Body camera footage released Friday shows that Chicago police officer Carlos Baker sat in a stairwell for more than 90 seconds after shooting his partner Krystal Rivera last summer, leaving her bleeding from a gunshot he initially said had been fired by someone else.
Videos show the officers chasing a man into an apartment building. Baker then booted open an apartment door and encountered a second man, who appeared to aim a gun at the officers, according to the videos released by the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
Baker turned, appeared to trip over himself and fired the gunshot that hit Rivera, then ran up a stairwell and called for help, the videos show. When Baker ultimately came back down the stairs, he first stepped over Rivera’s lifeless body before bringing her further down the stairwell.
The video footage doesn’t show Baker rendering aid to Rivera.
Rivera’s death was the first fatal officer-on-officer shooting in Chicago in nearly 40 years, and the first since the widespread adoption of body-worn cameras in the 2010s.
COPA released only two videos related to Rivera’s death and didn’t say how many it withheld, a significant departure from past practice and apparently at odds with city policy requiring the release of videos and reports when an officer shoots someone.
In the shooting death of Adam Toledo, the agency released 23 body-worn camera video files. In the shooting death of Dexter Reed, the agency released 17 of those files, including officers who arrived after the shooting. In the most recent video release by COPA, from January 2026, the agency released nine videos, including seven the agency tagged as occurring after the shooting.
Rivera’s family says partner ‘left her to die’
Rivera’s mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit last year alleging Baker was struggling to accept her daughter’s decision to end their romantic relationship when he fatally shot her during the foot chase.
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County court against Baker and the police department, says the breakup happened after Rivera learned that Baker was living with another woman while dating Rivera. Rivera threatened to tell his live-in girlfriend about their relationship.
The lawsuit alleges Baker showed up uninvited at Rivera’s home a day before Baker fatally shot Rivera.
After the shooting, Baker then “ran in the opposite direction and left her to die”, according to the lawsuit, which says he failed to provide medical aid, call for an ambulance or acknowledge he was the shooter.
Baker’s union president, John Catanzara, defended his conduct after the body camera video was released Friday.
“He reacted better in that situation than I want to say 90% of officers would, because it was that chaotic and tragic of a … scene,” said Catanzara, head of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police. “Many officers would have ran down the … stairs possibly right away … and subjecting themselves to then get shot.
“And then you’d have two shot officers on the staircase if the offenders were still in the apartment — which he had no idea that they had bailed at that point.”
Authorities arrested and charged one man, accused of pointing a gun toward Baker once he was in the apartment, within a couple days of the shooting. A second man, the one who Baker and Rivera had chased into the apartment, was arrested and charged about two weeks later.
Their cases are pending, court records show.
About a week after the shooting, a judge barred the release of any material related to the two criminal cases, or the administrative case opened against Baker after the shooting. The order prevented COPA from releasing videos within 60 days of the shooting, which is required by city ordinance.
The publisher of the Illinois Answers Project, the Sun-Times and other media organizations asked the judge to undo her secrecy order last summer. She declined, but an appeals court overturned her order in March as “an abuse of discretion.” COPA released videos and some files related to the shooting on Friday.
A checkered past
Officer Baker had racked up more than a dozen misconduct complaints by the time authorities say he inadvertently shot and killed Rivera as they confronted the two armed men inside an apartment filled with guns and drugs.
Baker accrued five of those complaints as a probationary officer, when he could have been summarily fired because he had few union protections.
During that time, Baker 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, especially for one so early in his career. Only 5% of Chicago police had six or more misconduct complaints from 2018 through 2023, according to data from the Invisible Institute.
Baker applied to the Gresham District’s tactical team in March 2024, but Patrol Chief Jon Hein quashed the move, citing Baker’s lengthy disciplinary history, according to an internal memo.
After submitting a second application in January 2025, Baker won a spot on the tactical team, a coveted and competitive position that’s often used as a stepping stone for promotions.
Between the two applications, Baker ran into more trouble.
Baker failed to activate his lights or sirens as he chased a stolen car in June 2024 that ultimately went flying into the air and wrecked into six other vehicless, records show. Baker then accidentally fired his Taser while chasing the driver over a fence. He was docked two days of pay over the crash.
In between applications, he was also found to have been insubordinate and to have called his sergeant an expletive, records show. Baker had worked on the tactical team for a few months before shooting Rivera.
Each time Baker applied to the team, he had the backing of his district commander, Michael Tate, who worked under Supt. Larry Snelling in areas of the department where Snelling held top command positions earlier in his career.
Tate has declined to comment since the shooting, and the Chicago Police Department hasn’t answered questions about the shooting or Baker’s conduct. Tate was promoted late last year to street deputy, a high-ranking position responsible for responding to and commanding the scene at major events citywide.
About the Author
Discover more from USA NEWS
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
