Chicago police officer ‘inadvertently’ fired Taser a year before fatally shooting his partner

The Chicago cop who city officials say unintentionally shot and killed his partner during a foot pursuit last summer had previously told his bosses that he “inadvertently” fired his Taser after a high-speed car chase he failed to initially report a year earlier.

The car chase ended when the driver of a fleeing Jeep hit the train crossing at 89th Street so fast that it flew into the air and then crashed into six cars, according to records obtained by Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times. No one was seriously injured.

The crash and Officer Carlos Baker’s accidental firing of the Taser and failure to report the chase raise new questions about why he subsequently, in early 2025, was allowed to join a tactical team, a competitive position, in the Gresham District on the South Side.

Chief of Patrol Jon Hein rejected Baker’s first application to the tactical team in the spring of 2024, citing Baker’s poor disciplinary record. The car crash happened seven weeks later, in June 2024. In January 2025, Baker applied a second time, again after Gresham District Cmdr. Michel Tate recommended him. This time, Hein approved it even though police brass knew about the additional infractions.

In June 2025, three months after joining the tactical team, Baker shot and killed his partner, Officer Krystal Rivera, as they chased a man into an apartment building.

A lawyer for Rivera’s family wouldn’t comment. Baker’s attorney didn’t respond to questions.

The car chase happened as Baker and his partner were patrolling the area of 83rd Street and Racine Avenue because of recent license-plate reader "hits identifying stolen vehicles in … the area.” They said they spotted a Jeep Grand Cherokee they recognized from burglaries and that had sped away from them earlier in the day, a police report shows.

Baker was driving, according to video footage from his body-worn camera and department records. The pursuit happened within a roughly one-square-mile residential area bounded by 79th and 89th streets and Halsted Street and Ashland Avenue.

The Jeep reached speeds of up to 90 miles an hour, and Baker’s police SUV hit 85 mph, records show. Baker and his partner didn't turn on their car’s emergency lights or in-car camera, so the crash wasn’t captured on video.

And the officers didn’t notify anyone that they were involved in a high-speed chase until after the crash, records show.

Footage from Baker’s body camera shows him opening the driver’s-side door as the SUV is still moving and car horns are blaring amid the wreckage. He and his partner then start chasing an 18-year-old man down a gangway, according to the video.

The footage shows Baker firing his Taser once at the teen after the younger man hopped a fence. The prongs “only [made] contact with” the man’s sweatshirt, though, and he kept running down the alley, according to the video and police records.

Baker then pulled the trigger of his Taser a second time — “inadvertently,” he wrote in a report — as he tried to scale the fence next to a chained gate while holding the Taser in his right hand.

Baker’s partner found the teenager sitting on the front steps of a house with wrecked cars surrounding Baker’s marked police vehicle.

Baker said he made his first Taser trigger pull because he believed the man he was chasing was “armed,” according to a use-of-force report filled out after the chase. His second trigger pull, described as unintentional, was disclosed in the same report.

“Inadvertently, another trigger pull was activated on the Taser when I climbed the fence to locate offender,” Baker wrote.

About a week after the crash, a lieutenant filed a complaint against Baker, saying he never heard Baker and his partner report over the police radio that they were chasing the Jeep, as department policy requires. It doesn’t appear that any supervisor filed a complaint against Baker for mishandling the Taser, but his lieutenant and sergeant talked to him about “the importance of weapon retention,” police records show.

Baker told a sergeant he thought he followed the department’s balancing test for car chases, which requires officers to weigh the potential capture of criminals against the risk of hurting bystanders. The teenage driver was convicted of receiving or possessing a stolen vehicle and was sentenced to probation.

The city of Chicago has paid more than $100 million in recent years to pedestrians, drivers and passengers killed or injured during police pursuits — though the car chase policy has been overhauled, often after those settlements.

An internal investigation into the car chase was closed on Jan. 15, 2025, with investigators agreeing with an assessment by the department’s Traffic Review Board that found both officers violated orders governing car chases and recommended discipline against Baker and his partner in September 2024.

Baker was docked two days of pay over the crash, records show.

Eight days after the internal investigation was closed, he submitted his second application to the tactical team. He was brought onto the team in the spring.

Police officials have declined to answer questions about why Baker’s appointment was approved after he accrued additional disciplinary complaints between his two applications to join the tactical team and would not discuss the new revelations. Baker also had been found to have been insubordinate and to have called his sergeant an expletive in the time between the two applications.

Tate, the district commander who nominated Baker to the team both times, has since been promoted to deputy chief. He has declined to comment on why he sponsored him.

Rivera’s shooting death remains under investigation. Officials have said little about the circumstances, aside from calling it unintentional.

Body-camera footage and police reports related to such an incident normally must be released within 60 days under the city’s video release policy, but a judge has blocked the release of those materials in this case.

Rivera’s family has sued the city, saying Baker “left her to die” after shooting her. They said Rivera had threatened to expose their romantic relationship, which she had recently ended after learning Baker had a long-term, live-in girlfriend.

The family has said that Baker could have been fired long before the shooting for racking up disciplinary complaints when he was still a probationary officer.