This story was originally published by the Illinois Answers Project.
Through Peter Nickeas” Casey Toner And Tom SchaubaIllinois Answers Project
A young police officer in Chicago had collected more than a dozen misconduct complaints by the time the authorities say that he unintentionally shot his partner, Krystal Rivera, when they confronted two armed men in an apartment filled with weapons and drugs.
Since he joined the Chicago police in December 2021, officer Carlos A. Baker has confronted with at least three suspensions and two reprimanders, one that came from a complaint that he had not arrested a home information in his first service in the street.
It was one of the five complaints he stood up as a probation officer, when the department could have fired him briefly because he had little protection for the trade unions.
During his probation, Baker was also accused of flashing a gun with a woman he had met online while she was on a date with another man in a north side bar. The woman later refused to collaborate with researchers, and Baker was confronted with no discipline, according to records.
Baker’s complaints report is unusual among police officers in Chicago. Only 5% of Chicago police had six or more misconduct from 2018 to 2023, According to data from the Invisible Institute.
Despite his working history, Baker was moved to the Tactical Team of Gresham District, a group of officers who work aggressively to get weapons and drugs from the streets and to investigate crime patterns in Gresham, Chatham and other nearby Southern neighborhoods.
Chicago police officers would not answer questions about Baker, his assignment to a tactical team or department policy, referring to the assessment of the Civilian Office or Police Accountability in the shooting. The Department refused to release records with regard to Baker’s complaints history, with reference to a judicial order that retains the release of records with regard to the shooting.
Baker was hired 10 months after Rivera and they soon came to the Tactical Team of Gresham District. They worked together in the night of June 5 when they saw a man with a gun in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue, prosecutors said.
The officers chased the man in an apartment complex, where another man focused an AR-Stijl gun on Baker, and the young agent accidentally shot Rivera in the back, said the authorities. Two men are sued in the case. According to the department policy, officers involved in shootings are placed on routine administrative tasks for at least 30 days.
Rivera was the first police officer in Chicago who was killed in almost 40 years by “friendly fire”, according to data kept by the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation.
The fatal shooting is the second controversial failure in which the Gresham district team has drawn attention to in recent months.
In April, Illinois Answer Project and the Chicago Sun-Times reported that in December 2023 the team supervised a failed police weather in St. Sabina Church. A weapon that was handed in, a .45-caliber Glock 21 gun, was later stolen from a room filled with agents at the tactical team office while the weapons were invented. The Glock was then used in a series of shootings; The police thought it was a 16-year-old boy a year later.
The casual shooting and the theft of the weapon raises new questions about the tactical teams of the Chicago police and have again fueled complaints from some officers about how Supervisors keep staff, supervise and implement the units.
Records released by the police show that Rivera had witnessed the Theft of the Glock. But the records make it clear that she has done nothing wrong and ‘was not accused of misconduct’.
In fact, Rivera diligently searched for the gun in the book bags of her colleagues after she heard that it was missing, records.
The Chicago police reopened the internal investigation into the theft of the gun after the Sun-Times and Illinois answered the CPD to ask about the incident.
Baker’s lawyer, Tim Grace, described the death of officer Rivera as “a tragic accident that is a pity and too usual when law enforcement officers have to run to the danger.”
“Officer Baker is deeply sad about what happened that night and will process his grief privately,” Grace said in a statement. “The focus should not be on the second councils of every tactical decision, but rather on the in -depth loss of a great police officer and the same size. Police is a dangerous profession and it is not an easy task to keep the people of this city safe.”
A history of complaints
Before he was hired as an agent, Baker played a broad receiver at Southern Utah University.
As a probationary police officer, he played in viral videos on Tik-Tok that let him dance in the Sueños Music Festival in May 2023 and generated millions of views. Another of his videos let him play with an online trend with the help of a police radio. In others he saw his police uniform and was in a departmental vehicle.
It was via Instagram that he met a woman who would eventually report that Baker flashed a gun to her in December 2022.
The woman said that Baker showed up unannounced and confronted her on Bluelight, a bar at 3251 N. Western Ave., where she was on a date with another man, according to Copa’s summary of her accusations. Baker, who was out of service at that time, reportedly said: “Who the f – is that guy” and “with whom the F – are you” before he cancel his shirt to reveal a gun in his waistband.
The woman called 911 but quickly hung up, according to Copa’s summary of her allegations. When a coordinator called back, she said she didn’t need help anymore.
Later she told Copa researchers that she had video evidence of the meeting, but stopped working together with their research before handing something.
“Without the cooperation of the complainant involved or the ability to collect additional details, there is no objectively verifiable evidence to support the allegation at the moment,” a researcher wrote. “However, if other information becomes available, or the complainant decides to work together later, Copa can reopen the investigation.”
A little less than a year later, Baker and another officer pulled a driver into what they thought was a stolen car and was wrongly fascinated and searched the man, then did not succeed in completing the right paperwork after they had realized their fault and had the man went without a charge. Baker received a five -day suspension.
The car license plate was “somehow confused” with a partial vehicle identification number for a motorcycle registered in Miami, Copa said in a report. Researchers discovered that the officers acted in good faith “to make the stop, and Baker blamed an” operational error “at the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles. But their subsequent actions were inappropriate, Copa thought.
Baker was also involved in two “prevent” accidents, according to records. One of them earned him a “day off” suspension; the other a reprimand. He received a short suspension for not submitting a report.
He is currently confronted with five disciplinary investigations, including internal business tribes of accusations that he was not subordinate and that he did not conduct a good investigation.
Killed officer worked together in stolen weapons round
Rivera is praised as a hard -working officer, with police Spt. Larry Snelling noted that the press conference was held after she was killed that she had previously received two other weapons from the street in her service.
After Rivera heard that a gun had been returned to the St. Sabina -Berugoop at the police station, she scribbled to find it.
“I helped this gun with many boxes, through many envelopes, through areas in the [tactical team] Office, garbage cans, behind the desks, behind seats, “said Rivera in an recorded interview with researchers.” I even looked in some of my colleagues’ book bags. “
Rivera’s name was mentioned on the paperwork for both the Glock that was stolen at the end of 2023 from the Gresham district station, and a smaller Chrome gun with the stock tag of the Glock that was switched to hide the disappearance of the Glock.
Rivera told a researcher that she did not know that she was credited for the two weapons, making it harder to follow the detention of the stolen gun. She speculated that she received credit because the return where the weapons were found was a ‘group effort’.
“Every inventory is counted for points in a certain sense,” she said, referring to internal statistics for weapon recovery that can be used for promotions or transfers. “So I was placed there to get points to bring the weapons back and forth.”
On Wednesday, dozens of police officers gathered for her funeral in Living becomes Christian Center in Forest Park.
Gresham District CMDR. Michael Tate said that Mourters Rivera was a maternal figure and “a real leader” among tactical officers. Snelling said that she earned a reputation as “a hard charger” who “understood what was needed to go out and keeping people safe in this city.”
“The example she has set is not just an example for Chicago,” said Snelling. “It is an example that she has set the whole world of what humanity is and what it means to go out and do things that nobody else wants to do with the risk of losing your life.”
