Gresham Tactical Unit Shooting: The Fatal Shooting of Officer Krystal Rivera by Partner Carlos Baker and the Department’s Reckoning with Its Own Oversight Failures

In a tragedy that has deeply rattled the Chicago Police Department, five names rise with central weight and devastating clarity: Officer Carlos A. Baker, the 26-year-old tactical unit member who fired the shot; Officer Krystal Rivera, his 27-year-old partner and the unintended victim of that fatal bullet; Tim Grace, the attorney speaking in Baker’s defense; and two unnamed armed suspects whose presence inside a South Side apartment on June 5, 2025, set off a chain of events that would lead to Rivera’s death. As the department mourns Rivera, a promising officer fatally struck by friendly fire, it is also being forced to confront its own institutional decisions—choices that placed an officer with a deep disciplinary history in a high-stakes environment with fatal consequences.

The shooting occurred in the Gresham neighborhood, a region long associated with elevated gun violence and strategic policing efforts. Officers Baker and Rivera, members of the district’s tactical team, were responding to reports of an armed suspect near the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue. Inside the apartment building, they encountered not one but two armed individuals. It was the presence of the second suspect—one who allegedly raised an AR-style pistol in Baker’s direction—that set the stage for the fatal misfire. In the chaotic seconds that followed, Baker discharged his service weapon. The bullet struck Officer Rivera in the back. She was later pronounced dead, becoming the first Chicago officer killed by friendly fire in nearly four decades.

Officer Baker, sworn in as a Chicago police officer in December 2021, had already compiled a disturbing record in his short tenure. Over a dozen misconduct complaints had been filed against him. He had received three suspensions, two formal reprimands, and had become the subject of internal investigations ranging from on-duty procedural errors to threatening behavior during off-duty hours. One complaint came on the very first shift of his career—an allegation that he failed to arrest a home invasion suspect. Despite the early red flags, Baker was not terminated during his probationary period, nor was he restricted from joining a tactical team. That decision, now under scrutiny, enabled his assignment to one of CPD’s most sensitive and dangerous operational units.

Tactical teams like the one assigned to the Gresham District are charged with proactive policing, often focused on guns, gangs, and narcotics. These teams, which operate in high-crime neighborhoods such as Chatham and Gresham, require rapid judgment, calm under pressure, and technical precision. Officer Rivera had been hired ten months before Baker and was also assigned to this unit. According to department records, her standing was unblemished. Her role in the unit was active and, at least in one documented instance, exemplary: she had been a cooperating witness in an earlier investigation involving the theft of a department-issued firearm—a matter that has now drawn renewed attention.

The shooting of Rivera did not happen in isolation, nor did it emerge from a vacuum. It was the product of a personnel structure that placed an officer with multiple warning signs in one of the department’s most demanding roles. Baker’s record includes deeply troubling allegations. In December 2022, for instance, he was accused of confronting a woman he met online. When he encountered her at a bar with another man, Baker—off duty at the time—allegedly lifted his shirt to reveal a firearm in his waistband while issuing threatening remarks. The woman contacted 911 but later declined to pursue the matter further. With no cooperation from the complainant, the case was closed without disciplinary action.

In 2023, Baker was involved in another serious incident during a traffic stop. Acting on flawed DMV data, he and another officer detained and searched a driver in what was later determined to be a legally registered vehicle. Not only was the stop mistaken, but it was also procedurally flawed. Baker was suspended for five days for failing to document the stop correctly and for conducting an unlawful search. His pattern of procedural missteps extended beyond the realm of encounters with civilians. He was also cited for two preventable on-duty vehicle collisions—one of which resulted in a formal suspension—and was reprimanded in yet another incident for failing to file a required report.

What emerges is a troubling pattern of conduct: procedural failure, poor judgment, misuse of authority, and an alarming familiarity with the mechanisms of discipline. Yet the consequences were insufficient to derail his career trajectory. Instead, Baker continued to ascend—into the tactical unit, into public visibility, and into riskier assignments.

Baker was also a presence online. He attracted public attention through TikTok, where videos of him in uniform at events like the Sueños Music Festival gained widespread popularity. One such clip received over 23 million views. While such visibility earned him notoriety, it also stirred internal criticism. For a department already wrestling with perceptions of excessive force, poor oversight, and political volatility, the juxtaposition of uniformed levity and high-risk misconduct was difficult to reconcile. Baker, for some, symbolized a new generation of police officers—digitally fluent but operationally inconsistent.

The June 5 shooting not only reignited these internal debates but placed them in the harshest light imaginable. Officer Rivera was not merely a casualty of violence—she was a victim of departmental failure. The bullet that killed her passed through layers of ignored warning signs and administrative inertia. It passed through every complaint filed, every report unheeded, and every missed opportunity for intervention.

The response has been immediate, though constrained. Officer Baker has been placed on administrative duty, a standard measure in all officer-involved shootings. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) has opened a formal inquiry into both the shooting itself and Baker’s broader disciplinary history. The department has refused further comment, citing a court-imposed gag order that limits disclosures regarding the ongoing case. Meanwhile, Rivera’s name has entered the painful register of CPD officers lost in the line of duty—a list that rarely includes those killed by their own.

Baker’s attorney, Tim Grace, has framed the incident as an unavoidable tragedy. In a public statement, Grace acknowledged the heartbreak of the moment and asked that judgment be withheld. “Officer Baker is heartbroken over what happened that night and is privately processing his grief,” he said. “The focus should be on the profound loss of a dedicated officer and person, not second-guessing every tactical decision made in a high-pressure moment. Policing is dangerous work.” His defense echoes a familiar refrain: the split-second decision, the chaos of the field, the impossibility of perfection in life-or-death situations.

Yet the context Baker carries is unique. Very few officers reach the number of complaints he did so early in their careers. In fact, according to records reviewed by the Illinois Answers Project and COPA, only 5% of Chicago officers between 2018 and 2023 accumulated six or more complaints—a threshold Baker had already surpassed before his second anniversary with the department. Each complaint, each suspension, added a new layer to the risk calculus that would eventually collapse on June 5.

Officer Rivera had no such record. She had been a cooperative witness in an internal investigation involving a stolen weapon in her district, a fact department records confirmed. While some news outlets have speculated about the implications of that theft and whether it had any indirect link to the June 5 incident, current information shows that Rivera herself was not under investigation. She had, in fact, tried to locate the missing firearm, reportedly checking the belongings of colleagues once she became aware it was missing. That particular gun theft investigation, reopened after inquiries from the media, casts a longer shadow now—partly because of Rivera’s role, but more so because of the fatal consequence that followed in the same district.

While Officer Rivera’s colleagues mourn and the department limits its statements, a broader reckoning has begun. Advocacy groups and public commentators are questioning how officers with records like Baker’s end up in high-risk tactical teams. What is the metric for acceptable misconduct? At what point does a pattern trigger disqualification from sensitive assignments? And who is accountable when it does not?

Tactical units, by design, are structured for aggressive, preemptive policing. Their work places officers in volatile environments, demands fast decision-making, and often occurs with less oversight than routine patrol. The very conditions that make tactical units effective in crime prevention also heighten the risks when officers within them have unresolved behavioral issues. Rivera’s death is a stark illustration of what can happen when those risks are not properly managed.

The incident also highlights the fragility of public trust in CPD. The department is no stranger to scandal. For decades, it has weathered accusations of systemic abuse, cover-ups, and failed reform efforts. In recent years, federal scrutiny and community outcry have forced the department to reexamine everything from its use-of-force policies to its disciplinary frameworks. The death of Officer Rivera, caused not by a criminal but by a fellow officer, reopens those wounds in particularly painful ways.

There are institutional tools meant to catch officers like Baker before they become a liability. Early intervention systems track behavioral red flags. Internal Affairs conducts investigations. Supervisors can flag problematic patterns. And COPA exists as a civilian oversight mechanism precisely to prevent misconduct from spiraling into catastrophe. But in this case, those tools failed—or were never activated in time.

If the shooting prompts any lasting change, it may be in how these tools are used. Already, city leaders and police accountability advocates are calling for stricter thresholds for tactical assignments, faster disciplinary action for repeat offenders, and a reassessment of the cultural incentives within elite police units. Questions are being raised about the blurred line between visibility and vanity—between an officer’s public image and their operational readiness.

Officer Krystal Rivera, remembered now as the victim in this haunting narrative, was more than a statistic. Her presence in the Gresham tactical unit was marked not by controversy but by commitment. Her cooperation in an internal investigation and her assignment to one of the city’s most challenging units reflect a career trajectory headed in a promising direction. That she died not from criminal hostility but from institutional miscalculation is a tragedy compounded by preventability.

For now, the city of Chicago waits—on toxicology reports, on disciplinary hearings, on the final findings from COPA. But even in this pause, the outlines of a larger reckoning are visible. The death of Officer Rivera has become more than an isolated mistake. It is a test of what a department learns from its own errors, and whether it can evolve before the next crisis arrives.