Chicago police Officer Carlos Baker was referred to a program for troubled cops just weeks before he fatally shot his partner, Krystal Rivera, according to records obtained by the Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Once in the program, Baker could have been placed under strict supervision or even been fired if he didn’t improve.
But Baker, who had a history of disciplinary complaints, wasn’t enrolled in the Chicago Police Department’s Personnel Concerns Program before the shooting. That’s because a police supervisor didn’t respond to an internal email about the referral.
So Baker kept working his normal job with the department’s Gresham District tactical team, aggressively targeting gangs, drugs and guns in a part of the South Side with a high rate of violent crime.
Then, last summer, Baker fatally shot Rivera as they chased a suspect into an apartment building, a shooting that police officials have said was unintentional.
Baker’s assignment to the tactical team and his work alongside Rivera are now the subjects of a lawsuit her family filed against Baker and the city of Chicago. In the suit, they say Baker should have been kicked off the police department years ago, pointing to a disciplinary record that includes complaints dating to when he was a probationary officer with few union protections.
The family’s attorney, Antonio Romanucci, says Rivera is dead because the department failed to discipline Baker.
“The new information reflecting clear internal CPD concerns about Carlos Baker’s fitness for duty is part of a somber and growing string of evidence reinforcing what we’ve said from the beginning: that he should never have been allowed to be an officer, wear a badge and carry a service weapon,” Romanucci says.
Police officials didn’t respond to questions. Baker’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Supervisors in the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs recommended on May 14, 2025, that Baker be enrolled in the Personnel Concerns Program. They did so while closing an investigation that found he cursed at a supervisor and disobeyed an order in 2024.
It’s not clear whether Baker’s immediate supervisors were informed of the recommendation.
The program is considered “non-disciplinary,” according to the department, though officers who fail to change can face “severe” discipline or be fired.
If police leaders had followed up and enrolled Baker in the program, he could have faced intense supervision. And his supervisors would have been required to submit regular reports about his behavior.
Baker’s shift lieutenant also could have sent him for additional training, required him to get a mental health evaluation, switched his partner or reassigned him to a less high-stress job.
An employee of the department’s Officer Support Unit followed up on Baker’s referral on May 20, 2025, asking Internal Affairs for more information. But no one responded.
Sixteen days later, on June 5, 2025, Baker and Rivera chased a man into an apartment building in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue.
After the man ran into an apartment, Baker kicked down the door and encountered a second man, holding a rifle, according to records and body-camera footage. Baker turned away, tripped and fired a single shot that struck Rivera, who was standing behind him.
She was pronounced dead soon after at the University of Chicago Medical Center from a gunshot wound in the back.
At the time, Baker had fewer than four years on the job.
He previously had worked some shifts on the tactical team in 2024 after he first submitted an application for the job but wasn’t formally accepted. He was one of the least-experienced officers in the coveted role at the time, and the department’s patrol chief ultimately blocked his appointment to the unit over his disciplinary record.
In one instance, authorities investigated accusations that Baker brandished a gun at a woman he’d been trying to date while she was at a bar across from a Northwest Side police station. The woman didn’t cooperate with investigators, according to records, and the investigation was closed.
About a year after his first application, Baker again applied to be moved to the tactical team.
Between his first and second applications, records show, Baker cursed out a sergeant and disobeyed one of his orders.
Baker also led an 85 mph chase without alerting dispatchers or activating his lights or sirens. It ended when the car he was chasing hit a railroad crossing, went airborne and crashed into six cars.
Baker ran after the driver and inadvertently fired his Taser while hopping a fence, records show. He was warned at the time about proper weapon retention.
The city of Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability added that case file to its investigation of Rivera’s shooting the same day that the Illinois Answers Project and the Sun-Times published a story about the errant discharge.
Those disciplinary cases weren’t held against him when he applied to the tactical team again. He got the appointment to the team in the spring of 2025.
In both of his applications to the tactical team, Baker was nominated by his district commander, Michael Tate, who often worked alongside Supt. Larry Snelling as the two rose through the department’s ranks. Snelling retired from his job on Wednesday.
The police department hasn’t previously disclosed that Baker was recommended to be placed in the Personnel Concerns Program. And officials have declined to explain why his second application to the team wasn’t affected by the findings of the disciplinary cases he picked up after his first application was rejected.
A COPA spokeswoman says the agency’s investigation into Rivera’s shooting is ongoing. The focus of the investigation is unclear, though Baker’s actions after the shooting have come under scrutiny.
Body-camera video footage shows that Baker took cover in a stairwell for 90 seconds before attempting to help Rivera, with whom he’d been in a romantic relationship, according to Rivera’s family, who say in their lawsuit that Baker left her to die after she’d threatened to disclose the relationship to a long-term girlfriend of Baker she’d recently learned of.
In the chaotic aftermath, other officers who loaded Rivera into a police SUV to take her to a hospital struggled to find the keys for about a minute. It turned out that Baker had them.
He had faced more than a dozen misconduct accusations before the shooting and has racked up another four since. Among them was one that he battered an off-duty female police officer outside a bar, which he was cleared of. But he was found to have interfered in that investigation because he called neighboring businesses to try to find surveillance video of the incident.
A month after the shooting, the Officer Support Unit emailed the Bureau of Internal Affairs again, writing:
“The [human resources] director is requesting more detailed information … for enrollment into the Personnel Concerns Program. Please get back to us at your earliest convenience.”