This story is a collaboration between the Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Carlos Baker, the Chicago police officer who shot and killed his partner Krystal Rivera during a foot pursuit earlier this year, allegedly attacked a female officer late Sunday at a bar in Wicker Park, the Chicago Sun-Times and Illinois Answers Project have learned.
The officer who was injured in the attack filed a police report while she was being treated for a split lip at Rush University Medical Center, alleging that Baker and another woman beat her late Sunday at DSTRKT Bar & Grill, 1540 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Baker and another woman approached the 29-year-old officer while she was waiting for a rideshare vehicle in the bar’s vestibule and pressured her to delete videos taken on her cellphone, according to police sources. During an argument over the videos, Baker and the woman allegedly hit the other officer in the face.
The injured officer escaped, with the help of others, and had a friend take her to Rush Hospital, where she got two stitches to close a cut on her swollen upper lip, sources said. An evidence technician documented the officer’s injuries at her home, sources said.
She told investigators she wasn’t at the bar with Baker or the other woman, and didn’t identify herself as an officer during the attack, sources said. It’s not clear what’s on the videos.
A COPA spokeswoman said the oversight agency is investigating the alleged attack. A police spokeswoman said no arrests have been made.
Baker fatally shot Rivera, a fellow Gresham District tactical officer, during a June 5 foot chase into a Chatham apartment filled with drugs and guns. Officials, and Baker’s lawyer, have referred to the shooting as an accident, but Rivera’s family has called for an outside investigation and the release of body camera videos taken that night.
A Sun-Times and Illinois Answers Project investigation revealed that Rivera had been a key witness to the theft of a Glock handgun that was turned over to police at a buyback event in December 2023 and then stolen from a room full of cops at the Gresham District station.
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Officer Carlos A. Baker has had more than a dozen complaints against him, records show.
Rivera told internal affairs investigators she tried to find the gun in her colleague’s bookbags once realizing it was missing. The gun was later used in a series of shootings and was ultimately found on a teenage boy.
“We have so many questions that need to be answered,” the family’s lawyer, Antonio Romanucci, said at a news conference last month. “And we don’t yet trust the narrative that Officer Rivera was shot and killed by her partner during a pursuit of suspects who never fired a shot.”
Baker’s short career as a cop has been marred by disciplinary problems from the start, including a complaint stemming from another interaction with a woman at a bar.
While Baker was still a probationary officer in late 2022, a woman he met on Instagram accused him of tracking her down while she was on a date and lifting his shirt to reveal a gun inside the Bluelight bar across from the police station at Belmont and Western avenues.
The investigation was handled by a special squad in the Civilian Office of Police Accountability that deals with sexual misconduct complaints, but it was never referred to the police department for a criminal investigation. COPA’s probe was closed when an investigator was unable to reach the victim, records show.
Baker has faced more than a dozen allegations of misconduct since joining the police department in December 2021. The complaint over the Bluelight incident and a handful of others were lodged when he was still a probationary officer and could have been summarily fired.
The police department hasn’t explained why Baker was able to keep his job when he was the subject of serious complaints during his probationary period. The department also declined to answer most other questions posed about Baker’s conduct or the shooting in June that left his partner dead.
The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge and a spokeswoman for Rivera’s family didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Baker couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Since Rivera’s death in early June, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office obtained an order preventing the release of records relating to the internal affairs investigation and an underlying criminal case against the suspects Baker and Rivera were chasing before the shooting.
That order prevented the release of video and other records that would have normally occurred 60 days after the shooting — about one week ago. COPA has said it did not, and does not, seek orders preventing the release of records.
The police department has pointed to that order in denying the release of records related to the shooting, and also denying the release of other records related to Baker and Rivera’s employment and conduct as officers.
The Better Government Association, which publishes Illinois Answers, the Sun-Times, NBC Chicago, and journalist Jamie Kalven filed a motion last week in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to undo the secrecy order preventing release of records in the case.
