citizen and asks Trybus to "please get away" from her as she keeps backing up.

"Officer? I feel highly uncomfortable," she tells the forest preserve police officer on scene. "Can you please grab him? Please, officer?"

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. Its residents have been U.S. citizens for more than a century. Their votes are counted in presidential party primaries but not in the electoral college or U.S. Congress.

Kanter and fellow prosecutor Patricia Berlinksy played the first approximately three minutes of the 36-minute live-streamed video for the jury. Then they played first few minutes of the video a second time during Irizarry's testimony, pausing about every 30 seconds for her to describe how she felt at the time. Jurors will be tasked with deciding if she had a reasonable fear of being imminently battered and if that assault was motivated by her race or national origin.

"I was very scared. I didn't know if I was going to be physically touched at that point in time," Irizarry said during one of the pauses. "My safety now felt like it was compromised."

She testified her voice remained calm and she never specifically yelled for help or told the officer she was in fear because she wanted to avoid escalation and upsetting her puppy.

The officer on the video, Patrick Connor, a 10-year veteran of the forest preserve police department, was placed on desk duty after the incident. He resigned July 11, 2018, one day before he would have faced a disciplinary hearing. Connor was not called as a witness by either the defense or prosecution.

According to police reports and the video, Forest Preserve police were already at the scene investigating an earlier report of a battery involving an altercation between Trybus and another man. The other man was handcuffed.

Connor interviewed Irizarry after the incident before Trybus was arrested on assault and disorderly conduct charges, the video shows.

"At no time was he going to attack you. He's just a big mouth, you know?" Connor tells her. He suggests he has had previous encounters with Trybus. "These people are a problem all the time," he said.

"He saw the shirt I was wearing and I guess he got triggered," Irizarry told Connor. "I don't know who hurt him. But somebody hurt him."

Other than Irizarry, the only other witness called by prosecutors was her cousin, Nathan Arroyo. The pair grew up as close as siblings before he moved to Washington. Arroyo said he had flown to Illinois to surprise Irizarry for her birthday. He was unloading picnic supplies in the parking lot when the confrontation between Irizarry and Trybus began, he said.

Arroyo, who was seen on video pushing Trybus away from Irizarry, testified he was confused why the officer was doing nothing to intervene. He said Trybus' body language appeared "very, very violent."

Prosecutors played only a portion of the video a third time after Trybus' attorney objected to playing a recording of things that Arroyo did not witness.

Trybus' defense attorney David Goldman previously attributed his client's "rant" to a combination of alcohol and painkillers Trybus had taken after having six of his teeth removed the prior day. The video showed that Trybus had "all the characteristics of someone who's drunk, and not just drunk, extremely drunk," he told jurors.

The only explicit threat Trybus makes in the entire video, he said, was his assertion that he has "some really, really, really nephews and nieces that'll go down on you." Goldman confirmed with both Irizarry and Arroyo that none of Trybus' relatives were present during the incident, arguing that it was an insufficient threat to establish the fear of an immediate battery.

Goldman called only one witness before resting his case — the Cook County Forest Preserve police detective who was assigned to investigate the case after the video had gone viral but before hate crime charges were filed. Detective Grzegorz Kawecki testified his investigation consisted solely of speaking to prosecutors and watching the video. He told jurors he believed the video showed a hate crime being committed and disagreed with the actions of the officer on scene.

Trybus, wearing a blue pinstripe suit, white t-shirt and black boots in court, declined to testify on his own behalf.

If the incident was an assault and motivated by Irizarry's "actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or national origin," then it was one count of hate crime. If it was a disorderly conduct, where Trybus behaves in an "unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb" Irizarry, it would be another count of hate crime. The jury may also find Trybus guilty of misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct.

At a news conference called in the wake of the video, Forest Preserves Police Chief Kelvin Pope said Connor "should have stepped in and he should've done something."

Cook County officials apologized to Irizarry, refunded her permit fee and and gave her passes to the Brookfield Zoo.

"I'm troubled by the response of the initial officer on the scene," Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle told reporters. "We intend to use the video in future training exercises for our officers and we want to assure everyone that the forest preserve district will be a safe and welcoming place for all. We take incidents like this very seriously."

The incident also prompted a response from former Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who said he was sure Preckwinkle would handle the issue.

"We cannot allow those who do not understand America's greatness to terrorize people because of their background," Rosselló said in a tweet last July. "This is not the America we all believe in."

Rosselló resigned a year later after protests prompted by the publication of a collection of racist, sexist and homophobic online chats between the governor and his cabinet.

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, a Chicago Democrat of Puerto Rican descent, called for a federal investigation of the incident. In a July 12, 2018, address on the House floor he linked Irizarry's treatment to his own by Capitol police over two decades earlier and to the recent political rhetoric of President Donald Trump.

"When our president calls Puerto Ricans 'lazy' and 'expensive' to help, it hurts our nation. When he calls Mexicans 'rapists' and 'murderers' or calls refugees fleeing violence with their children 'illegal immigrants,' or calls transgender soldiers a 'threat to our country', and says that good people on both sides of a racist rally where a woman was killed are the same, it filters down.
Maybe the president is just reflecting back the fear, anger, and misunderstandings of the voters he wants to mobilize. But all of the lying, the hostility and the racism is clearly taking a toll on our country," Gutiérrez said.

"I just hope that we are all as poised as Ms. Irizarry was, and when someone gets in your face, whether you're wearing a 'pussy hat,' or a hijab, a rainbow flag or a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, I hope we are all more willing than officer Connor to take action when someone is trying to bully someone else. And I know most Americans are not like Mr. Tybus, who is afflicted with both fear and ignorance and probably a substance abuse problem."

Closing arguments and jury deliberations are scheduled for Wednesday.

UPDATE: A jury of two men and 10 women convicted Trybus of both felony hate crime counts after three and a half hours of deliberations Wednesday. Read more...

Earlier:

• Video Shows Man Harass Woman For Puerto Rico Shirt
• Puerto Rico Shirt Case: Cop Resigns, Man Charged With Hate Crime

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