‘I need to understand what happened': Family of Officer Krystal Rivera asks for answers as lawyers announce civil investigation
The slain officer's parents and their attorney also asked that the city release the body-worn camera footage that captured the fatal June 5 shooting — despite a standing order from a Cook County judge preventing the public release.
Rivera's mother Yolanda and stepfather Rico Thompson, flanked by friends, family and staff at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, said her mother needed to understand what happened June 5 to make Rivera the first CPD officer to die of friendly fire in nearly 40 years.
'I need to understand what happened that night,' Yolanda Rivera said. 'I need to know the truth. Krystal believed in protecting and serving with honor. Please honor her. Let this moment be guided by truth.'
Her stepfather echoed that thought, asking city leaders to be open.
'We are here asking both Mayor Johnson and Superintendent Snelling for full transparency,' Thompson said. 'We as a family need answers and believe the people of Chicago deserve them as well.'
Attorney Antonio Romanucci stopped short of announcing plans for a lawsuit against the city, but said 'we are looking at all our civil avenues of justice' and that some of those avenues were 'very viable.'
Romanucci ticked through a long list of questions about the shooting and said they needed to know more about Officer Carlos Baker, whom the Civilian Office of Police Accountability has identified as the fellow tactical officer who accidentally shot Rivera as she pursued a suspect down a hallway of a Chatham apartment building.
Romanucci noted six complaints were lodged against Baker in his relatively short career with CPD, including an allegation that he flashed a gun at a woman he had been talking to while she was on a date with another man inside a restaurant. Other allegations included excessive force and neglect of duty, according to records from the city's Office of Inspector General.
'We believe that the warning signs had been there for years,' Romanucci said. 'He never should have been an officer. In other licensed professions, this type of probationary behavior would have been the end of that person's career.'
Rivera and Baker, both part of the Gresham (6th) District tactical team, were trying to make a traffic stop on a suspect and chased him into an apartment at 8210 S. Drexel Ave., police have said. Inside the apartment, they met a man later identified as 25-year-old Adrian Rucker, of Freeport, who allegedly pointed a rifle at them.
Prosecutors said that Rivera was running down a hallway when she was shot. Authorities late last month charged Jaylin Arnold, 27, with multiple felonies in connection with Rivera's death.
The family had seen some of the body-camera footage that captured the shooting, but Romanucci said they still had many questions about how the attempted arrest and shooting unfolded.
'If that event were as clear as what's being portrayed, we wouldn't be standing at this podium right now,' he said.
Although an order from a Cook County judge prohibits the release of the body-worn camera footage pending trial for two people who are in custody in connection with the shooting, Romanucci suggested that the order could be modified at the request of CPD and the Cook County state's attorney's office.
'The shooting incident remains under the jurisdiction of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability,' Chicago police said after the news conference. 'The officer involved will remain on routine administration duties.'
The state's attorney's office immediately responded to a request for comment.
The Cook County medical examiner's office ruled Rivera's death a homicide by gunshot wound to the back. The Tribune has requested a copy of the full autopsy report, though it's not yet finalized, according to the medical examiner. A CPD incident report from the night of the shooting said Rivera was shot in her left flank.
In a short, emotional statement, Yolanda Rivera said she would continue to care for her granddaughter as she mourned her daughter, whom she described as 'the light of my life.'
'We spoke every single day,' she said. 'She was the one that I turned to for comfort, for laughter, for strength. There wasn't a part of my world that didn't include her.'
Fatal friendly fire involving CPD officers is exceedingly rare. City records show Rivera was the first Chicago cop in nearly four decades to die by a colleague's bullet.
In September 1986, Jay Brunkella, a 39-year-old tactical officer in the Rogers Park District (24th), was among a team of officers conducting surveillance on a longtime marijuana dealer who operated north of Howard Street.
Brunkella, an 18-year department veteran, and his partner left their post and tried to take the man into custody. With his police radio in one hand and his pistol in the other, Brunkella's partner struggled to arrest the suspect. During the scuffle, the partner's gun discharged and a bullet struck Brunkella in the chest.
He died 12 days later, and the drug dealer was charged with felony murder. A jury later found him guilty and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Two jurors, however, soon contacted the judge who oversaw the case to say the conviction was wrong. Three CPD officers told the judge that the officer who shot Brunkella had shot and wounded another CPD officer years earlier, the Tribune reported at the time.
Cook County court records show the man appealed his conviction to the state appellate court but was denied.
Though two men now face an array of weapons and narcotics charges in connection with the shooting of Krystal Rivera, neither faces a count of murder in her death.
A Cook County judge last month granted a motion from the Cook County state's attorney's office that prohibits any city agency from releasing materials related to the shooting — officer body-worn camera and other memoranda — as those criminal cases are pending. Similar orders are often entered in criminal cases that stem from police shootings, and those orders are lifted once a case is adjudicated.
Matt McGrath, a spokesman for the state's attorney's office, said in a statement last month that said the motion is standard in criminal cases.
'To clarify, the motion to shield body-worn camera footage in this case is standard and related to the ongoing criminal prosecution of two defendants charged with serious felony gun and narcotics possession offenses — neither of whom is a police officer,' McGrath said in the statement.
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