The frenzied attempt to rush wounded Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera to a hospital was apparently delayed almost three critical minutes after she was shot by her partner, Officer Carlos Baker, according to an Illinois Answers Project and Chicago Sun-Times analysis of newly released records.
The body-worn camera footage, obtained through a public records request, shows officers lost more than a minute as they struggled to find the car keys to the police sport-utility vehicle they had loaded Rivera into, then waited as parked cars were cleared from the street.
That confusion came after Baker took cover in a stairwell for more than 90 seconds after shooting Rivera during a foot chase into an apartment building in Chatham last June 5. That crucial stretch was previously shown in videos released last month by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the city of Chicago agency investigating the shooting.
Baker and Rivera had chased a man into the apartment building in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue. Baker booted a door and encountered another man pointing a gun, the video showed, and then Baker appeared to trip over his feet and fire one shot that hit Rivera, who was standing behind him.
The body-camera footage released by COPA, from which certain portions were cut or redacted, shows at least four minutes passed between when Rivera was shot and when the SUV departed.
The new records also show that COPA investigators are reviewing an earlier incident, in which Baker accidentally fired his Taser. Officials have said Baker unintentionally shot Rivera.
It’s unclear whether the police response to the shooting is the subject of COPA’s shooting investigation, which typically focuses on whether an officer’s use of force was appropriate. An agency spokeswoman declined to comment.
Rivera’s family has sued the city, saying Baker shouldn’t have been allowed to remain a police officer after racking up a lengthy complaint history.
Her relatives say in the suit that Baker “left her to die” because of a romantic relationship that Rivera had broken off after she found out he was living with another woman and after she threatened to tell that woman.
Antonio Romanucci, the attorney for Rivera’s family, is asking for “immediate, full and complete release of all materials, video, reports and personnel files. We believe the city and COPA are intentionally withholding relevant information that the public deserves to see.”
Chicago police officials wouldn’t answer questions about the newly obtained video footage.
Confusion over gun
In an interview with COPA months after the shooting, Baker said he carried Rivera down the first floor of the building, laying her against a wall and giving the keys to his squad car to another cop.
“I told them to take her to the hospital,” Baker said in a recorded statement. “I gave them her gun, and then I went back up the stairs.”
After the SUV carrying Rivera left, a sergeant went inside the apartment building as officers were waiting in the hallway. Video shows Baker shouted that he needed a SWAT team, and someone told him to calm down.
An officer who’d helped Rivera followed the sergeant inside and, with Baker, searched the apartment where Baker had encountered the armed man.
Baker shouted, “Chicago f—— police,” and another officer yelled, “I will f—— kill you,” as they searched for the man officers initially believed had shot Rivera.
“Rifle’s here,” Baker said, pointing to a gun on the ground later identified as an AR-style pistol. Seconds later, the sergeant told an officer to guard the gun.
Their conversations show confusion about what Rivera had been shot with and uncertainty over whether the AR-style pistol was the gun they’d been looking for and also whether a rifle was still missing. Baker had told a dispatcher of a “shooter with a rifle” while giving a description.
The sergeant asked Baker what happened, and Baker said he encountered someone pointing a rifle toward him from the bedroom. The sergeant told Baker the gun they found fired handgun rounds and said most people shot with handguns survive.
After the officers realized the apartment was empty, they checked the wooden back stairwells and porches, then left through the front door.
One officer cursed after realizing the apartment was empty. He came back outside as Baker was asking for an ambulance for himself about three minutes after Rivera was taken to the hospital.
The shooting happened at about 9:50 p.m. Emails obtained by the Illinois Answers Project and the Sun-Times show department bosses knew as early as 10:30 p.m. that Baker had shot Rivera. It’s not clear from the videos when or how they learned Baker fired the shot.
The newly released videos don’t make clear what COPA is considering in its investigation. The video file included Baker’s body-worn camera footage from a foot chase a year before he killed Rivera, in which Baker accidentally fired his Taser while hopping a fence.
That errant Taser discharge happened moments after Baker led a car chase that reached almost 90 miles an hour in Gresham on a weekday morning. The car he was chasing went airborne after hitting a train crossing and crashed into six cars. The driver got out of the car and ran away, and, as Baker chased him, the officer fired his Taser once on purpose and once unintentionally.
Records show COPA accessed the traffic crash report hours after the Illinois Answers Project and the Sun-Times first reported on Baker’s Taser deployment.
Baker didn’t use lights or sirens and didn’t tell any supervisors about the chase until after the crash.
As a result, he was warned about “the importance of weapon retention” over the inadvertent Taser usage, but no supervisor made a formal complaint.
Series of delays
The new video footage offers the clearest account yet of what happened after Rivera was shot. But it’s incomplete because COPA’s case file doesn’t include footage from every officer who was on the scene and because the agency continued to withhold releasing video footage that might show officers “rendering aid.”
COPA said it withheld portions of some of those videos to protect the privacy of Rivera’s family, though the family has called for all the videos to be released.
It’s common for officers to rush wounded cops to a hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance. But police officials never disclosed Baker’s delay in tending to Rivera, and it only was revealed when COPA released the initial videos of the shooting. The delay in getting her to the hospital hadn’t been reported, either.
Baker’s previously released body camera footage shows officers arrived about two and a half minutes after Rivera was shot and tended to her at the bottom of the first-floor steps of the apartment building.
One newly released video shows an officer crossed the street behind Baker’s SUV and walked down a fenced-in sidewalk that leads to the steel front door of the apartment building. Officers shouted “clear a path” so Rivera could be carried to Baker’s SUV, which was parked outside.
At least 97 seconds passed between those officers arriving and the SUV leaving to take Rivera to the hospital.
During that window, officers spent just over a minute shouting for keys and for officers and others to move their cars. Baker later told investigators he had the keys.
The delays didn’t stop there.
Once the SUV carrying Rivera got on the road, it caught fire on the way to the hospital. Radio traffic shows a dispatcher asked about the car fire and that an officer responded about a minute later that another squad car was needed to carry Rivera to the hospital.
By this point, about nine minutes had passed since the shooting.
A supervisor asked about Rivera’s condition.
“The last thing I heard was: ‘Unresponsive,’ ” the dispatcher said.
A short time later, Rivera was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center.