Young Chicago cops are being arrested or killed at alarming rates amid department's staffing crisis

Months after Kyjuan Tate entered the Chicago Police Academy, he found himself on the wrong side of the law.

During an alcohol-fueled fight at a Blue Island bowling alley, Tate pulled out a pistol, pressed it against another man’s head and pulled the trigger, authorities say. A bullet pierced the man’s ear, then traveled through another patron’s chest and ended up lodged in a hand of the bowling alley’s manager.

Tate was arrested after the Jan. 11, 2022, shooting, and a Glock handgun was found in his car, prosecutors have said. Three days later, the probationary officer was fired. It was less than nine months after he went on the city's payroll.

Tate is among 64 recruits and officers hired since 2016 the Chicago Sun-Times identified as having been axed by the Chicago Police Department.

Twenty-five other early career cops have resigned while under investigation or quit to avoid being fired. Despite their disciplinary issues, 19 are now working for other police agencies across the state, according to state records.

The findings underscore a staffing crisis that affects nearly every facet of the Chicago Police Department’s operations. With far fewer people applying to become cops, experts say Chicago can’t afford to be as picky as in the past in screening out marginal candidates who might cause problems after they’re hired.

Anthony Riccio, who retired in 2020 as second-in-command, says the department is now more inclined to overlook applicants’ red flags — like past arrests and issues with debt — because the pool of candidates is so small.

Riccio says new hires who get into trouble damage the department’s reputation and make it harder to recruit.

“It ruins the perception of the professional police officer that everybody wants to have,” he says. “You call 911, you want the best police officer showing up. You want somebody who’s professional, who knows what they’re doing, who’s going to help you, work with you, try to resolve your situation, whatever that situation might be.

“And I think when you call 911, a lot of times you’re not getting that any more.”

Chicago’s police staffing problems have stemmed in part from early-career cops leaving, many for other police departments. One in six cops hired by the police department since 2016 is no longer on the city payroll, with 42% landing at other Illinois law enforcement agencies or the Chicago Fire Department, the Sun-Times found.

Twenty-one more young officers have died over the same period, seven of them killed in the line of duty and four who died by suicide, which experts say shows the risks of policing a city with serious crime problems and the toll that takes on officers.

Meanwhile, a string of embarrassments has raised questions about recruitment efforts and a decision in 2022 to lower hiring standards.

Like Tate, whose criminal case is pending in court, the Sun-Times found that 16 other young cops have ended up in police custody and washed out with the Chicago Police Department. Another probationary officer was fired after she was wounded in a shooting in September 2022. She had failed a drug test days earlier, according to law enforcement sources.

To protect the department's reputation, police Supt. Larry Snelling says it's important to first weed out applicants with troubling pasts by conducting stringent background checks. Police officials must then keep a close eye on those who make it through to the police academy, Snelling says.

"When we have someone that we found has done something that’s embarrassing to the department, we have to make sure that we get rid of those people immediately when they come through that academy," he says. "There’s a probationary period for officers. And, when we see that an officer is just not fit for the job or just doesn’t believe in coloring inside the lines, we also have to make sure that we remove those officers from the job.

"It doesn’t make them bad people. It just makes them bad for the job.”

BOOTED OVER CRIMES

D’Angelo Silvar had been in the police academy less than two months when the police say he attacked another man near a funeral home near Midway Airport on June 20, 2023. The victim was "undergoing the recruitment process," according to a police report, but records show he isn't employed by the department.

Wearing a ski mask, Silvar approached the man from behind, struck him in the head and kicked him while he was “balled up” on the ground, then threatened that he was “going to beat the f--- out of him” if they crossed paths at the academy, according to the report.

Silvar — identified by a tattoo — was fired three days later, the same day he was arrested for misdemeanor battery.

Convicted in May, he was sentenced to a year of court supervision.

In other incidents, Chicago police employees have been charged with harming their co-workers.

Korey Giles was initially charged with attacking his ex-girlfriend, a fellow cop, in the fall of 2022. Almost a year later — on Oct. 10, 2023 — he was found guilty of misdemeanor battery, and he quit the department a day later after nearly five years on the job.

A day after that, he's accused of breaking in to the same woman’s home and pushing another man down a flight of stairs, according to a police report. He also was accused of taking a nude photo of the other man, identified as a Cook County sheriff’s officer.

Giles faces charges including felony counts of home invasion, residential burglary and disseminating sexual images without consent. He has been released on electronic monitoring and is appealing his earlier conviction, court records show.

Sheila Bedi, a Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law professor, says the incidence of young Chicago cops getting arrested “doesn’t seem inconsistent with CPD’s long history of officers who engage in both violations of people’s rights and horrific acts of violence.”

“And I would say that is particularly true with regards to the domestic violence allegations,” Bedi says.

She is representing the family of Dexter Reed, who was fatally wounded in a gunfight that erupted after Reed shot an officer during a traffic stop in Humboldt Park in March.

A lawsuit she filed on behalf of the family targets the city of Chicago and the five officers involved in the incident, all hired between June 2018 and November 2021.

Not wanting to end up on YouTube

Young cops are often thrust into dangerous situations, and seven have died in the line of duty in recent years.

Officers Andres Vasquez Lasso, Ella French and Samuel Jimenez were killed in on-duty shootings. Officers Luis Huesca and Aréanah Preston were fatally shot in separate attacks as they returned home from work in their uniforms. And officers Conrad Gary and Eduardo Marmolejo were struck by a commuter train while chasing a crime suspect.

Snelling says officers have been increasingly targeted in violent attacks and must be prepared.

"We want to make sure that our officers are equipped with some deescalation skills when they can actually deescalate," he says. "But we're also training our officers to respond when they know that there's a possibility that their lives or the lives of other people are on the line."

But Riccio questions whether officers are reluctant to “draw their weapon because of fear of either discipline [or] lawsuits.”

“A lot of officers will tell you that they drill into their head that, if you use deadly force, and it turns out that that was not appropriate that you’re looking at going to prison, you’re going to be the next YouTube video or the next video on the news,” he says.

Two of the 14 other officers who have died since being hired in 2016 were killed in off-duty shootings. That includes German Villasenor, who was shot and killed by his wife Jacqueline Villasenor, who was also a Chicago cop.

On Nov. 2, 2021, the couple was arguing over an affair Jacqueline Villasenor previously had, and she pulled out a handgun and threatened to shoot herself, according to prosecutors. During a struggle over the gun, it fired, and a bullet pierced German Villasenor’s chest.

Jacqueline Villasenor is charged with involuntary manslaughter. She resigned from the police department in December 2022.

Suicides affect young cops

Four early-career officers in Chicago have died by suicide in recent years, adding to a toll that has prompted calls for adding mental health resources for cops.

Alexa James, chief executive officer of the Chicago office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, consults with the department to ensure that officer wellness is prioritized through training.

James says the department has made significant strides in addressing the mental health needs of its rank-and-file members after a number of suicides.

Between 2016 and 2023, 31 department employees died by suicide. In 2022, the most devastating year for officer suicides in that span, seven Chicago cops took their own lives.

That year, James slammed then-Supt. David Brown’s policy of routinely canceling officers’ days off to shore up staffing, calling the practice “inhumane.”

She credits Snelling, who previously was a longtime department trainer, as “a real steadying force” who has prioritized officer wellness.

This year, three officers have died by suicide.

James says probationary cops need reliable mentoring before they patrol the streets without the guidance of a field training officer.

She also says she hopes the department’s counseling division will start monitoring new officers and offering guidance about sleep schedules, substance use, relationships and finances.

“You also have to hire people who have insight,” James says. “Part of resilience is insight. We need people who have the ability and are far away enough from their own self-stigma to know: I’m not feeling right, I need to ask for help.”