White Sox fan suing team after scuffle at ballpark

[iggs111]

Dirty ass cops.....You southsiders must be proud of your ballpark and it's security

WATCH VIDEO HERE

It was supposed to be a battle of the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox, but in the stands another rivalry was erupting: Chicago police vs. the Cook County Sheriff's Office.

At least that's how Cook County Correctional Officer Rubin Lopez recalls it.

He's the Sox fan now suing his beloved ball club and its security team -- including an off-duty Chicago police officer -- after Lopez was arrested for what he calls "doing the right thing."

Lopez was one of the lucky fans to get a ticket to the June 27, 2009 Sox-Cubs matchup, but right around the 6th or 7th inning, a fellow Sox fan began cursing and tossed a plastic beer bottle over the side of the upper deck to the seats below.

Fans summoned security to the third baseline seats, but officers nabbed a guy wearing a Cubs T-shirt -- the wrong guy, Lopez said. So Lopez told security the man they wanted was in a Sox shirt.

"I was sticking up for a Cubs fan, even though I'm a Sox fan," Lopez said. "I was trying to do the right thing."

But the security officer wasn't having it.

"That's when he [the officer] said to me to mind my own business. And that's when I let him know, I was a Cook County Sheriff [corrections officer], off duty," Lopez said, explaining that he thought he was helping a fellow officer, not getting in the way.

"He said that the 'Cook County Sheriffs are burnt up,'" Lopez said, explaining: "It's slang for disrespect, like there's no respect for sheriff's" officers.

"So I said 'fine, do what you guys got to do,'" Lopez said.

But it didn't end there. Lopez turned to another security officer and repeated that the wrong fan was being yanked from the game.

According to Chicago police, security was trying to break up a disturbance when Lopez shoved a security officer knocking him over a chair.

But Lopez said he was shoved by the security officer who bad-mouthed the sheriff's office, sending Lopez tumbling in to another officer.

Before Lopez knew it, security officers were dragging him across several rows of seats -- with another two officers punching him along the way. Lopez said he was handcuffed and led to a holding cell at the ballpark.

That's where two of the security officers, including the one he originally tangled with, identified themselves as off-duty Chicago police officers.

"They were coming over and telling me they were off-duty police officers and they were going to do what ever they could ... to ruin my career," Lopez said.

A videotape vindicates him, Lopez says, and battery charges against him were dropped in December, court records show.

But the four-year veteran says he endured an internal investigation that stripped him of many of his duties and prevented him from testing for promotions.

So the 29-year-old married father of three, a South Sider, is suing the Sox and the security detail -- including that off-duty police officer identified as Jorge Flores -- for malicious prosecution and battery. He didn't put a pricetag on the damages for now.

Lopez said he's heard of corrections officers having run-ins with Chicago police, but he holds no grudge.

"I don't think they're all like that -- but this guy -- he's the one with the chip on his shoulder."

As for the Sox? "I'll always be a Sox fan."

The White Sox and Chicago police declined comment.

[chibob]

Sounds like assholes from Old Comisky