A young Chicago cop had racked up more than a dozen misconduct complaints by the time authorities say he inadvertently shot and killed his partner, Krystal Rivera, when they confronted two armed men inside an apartment filled with guns and drugs.
Since joining the Chicago Police Department in December 2021, Officer Carlos A. Baker has faced three suspensions and two reprimands, records show, one stemming from a complaint that he failed to arrest a home invader on his first shift working the street.
It was among five complaints he accrued as a probationary officer, when the department could have summarily fired him because he had few union protections.
During his probationary period, Baker also was accused of flashing a gun at a woman he’d met online while she was on a date with another man at a North Side bar. The woman later refused to cooperate with investigators, and Baker faced no discipline, records show.
Baker’s record of complaints is unusual among Chicago police officers. Only 5% of Chicago police had six or more misconduct complaints from 2018 through 2023, according to data collected by the Invisible Institute.
Despite his work history, Baker was moved to the Gresham District tactical team, a group of officers who aggressively work to get guns and drugs off the streets and investigate crime patterns in Gresham, Chatham and other nearby South Side neighborhoods.
Police officials would not answer questions about Baker, his assignment to a tactical team or department policies, citing the city Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s review into the shooting. The department declined to release records related to Baker’s complaint history, citing a court order barring the release of records related to the shooting.
Baker was hired 10 months after Rivera. They soon joined the Gresham District tactical team. They were working together on the night of June 5 when they spotted a man with a gun in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue, prosecutors have said.
The officers chased the man into an apartment complex, where another man pointed an AR-style pistol at Baker, and the young cop accidentally shot Rivera in the back, authorities said. Two men have been charged.
Under department policy, officers involved in shootings are placed on routine administrative duties for at least 30 days.
Rivera was the first Chicago police officer to be killed by “friendly fire” in nearly 40 years, according to records maintained by the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation.
The fatal shooting is the second high-profile failure involving the Gresham District team to draw attention in recent months.
In April, the Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the team oversaw a botched police gun buyback at St. Sabina Church in December 2023. One weapon that had been turned in, a .45-caliber Glock 21 handgun, was later stolen from a room filled with cops at the tactical team office while the guns were being inventoried. The Glock was then used in a series of shootings. Police found it a year later on a 16-year-old boy.
The accidental shooting and the gun theft raise new questions about the Chicago Police Department’s tactical teams and have rekindled complaints from some officers over how supervisors staff, oversee and deploy the units.
Records released by the police show Rivera had been a key witness to the theft of the Glock. The records make clear that she did not do anything wrong and was “not accused of any misconduct.” They show Rivera diligently searched for the gun in her colleagues’ book bags after she learned it was missing.
The police department reopened the internal investigation of the gun’s theft after the Sun-Times and the Illinois Answers Project asked about the incident.
Baker’s attorney Tim Grace called Rivera’s death “a tragic accident that is unfortunate and too common when law enforcement officers are required to run towards the danger.
“Officer Baker is heartbroken over what happened on that night and will privately process his grief,” Grace said in a written statement. “The focus should not be on second-guessing each tactical decision made but rather on the profound loss of a great police officer and equally great person. Policing is a dangerous profession, and it is no easy task to keep the people of this city safe.”
A history of complaints
Before he was hired as a cop, Baker played wide receiver for the football team at Southern Utah University.
As a probationary police officer, he starred in viral videos on Tik-Tok that showed him dancing in uniform at the Sueños Music Festival in May 2023, generating millions of views. Another of his videos showed him playing along with an online trend using a police radio. In others, he’s seen wearing his police uniform and sitting in a department vehicle.
It was through Instagram that he met a woman who later reported that Baker flashed a gun at her in December 2022. The woman said Baker showed up unannounced and confronted her at Bluelight, a bar at 3251 N. Western Ave., where she was on a date with another man, according to COPA’s summary of her allegations. Baker, who was off duty at the time, allegedly said, “Who the f— is that guy” and “who the f— are you with” before lifting his shirt to reveal a gun tucked in his waistband.
The woman called 911 but quickly hung up, according to the COPA summary. When a dispatcher called back, she said she didn’t need help anymore.
She later told COPA investigators she had video evidence related to the encounter but stopped cooperating with their investigation before handing anything over.
“Without the cooperation of the involved complainant or ability to gather additional details, there is no objective verifiable evidence to support the allegation currently,” an investigator wrote. “However, should other information become available, or the complainant decides to cooperate later, COPA may reopen the investigation.”
A little less than a year later, Baker and another officer pulled over a driver in what they thought was a stolen car and wrongfully handcuffed and searched the man, then failed to complete the proper paperwork after realizing their error and letting the man go without charges, records show. Baker got a five-day suspension.
The car’s license plate was “somehow confused” with a partial vehicle identification number for a motorcycle registered in Miami, COPA said in a report. Investigators found the officers “were acting in good faith” in making the stop, and Baker blamed an “operational error” at the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles. But their subsequent actions were improper, COPA found.
Baker also was involved in two “preventable” accidents, records show. One of those got him a “day off” suspension, the other a reprimand. He was issued another brief suspension for failing to submit a report.
He currently faces five disciplinary investigations, including internal affairs probes into allegations that he was insubordinate and he didn’t conduct a proper search.
Rivera cooperated in stolen gun probe
Rivera has been praised as a hard-working officer, with police Supt. Larry Snelling noting after she was killed that she had gotten two other guns off the street earlier in her shift.
After Rivera learned a gun had been turned in at the St. Sabina buyback had been stolen at the police station, she scrambled to find it.
“I helped look for this gun through many boxes, through many envelopes, through areas in the [tactical team] office, garbage cans, behind desks, behind seats,” Rivera said in a recorded interview with investigators. “I even looked in some of my coworkers’ book bags.”
Rivera’s name was listed on the paperwork for the Glock that was stolen from the Gresham District station in late 2023 and for a smaller chrome handgun bearing the Glock’s inventory tag that had been switched to conceal the Glock’s disappearance.
Rivera told an investigator she was unaware that she was credited for the two guns, making it harder to track the stolen gun’s chain of custody. She speculated that she’d received credit because the buyback where the guns were recovered was a “group effort.”
“Every inventory is counted towards points, in a sense,” she said, referring to internal statistics for gun recoveries that can be used for promotions or transfers. “So I was placed there just to get points for bringing back and forth the weapons.”
On Wednesday, scores of police officers gathered for her funeral at Living Word Christian Center in Forest Park.
Gresham District Cmdr. Michael Tate told mourners Rivera was a motherly figure and “a true leader” among tactical officers.
Snelling said she earned a reputation as “a hard charger” who “understood what it took to go out and keep people safe in this city.
“The example that she set is not just an example for Chicago,” Snelling said. “It’s an example that she set for the entire world of what humanity is and what it means to go out and do things no one else wants to do at the risk of losing your life.”