On June 5th, Krystal Rivera was gunned down by a fellow pig in the Chicago Police Department (CPD). According to the cops, Rivera and her partner, Carlos Baker, were conducting an “investigatory stop” (CPD’s new age term for stop and frisk) in the southside Chatham neighborhood when a suspect took off on foot and ran inside an apartment. After the pigs ran after him, they claim a second suspect pulled out a rifle and pointed it at them, leading to her Baker shooting Rivera in the back in a “friendly fire” incident. The only gun that fired a shot was Baker’s.
Instead of calling an ambulance for Rivera, Baker decided to drive Rivera to the hospital himself, and along the way, their squad car somehow caught on fire. He then called in another car to transfer Rivera’s body to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Not even an hour after news broke of the incident, both Mayor Brandon Johnson and Superintendent Larry Snelling were in front of the press, insinuating that Rivera was killed by the two suspects they encountered while “keeping the city safe”. When the news came out the next day that Rivera was actually killed by her fellow pig, Johnson and Snelling quickly changed the script, calling the shooting a tragic “accident.”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported Rivera was a central figure in the 2023 CPD buyback scandal, where a Glock .45 turned in to Chicago Police wound up back on the street, was involved in three separate shootings, and then retrieved a year later from an arrest of a 16-year-old in South Shore. Rivera’s unit was responsible for the buyback, and her name and signature were on the log for the missing Glock. The Sun-Times also reported that Rivera’s shooter, Carlos Baker, has accumulated a long list of misconduct complaints over his brief 4-year career. CPD has concealed the nature of these complaints due to the “ongoing investigation.”
Since Rivera’s killing by CPD, two young men have been charged “in connection” with her death. Adrian Rucker and Jaylin Arnold were both arrested and charged with “armed violence” as well as a litany of unrelated charges, claiming Jaylin was the person CPD was chasing, and Adrian was the one who pulled out a rifle. Both of them are rotting inside Cook County Jail as they wait for their day in court and are being dragged through the media as the individuals responsible for Rivera’s death. Meanwhile, the Cook County state’s attorney has barred the public release of bodycam footage that could show what happened to Rivera that night.
Gangsters with Badges
Rivera’s death raises many questions and reeks of a cover-up. Did Rivera know something about the missing Glock in the buyback? Was her unit responsible for it going back on the street, and was she going to speak up? Why was Rivera’s dying body transferred in a squad car, and how did it catch on fire? Why is the state attorney’s office concealing the bodycam footage from the public? Why are Jaylin and Adrian being held responsible when they didn’t pull the trigger? Why have there been no charges brought against the killer cop, and how are Johnson and Snelling so certain this was an accident?
Could it be that this pig took advantage of the situation to take out Rivera, a potential key witness to the buyback scandal? If so, it would by no means be the first incident of cops resorting to murder to cover up their crimes. On November 16, 2017, Sean Suiter, a Baltimore Police Department homicide detective, was found dead with a shot in the head, a day before he was scheduled to testify in front of a federal grand jury against corrupt police connected to the Gun Trace Task Force, a tactical team who were selling guns and drugs on the streets of Baltimore. The Los Angeles Sheriffs Department runs rampant with literal LASD gangs, cliques of officers calling themselves the “Banditos”, “Reapers”, and “Executioners,” etc. These deputy gangs have well-documented histories of physically assaulting, intimidating, and issuing death threats to their fellow pigs who get out of line or blow the whistle on them. According to the Invisible Institute, there are more than 150 similar police gangs in the CPD today.
Chicago is also a city known for its corruption. From politicians to police, the city has a long history of powerful people taking advantage of their positions and fucking people over. CPD, in particular, has a deeply ingrained culture of gangsterism. Throughout the 2000s, Sergeant Ronald Watts led a crew that was well-known for shaking down drug dealers in the Ida B. Wells housing projects, taking a cut of the sales. They used their authority to arrest and frame those who got in the way or wouldn’t cooperate. When Watts and his crew were exposed by a CPD detective and an FBI agent, the whistleblowers faced intimidation and death threats from their fellow officers. More recently, a CPD tactical team on the Southside was discovered to be stealing guns, drugs, and money during “pretextual stops” (CPD’s policy of stop and frisk for drivers). Both the Cook County state’s attorney and the FBI have refused to prosecute. These cases are resulting in multi-million dollar lawsuits that are further bankrupting the city. Rivera’s shooter, Baker, once pulled a gun on a woman he had gone on a date with previously while she was out with another man, macho posturing like a wannabe gangster.
Krystal’s own family isn’t buying it either. On July 2nd, they came out to call for an independent investigation stating the inestigation is not being be handled the way it would “had she been shot and killed by someone not wearing a CPD uniform.” If you ask most people on the street who live under the gun of the police, they’ll tell you CPD corruption is alive and well. It’s no secret. Even under a federal consent decree, body cams, and years of “reform”, CPD continues to move like the mob.
Why do killer cops go free?
While the “people’s mayor” cries tears of grief for his fallen comrade Rivera and makes public statements about what happened that night, he continues to remain silent about the civilians his CPD has gunned down under his administration. Timothy Glaze was murdered inside a Chicago Housing Authority apartment building on January 3rd, and Johnson has made no mention of him, even after being confronted by Dare to Struggle and Timothy’s partner, Charlotta Pritchett, on multiple occasions. Six months after Timothy’s killing, Johnson still lies and says he “doesn’t know the details of the case,” and yet he knows every detail of Rivera’s within days of her killing. When 19-year-old Nate Ferejang was killed by CPD only days earlier, Johnson had nothing to say about this matter either. His silence is deafening.
While there are many questions about the specifics of Rivera’s killing, we know that CPD is a swamp of corruption. The killer cop Baker continues to walk the streets while Adrian and Jaylin are being blamed
for the shooting. They languish inside CCJ’s Division 11 as they wait for trial, used as scapegoats while the cop who fired the fatal shot roams free. If someone other than a cop killed someone in this way, even “by accident”, they would be held accountable and charged. But when it’s one of the pigs, CPD can easily control the narrative, find some fall guys, and let another trigger-happy pig go back to work.
It’s time to fight back
Are these the people who are supposed to keep Chicago safe? The ones who put guns back on the street, chase Black and Latino kids down in tactical teams, kill people (even their own) with impunity, and frame people for crimes they didn’t commit? This is exactly why many people under the boot of these pigs call them “the biggest gang in Chicago”: not only are they crooked criminals who prey on the people, they have the whole system backing them up when shit goes south. Despite all their reforms, pigs can’t rid themselves of corruption and gangsterism; they thrive on it. The ruling class encourages and needs these pigs on the street to keep their boots on their necks of the masses. The people need to mob up and drive these pigs back to the pig pen where they belong, and take back our streets. You in?
Dare to Struggle 