Chicago cops dismissed recruit’s claim a colleague sexually assaulted her. Then, he was accused again and again.

Alexus Byrd-Maxey had just finished her second month at the Chicago police academy, well on her way to fulfilling her childhood dream.

The South Side native wanted to become a detective so she could bring closure to families who have lost loved ones to homicides by arresting those responsible.

Byrd-Maxey, then 26, was proud of herself for making it this far: completing college classes, applying to the academy multiple times, passing a background check and physical tests. She was delighted to be part of the academy despite the sacrifices it required, including leaving her toddler son most mornings at 5 a.m. and having her mom spend thousands to buy her new uniforms and equipment.

“Actually sitting in those chairs at the academy was very rewarding,” she said.

But on March 17, 2023, an encounter with a fellow recruit derailed that dream. She was leaning over a classmate’s computer, helping him log on to do their lesson. As another recruit walked behind her, she said she felt his hands on her waist and his body pressed against her. He was close enough, she told reporters, that she felt “his penis on my butt.”

She recalled that she confronted him immediately — hoping to hear remorse in his voice. Instead, she said, she saw him smirk.

“That’s when I knew,” she said. “You’re not sorry.”

In the days that followed, Byrd-Maxey wrestled with how to report her fellow recruit, a man named Eric Tabb, or whether to let it go.

At the same time, Chicago Police Department investigative records show, Tabb started telling other recruits that Byrd-Maxey had overreacted and that he had only tapped her on the shoulder so he could get to his seat.

The following week, when Byrd-Maxey reported the incident to her class leader, he talked with fellow recruits, and they downplayed the encounter. A recruit who witnessed what happened and was friends with Tabb later told investigators Byrd-Maxey was “trying to victimize herself.”

The academy instructor never filed a sexual misconduct complaint. Two and a half weeks later, Byrd-Maxey was fired from the academy for supposedly cursing and using gang language — allegations she has denied. Tabb soon became an officer and began patrolling streets.

But he didn’t last long.

Eight months after Byrd-Maxey was fired, Tabb was arrested for allegedly grabbing a fellow officer’s genitals repeatedly over her uniform after roll call in their police precinct.

That woman, too, had been in the academy with Byrd-Maxey. Two additional female recruits also have said Tabb assaulted them, and witnesses allege yet another was assaulted but did not report it, meaning five of 17 women in his academy class have given similar accounts, investigative files show.

Tabb now faces multiple felony charges, including aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

He has pleaded not guilty, and the criminal case is ongoing. He declined to comment.

Police department records, including interviews and investigative files obtained by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica, together with court records, highlight how police officials failed to intervene while Tabb was at the academy and head off potential harm to other women.

Reporters identified 14 officers who disciplinary records suggest may be repeat offenders, having been accused of sexual assault in the last decade and of at least one other incident of sexual misconduct. Five of those officers faced criminal charges and were convicted, in some cases pleading to a lesser offense that was not a sex crime, and three others have ongoing criminal cases.

In reviewing more than 300 sexual misconduct and assault complaints against Chicago police officers, the Invisible Institute and ProPublica found a pattern of the department failing to vigorously investigate accusations of sexual assault by officers, whether those complaints were lodged by fellow cops or members of the public. The claims were often downplayed or ignored, sometimes allowing officers to abuse again and again.

A 2017 U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Chicago police found officers frequently minimized the seriousness of sexual misconduct accusations against colleagues and didn’t employ best-practice investigative techniques. Police, the investigation found, closed cases without conducting full investigations.

Police spokesperson Don Terry declined requests for an interview but said in a written statement that the department “takes all allegations of sexual assault seriously, including allegations against CPD members.” He said the department has “zero tolerance for sexual misconduct and any member in violation will be held accountable.”

He also said the department works with victim advocacy groups “to assist in the appropriate reporting of sexual assault allegations against department members in a way that eliminates barriers to reporting and provides support services to the survivors.”

That Tabb allegedly assaulted women while training to become a police officer is particularly troubling. The police academy is where aspiring officers learn the department’s culture. Recruits get their first lessons in how officers should behave in uniform — and out of it. They also have fewer job protections while undergoing their academy training, so they can be easily dismissed if they break the rules. Four other academy recruits have filed sexual misconduct or harassment complaints in the last four years. Records show three of the complaints ended in no discipline for the accused officer and one is still ongoing.

“I think of it as behavior that you’re sort of taught in the first few years on the job, starting with your field training officer, what you can get away with,” said Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who has done extensive research on police misconduct and created a national database of officer arrests. “They learn that it’s accepted behavior within that culture, within that squad, or that shift, quite often. And I do think that it’s behaviors that escalate.”

In June 2023, a little over two months after Byrd-Maxey was kicked out of the academy, the department implemented its first sexual misconduct policy, one it had been working on before she began her training.

Pattern of missed opportunities

The Chicago Police Department has a long history of failing to identify and deal with patterns of troubling behavior within its ranks.

Officers who stole from suspects were able to do so repeatedly before getting caught. Detectives who coerced confessions, sending innocent people to prison and costing the city tens of millions of dollars in legal settlements, did so without ever being disciplined. And some cops who abused and tortured Chicagoans did so for years before they were stopped.

This failure of the department to police its own officers has also had devastating consequences for people who have accused officers of sexual assault or harassment.

In 2019, then-Supt. Eddie Johnson praised the department’s internal investigation of 13-year police veteran Officer Corey Deanes, who had been accused of sexual misconduct by four women. He called it a “testament to our ability to police ourselves.”

But what Johnson didn’t mention was that the department allowed Deanes to police the city’s streets for nearly a year despite two allegations of sexual misconduct. It took the city’s civilian police oversight agency to identify his behavior and stop him.

Deanes was suspended for seven days in 2011 for sexually harassing a woman during a traffic stop. He insisted on getting her phone number, then called or texted nearly 30 times. He told investigators he had no official reason to pull the woman over but did so because he wanted to talk to her.

Six years later, in August 2017, he again was accused of abusing his position while pulling over a 23-year-old woman during a traffic stop. Deanes, according to internal affairs records, made inappropriate comments to her and threatened to write the woman a ticket if she did not give him her phone number. Then Deanes allegedly hugged her and, though she resisted, touched her buttocks before leaving without giving her a ticket.

The woman reported the incident to the Chicago police and to the Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian oversight agency at the time. Police records and a lawsuit brought by the woman indicate it took police investigators more than a year to interview her, and the department lost an opportunity to get Deanes off the streets. The city settled the woman’s lawsuit for $100,000.

In July 2018, another Chicago woman reported Deanes. She had called 911 for help after arriving home late at night and finding a stranger on her porch. Deanes, who responded to the call, allegedly asked her personal questions, commented on her body and touched her inappropriately, according to internal affairs records.

“I felt so violated,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Invisible Institute and ProPublica. “I called you for help and I got harassed. That is not OK.”

The woman reported the incident to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the latest iteration of the review board. Launched in 2017 as part of a wider series of reforms, COPA and its new leaders hoped to bring an additional focus to investigating claims of domestic violence and sexual assault committed by officers.

Yet another woman filed a complaint against Deanes two weeks after the incident with the 911 call. This time, COPA identified a pattern. Andrea Kersten, then COPA’s head of investigations, notified the police department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs about the three incidents and pushed for a criminal investigation.

Deanes was arrested in May 2019 and charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery, one felony count of aggravated battery, and three felony counts of official misconduct for the three separate incidents. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor battery in 2020 and received two years probation. He was stripped of his Illinois state certification, preventing him from working as a cop.

The woman who encountered Deanes after the 911 call said she’s disappointed that it took so long for the department to take action. “Police will have each other’s backs no matter what heinous things they do,” she said.

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Deanes declined to comment for this story.

COPA has taken steps to improve its handling of sexual misconduct cases to identify officers who repeatedly engage in misconduct. Under Kersten’s leadership, the agency created a Special Victims Squad of trained investigators in 2019 to pursue these cases, including those with limited evidence beyond the accuser’s word. COPA also entered into an agreement that allowed other agencies to conduct joint interviews with victims to enhance collaboration and to reduce the risk of retraumatizing victims by limiting retellings of their assault.

Kersten stepped down as the head of COPA in February after facing a possible no-confidence vote from an oversight board and ongoing lawsuits against Kersten and COPA. A lawsuit filed by the Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing Chicago police officers, said COPA and Kersten exhibited an anti-police bias that unfairly affects investigations and how officers are disciplined. Last month, a federal judge dismissed the suit.

Kersten declined to comment. In her resignation letter, she disputed the claims against her. COPA’s interim chief administrator said the agency remains committed to pursuing investigations of sexual misconduct.

“We are working on growing our SVS section to a fuller unit with more staff who will receive specialized training to handle these investigations,” the administrator, LaKenya White, said in a written statement.

While COPA participated in the investigation into Byrd-Maxey’s claims, internal affairs led the criminal investigation into the matter.

‘I’m not going nowhere’

Last fall, Alexus Byrd-Maxey had come to accept what she called God’s will — that she would not become a Chicago police officer.

Since being fired from the academy, she had struggled with depression and anxiety as she tried to rebuild her life. She went back to work as a waitress at a North Side restaurant. Yet every time she saw her police uniforms hanging in her closet, she grieved a life she would never have.

“I feel like I was stripped away from it,” she said.

Whether he ended up being disciplined or not, she said she thought she was doing the right thing in reporting Tabb.

It wasn’t long after Byrd-Maxey tried to alert the academy about Tabb that a second incident occurred. At the end of August 2023, Tabb attended a birthday celebration at a Wrigleyville bar with other recruits. He joined a female recruit on the dance floor and, according to investigative reports and court records, touched her breast, buttock and crotch over her clothes and also grabbed her face and tried to kiss her. He was so aggressive, a witness told investigators, that a mutual friend had to intervene to get him away from the recruit.

A few days later, according to investigative files and court records, Tabb attended a “star party,” an unofficial celebration for graduating recruits receiving their badge number. Another recruit told investigators he saw Tabb grabbing a third female recruit’s genitals over her clothes. The recruit’s boyfriend confronted Tabb, according to a witness. That same night, Tabb touched a fourth recruit’s buttocks, according to interviews with police investigators and court records.

In the immediate aftermath, the three women said nothing. Soon, Tabb was officially in the department.

After about three months, a fifth female officer accused Tabb of touching her crotch over her uniform several times when she stood up after roll call to adjust her duty belt.

The woman went to her supervisor despite her fears. “I was afraid that any type of confrontation or anything would not work out for me,” she later told investigators. “I felt powerless,” the woman said, crying.

She said Tabb grabbed her crotch a second time.

“He sat back in his chair and he had a slight smile on his face with his hand up to his chin,” she said in a recorded interview with investigators. “It looked to me like, I don’t know, like he was proud of what he did.”

During the investigation into that incident, officials uncovered the accusations against Tabb that involved off-duty behavior toward recruits. Two of the three recruits stepped forward to report Tabb’s behavior because they said they wanted to support the final alleged victim.

Even though Byrd-Maxey had been the first to report his behavior, no one contacted her for 15 months about the criminal case against Tabb. When she learned about it, she decided to attend his next court hearing.

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On a Tuesday morning in March, Byrd-Maxey entered the Cook County criminal courthouse with her mother Jauntaunne Byrd-Horne. They walked past the black Doric columns and the tall golden lamps on their way to a courtroom for a hearing in Tabb’s case. For the first time in nearly two years, she was going to see him.

Her mom made herself a T-shirt. In bold white letters against a black background, the front of the shirt read: “What about Tabb’s first police academy victim 03/17/2023?”

Byrd-Maxey and her mother sat in the courtroom’s first row. Minutes later, Tabb arrived with his parents and sat behind them.

At issue was a request from prosecutors asking to have the additional allegations related to off-duty incidents considered as evidence of a pattern of behavior: similar victims, similar assaults. Dan Herbert, Tabb’s defense attorney, said his client was innocent. He tried to blame Byrd-Maxey for the claims involving all the off-duty recruits, implying she had a grudge against Tabb.

Records show that, before she was fired, Byrd-Maxey tried to report Tabb multiple times. She talked to her class leader — a fellow recruit who is put in a leadership position — on the Monday following the Friday incident. Records show the class leader discussed the incident with superiors and placed more emphasis on Tabb’s version, which was supported by other recruits. No one filed an official complaint.

Almost three weeks later, conflict erupted in class. Byrd-Maxey claimed Tabb verbally attacked her, and Tabb accused her of doing the same, records show. After class, Byrd-Maxey said, she went to her instructor to tell him about the incident in the computer lab.

Byrd-Maxey was fired the next day, accused of saying “shut your bitch ass up” in class and using gang-related language. Though their names were redacted, investigative files show seven recruits, including Tabb, filed complaints against Byrd-Maxey for engaging in this behavior. She denies the allegations.

The next day, Byrd-Maxey returned to the police academy to file the sexual misconduct complaint herself. She also accused two instructors of wrongful termination. During that investigation, several recruits sided with Tabb, including three who told investigators they were in the computer lab at the time.

By the time internal affairs cleared Tabb of Byrd-Maxey’s complaint on Sept. 20, 2023, he had allegedly assaulted three other women from his academy class.

During the court hearing, Tabb’s attorney attacked the credibility of those officers for not reporting the alleged abuse the moment it happened.

“They’re police officers,” Herbert said. “They have a duty to report misconduct. And they’re probationary police officers, which, as the court well knows, they can be fired for any reason, unless it’s an illegal reason. They can be fired for not reporting misconduct. I think that’s what happened in this case.”

After the hearing, Byrd-Maxey spotted Tabb in the courthouse lobby. She locked eyes with him as their paths crossed.

“I’m here. I’m not going nowhere,” she said afterward.

Byrd-Maxey and her mother embraced outside the courthouse, an acknowledgment of the toll reporting Tabb had taken on them both.

Yet she doesn’t regret it.

“I wouldn’t change anything, even though it cost me mentally and financially,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it because, at the end of the day, I had the right motive to be heard and to avoid this from happening again.”

Contributing: Andrew Fan, Maheen Khan and Isabelle Senechal of the Invisible Institute, Mariam Elba and Agnel Philip of ProPublica