Due to the department’s staffing crisis, young police officers in Chicago are being arrested or killed at alarming rates

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

During a drunken brawl at a Blue Island bowling alley, Tate pulled out a handgun, pressed it against another man’s head and pulled the trigger, authorities say. A bullet pierced the man’s ear, then pierced another patron’s chest and finally lodged in the bowling alley operator’s hand.

According to prosecutors, Tate was arrested after the shooting on January 11, 2022, and a Glock pistol was found in his car. The probation officer was released three days later. It took him less than nine months to get on the city’s payroll.

Tate is among 64 recruits and officers fired from the Chicago Police Department since 2016, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Twenty-five other early career police officers resigned during the investigation or resigned to avoid firing. Despite their disciplinary problems, 19 of them currently work for other police departments across the state, according to state records.

The findings highlight a staffing crisis that affects nearly every aspect of the Chicago Police Department’s work. With far fewer people applying to be police officers, experts say Chicago can’t afford to be as picky as it has been in the past in selecting marginal candidates who could cause problems once hired.

Anthony Riccio, who retired as a deputy in 2020, says the department is now more inclined to overlook applicants’ red flags — such as previous arrests and debt problems — because the candidate pool is so small.

Riccio says new hires who get into trouble damage the department’s reputation and make recruiting difficult.

“It ruins the perception of the professional police officer that everyone wants,” he said. “You call 911 and want the best cop to show up. You want someone who is professional, who knows what they are doing, who will help you, work with you, and try to resolve your situation, whatever it may be.

“And I think a lot of times when you call 911, you don’t get that anymore.”

The Chicago police department’s staffing problems stem in part from the migration of officers early in their careers, many to other police departments. One in six officers hired by the police department since 2016 are no longer on the city’s payroll, with 42% ending up at other law enforcement agencies in Illinois or the Chicago Fire Department, the Sun-Times found.

Since 2016, 5,747 people have been hired

956 of them are no longer on the city’s payroll

320 of them are now employed by other police stations

Source: Chicago Police Department
Jesse Howe/Sun Times

During the same period, 21 other young police officers died, seven of whom died in the line of duty and four died by suicide. That highlights the risks of policing in a city with serious crime problems and the toll it takes on officers, experts say.

Meanwhile, a series of embarrassments have raised questions about recruiting 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 officers have fallen into police custody and disappeared from the Chicago Police Department. Another parolee was fired after she was injured in a shooting in September 2022. According to law enforcement, she had failed a drug test days earlier.

To protect the department’s reputation, police Sut. Larry Snelling says it’s important to first screen out applicants with troubling pasts through rigorous background checks. Police officers then need to keep a close eye on those who make it to the police academy, Snelling says.

“If we find that someone has done something that is embarrassing to the department, we need to make sure we get rid of those people immediately as they come through the academy,” he says. “There is a probationary period for civil servants. And if we determine that an officer is simply not fit for the job or simply doesn’t believe in playing by the rules, we must also ensure that we remove those officers from the job.

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

Booted out for crimes

D’Angelo Silvar had been in the police academy less than two months when police said he attacked another man near a funeral home near Midway Airport on June 20, 2023. According to a police report, the victim was “in the recruiting process.” , but records show he is not employed by the department.

Wearing a ski mask, Silvar approached the man from behind, punched him in the head and kicked him as he lay “balled up” on the ground. According to the report, their paths crossed at the academy.

Silvar – identified by a tattoo – was released three days later, the same day he was arrested for assault.

In May he was sentenced to one year of court supervision.

In other incidents, Chicago police officers have been accused of harming their colleagues.

Korey Giles was initially charged with attacking his ex-girlfriend, a fellow police officer, in the fall of 2022. Nearly a year later — on Oct. 10, 2023 — he was found guilty of assault and left the department a day later after nearly five years on the job.

A day later, he is accused of breaking into the same woman’s home and pushing another man down a flight of stairs, according to a police report. He was also accused of taking a nude photo of the other man, who was a Cook County sheriff’s officer.

Giles is charged with, among other things, trespassing, home invasion and distributing sexual images without consent. He was released on electronic monitoring and is appealing his previous conviction, court records show.

Sheila Bedi, a professor at the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University, says the frequency of arrests of young Chicago police officers “does not seem inconsistent with the long history of CPD officers both violating human rights and committing horrific acts of violence.” .”

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

She represents the family of Dexter Reed, who was fatally injured in a shooting that erupted after Reed shot and killed an officer during a traffic stop in Humboldt Park in March.

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

I don’t want to end up on YouTube

Young police officers often find themselves in 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 hit by a local train while chasing a suspect.

Snelling says officers are increasingly falling victim to violent attacks and need to be prepared.

“We want to make sure that our officers have some de-escalation skills if they can actually de-escalate,” he said. “But we also train our officers to respond when they know there is a possibility that their life or the lives of other people are at stake.”

But Riccio wonders if officers are afraid to “draw their guns” for fear of one discipline or another. [or] Lawsuits.”

“A lot of cops will tell you they’ve got it drilled into their head that if you use deadly force, you’re the next YouTube, and it turns out it wasn’t appropriate to go to jail for that video or the next video on the news “, he says.

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

On Nov. 2, 2021, the couple argued about an affair Jacqueline Villasenor had previously had and she pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot herself, prosecutors said. During a struggle over the weapon, she fired and a bullet pierced the German Villasenor’s chest.

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

Suicides affect young police officers

In recent years, four early-career officers in Chicago have died by suicide. This has increased the number of victims, leading to calls for more mental health resources for police officers.

Alexa James, executive director of the Chicago office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is consulting with the department to ensure officer well-being is prioritized through training.

James says the department has made significant progress in addressing the mental health needs of its rank-and-file members following a series of suicides.

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

That year, James slammed then-Supt. David Brown’s policy of regularly eliminating officers’ days off to bolster staffing levels, calling the practice “inhumane.”

She called Snelling, who was previously a longtime department instructor, a “real sustaining force” who prioritized officer well-being.

This year, three officers have died by suicide.

James says probation officers need reliable supervision before patrolling the streets without the guidance of a field officer.

She also hopes the department’s counseling department will begin monitoring new officers and offering advice on sleep schedules, substance use, relationships and finances.

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