A lawsuit filed last week by the family of Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera, who was shot and killed earlier this year while attempting to apprehend a suspect, has raised serious questions that cry out for an independent investigation into all that led up to the shooting of Rivera by her partner, Officer Carlos Baker, on the fateful night of June 5.
Baker since has been stripped of his police powers, as information steadily has emerged on his lengthy record of internal complaints in the years before he fatally shot Rivera in what the Chicago Police Department has consistently said was an accident. Baker’s track record included a December 2022 complaint filed with Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability by a woman who said she had dated Baker. She said he confronted her on a night out with another man and brandished a gun in an attempt to intimidate, according to the lawsuit.
The circumstances surrounding the death of Rivera, 36, who is survived by an 11-year-old daughter, were awful enough in the original explanation given by CPD. Initially, there was confusion as to whether the suspect had shot at police. But soon it emerged that the only person who discharged their weapon was Baker. And in so doing he had struck Rivera, his partner, in the back.
CPD’s initial statement requested prayers for Rivera’s family. “We also ask that the people of Chicago pray for Officer Rivera’s partner as he faces the loss of his fellow CPD family member,” the statement said.
The complaint filed last week by Rivera’s mother, Yolanda Rivera, acting as administrator for Krystal Rivera’s estate, offered startling new revelations about Baker’s relationship with Rivera. According to the complaint, they were in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship from 2023 to 2025 and Krystal Rivera had broken it off with Baker for good shortly before her death. Others within CPD, including their bosses, knew of the nature of their relationship as of September 2023, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleged that Baker reacted negatively after Rivera broke up with him in May of this year. Rivera was upset after learning in February that Baker had another girlfriend with whom he lived, the lawsuit stated. Rivera had threatened “repeatedly” to tell Baker’s live-in girlfriend that Baker had been seeing Rivera as well, according to the lawsuit. Baker attempted to dissuade Rivera from taking that step, and even arrived uninvited in the early-morning hours of June 4 at her home to confront her, the complaint alleged.
That was less than 48 hours before the shooting.
The complaint went on to allege that Baker didn’t take appropriate steps to save Rivera’s life after she was shot. According to the lawsuit, Baker’s alleged “failure to render aid to Rivera was motivated by purely personal reasons — his animosity or contempt toward her — arising out of their recently-ended romantic relationship, which Rivera had broken off.” Baker’s motive, the complaint alleges, was to keep Rivera from telling his live-in girlfriend about his personal relationship with his work partner.
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The complaint also laid out multiple instances when CPD higher-ups allegedly didn’t act on Rivera’s request to change partners.
To say these are serious allegations is to understate.
Baker’s attorney, Tim Grace, said bodycam evidence, as yet unreleased, will demonstrate the shooting was accidental and that Baker did all he could to save Rivera afterward, including immediately calling for an ambulance and carrying her away from the scene, where the suspect remained.
CPD hasn’t commented on the lawsuit yet nor has City Hall. A spokesperson for Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said her office is investigating.
Exacerbating matters, a separate lawsuit filed Dec. 10 in federal court in Chicago by a female Chicago police detective, who kept her name anonymous because she is a whistleblower, alleges that a fellow detective, Marco Torres, abused her and posed a grave threat to her after she’d filed a discrimination complaint with federal authorities. Among the defendants are the city of Chicago and police Superintendent Larry Snelling. The details in that lawsuit include a text Torres allegedly sent another fellow officer asking for the woman’s address because he had spoken to a gang member who wanted a “grand” to “get rid of her.”
A lawyer for Torres told the Chicago Sun-Times it was a “baseless lawsuit” and that the two had “a substantial consensual relationship.”
These lawsuits are merely allegations at this juncture and the courts have yet to sort out the facts of the cases. More information surely will come to light. Still, after reading these complaints, any Chicagoan should be disturbed and concerned about what’s happening within the Chicago Police Department when it comes to relations between its officers.
For years, we’ve heard much about police treatment of civilians in the course of enforcing the law. But now we’re wondering about the treatment of those within the “CPD family” who allege wrongdoing by one of their own.
What happens to those who blow the whistle, particularly in the often-messy business of workplace relationships Is there abuse that’s being swept under the rug? Are women on the force safe, not only from the criminals they face on a regular basis but from some of their fellow officers? After all, we are talking about a profession in which every sworn officer carries a gun.
We’re chagrined to see so little action on the city’s own initiative thus far in the case of Officer Rivera. What we should have seen by now is the appointment of an independent investigator to assess why Officer Baker continued to progress in his career within the department as he drew multiple complaints and how the department responded to Rivera’s desire to be separated from her partner.
Better late than never. In light of these latest disclosures, an independent investigation should be pursued immediately; that’s the responsibility of Mayor Brandon Johnson and his Law Department.
By all accounts, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has developed a far more cooperative and productive relationship with Chicago police than was the case under O’Neill Burke’s predecessor, Kim Foxx. That’s a development we’ve applauded as it pertains to fighting crime in Chicago, but it also makes investigating CPD difficult for O’Neill Burke.
Her office is fully capable, we believe, of probing Baker’s actions the night that Rivera was killed and whether he bears any criminal responsibility. But the broader issues of culture within CPD and its processes for protecting female officers should be left to an independent investigator who should be starting work immediately.
The city must get to the bottom of the issues raised in that lawsuit and give a public accounting — wherever those facts lead and whomever they implicate.
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