CHICAGO — Newly released documents show the officers who were involved in a shootout that killed Dexter Reed last month in Humboldt Park are being investigated for several other traffic stops that drivers said were unwarranted.
The Reed case has garnered national attention since videos of the shootout were released Tuesday by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates uses of force by Chicago police. Officials have said Reed shot at officers first, wounding one, and that led to the shootout — but questions are swirling about why officers stopped Reed as he drove around Humboldt Park that day.
And on Friday, documents provided to Block Club Chicago by the agency under a Freedom of Information Act request showed officers involved in the shootout had been the target of several complaints for making traffic stops that drivers said were unwarranted.
Officials at the oversight agency said this week that officers stopped Reed on March 21 for not wearing a seat belt — but Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the agency, wrote a letter to police Supt. Larry Snelling last week calling into question the “veracity” of that.
Investigators are uncertain how officers would have seen Reed wasn’t wearing a seat belt given their positions and the fact that Reed’s SUV had tinted windows, Kersten wrote.
“This evidence raises serious concerns about the validity of the traffic stop that led to the officers’ encounter with” Reed, according to the letter, also obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Reed noted in the letter that officers from the shootout were being investigated for a traffic stop that happened less than a month before Reed’s killing.
But the newly released documents show the five officers from the shootout are all facing several complaints and investigations.
Four officers have been put on administrative leave for 30 days as the shootout is investigated. A fifth officer was wounded when Reed shot him, officials have said.
When asked at a news conference earlier this week if the tactical unit responding to the Reed scene was designed to do traffic stops, Kersten referred the question to police. Police did not directly answer the question.
“We will be looking at what the officers assigned to that unit were engaged in for this incident and on this day,” Kersten said. “The only information we have at this time is that entire purpose behind the traffic stop was for Mr. Reed not wearing a seat belt. We have no information that any other information about Mr. Reed was known to officers.”
Complaints About Traffic Stops
Three of the incidents under investigation happened just in the month before officers killed Reed.
On March 6, five of the officers involved in the shootout stopped a person in a different instance, the newly released documents show. The driver who was stopped filed a complaint, saying the officers stopped him and searched his car without justification in the 3800 block of West Jackson Boulevard.
Two other officers were involved in that stop, as well, according to the complaint.
Another complaint, this one stemming from a March 1 incident, alleges seven officers — four of whom would later be involved in the Reed shootout — improperly stopped and searched a driver and had “unprofessional police conduct.”
And on Feb. 23, a man was near his car and began going up the steps to his apartment when officers stopped him and tried to grab him by his jacket, he said in a complaint. The officers told the man they were going to search his car, and he heard one officer say he was going to “beat my ass,” the man alleged in the complaint. The officer searched the man’s car without permission, he said.
The man told investigators he did not know why the officers stopped him or wanted to search his car, and the officers refused to provide identifying information to him, according to the complaint. Four of the officers in that incident were involved in the Reed shootout.
And one of the officers involved in the Reed shootout was also involved in three other incidents that led to complaints between Jan. 31, 2023, and Oct. 5.
In the Oct. 5 incident, the person filing the complaint said officers stopped him or her at a gas station and used excessive force as they got into a “physical altercation,” according to the complaint. Seven officers were accused in that incident, one of them from the Reed shootout.
In an Aug. 29 incident, a driver said they’d been pulled over for a traffic violation and were “illegally detained in cuffs” despite committing no crime, and their car was searched without consent, according to the complaint. The person wasn’t cited or warned, they wrote.
“So honestly that proves the officer racially profiled me in my vehicle and was on a fishing expedition instead of serving and protecting,” the person wrote in the complaint.
Three officers were involved in that incident, one from the Reed shootout.
Those cases all remain under investigation, according to the documents.
And in the Jan. 31, 2023, incident, the complainant said an officer — who was later involved in the Reed shootout — punched his stomach when the person resisted arrest, an apparent violation of the department’s use of force policy when an officer has someone resisting arrest, according to the complaint.
That case is closed.
Dexter Reed
Police shot and killed Reed on March 21 after a traffic stop in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand Street.
Reed shot at officers first, hitting one in his forearm — then four officers shot about 96 times in 41 seconds, according to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. At least one officer fired at Reed as he laid on the ground, videos show and officials have said.
The police watchdog did not say how many shots Reed allegedly fired before officers fired back.
Reed was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability is investigating the shooting. The four officers who shot at Reed have been placed on 30-day administrative leave, which is standard; but the leader of the watchdog agency has recommended they be relieved of police powers throughout the investigation.
Kersten wrote the incident raises “serious questions about the proportionality of their [officers’] use of deadly force.”
The officers continued to fire shots even after Reed got out of his car, unarmed, Kersten wrote. Three of the officers reloaded during the encounter, Kersten wrote.
And one of the officers, who fired “at least 50 times,” shot Reed three times as he was “motionless on the ground,” Kersten wrote.
At a minimum, the officer who shot at Reed three times as he lay on the ground should be relieved of police powers during the investigation “based on the safety risk posed by his conduct,” Kersten wrote in her letter to Snelling.
The watchdog has 18 months to conclude its administrative investigation into the police officers.
Snelling said Friday he believes in the “integrity of the investigation” by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability — but appeared to question why Kersten’s letter about the officers’ conduct quickly made its way to the press.
A sticking point for Snelling was that the police oversight agency had not yet interviewed the officers involved in the shooting.
“Information spreads like wildfire,” Snelling said. “A police officer was shot. A man lost his life. … This isn’t something that should play out in the court of public opinion. Proper investigations should be done before we start litigating online.”
Reed’s family members and their attorneys said they want the officers involved fired and charged to the highest degree. They also do not wish there to be violence in Chicago because of the news.
“We want answers,” Porscha Banks, Reed’s older sister, said at a news conference after the video was released. “They shot at him 96 times and reloaded. This has to stop. I can’t explain the pain me and my family are going through.”
Andrew Stroth, an attorney for Reed’s family, said it’s unclear if Reed shot at the officers first, but he anticipates that to be revealed once the Civilian Office of Police Accountability completes its investigation. He acknowledged there was a gun found in Reed’s car, but he said video shows Reed got out of the vehicle unarmed — only to be shot by officers.
Stroth and the family said pulling over Reed for not wearing his seat belt was “completely unjustified.”
“Imagine a 26-year-old not being told what he did wrong and having five guns in his face,” Steven Hart, another attorney representing the family, said at a news conference Tuesday. “Do you believe he was frightened?
“They fire 96 times in 41 seconds. … Finally, they fire away after reloading their clips, three times on the young man just lying on the ground, having been shot multiple times.”
Police Traffic Stops
A recently released analysis from advocacy groups Impact for Equity and Free2Move Coalition found about 22 percent of all traffic stops made last year were concentrated on the West Side in the Ogden (10th) and Harrison (11th) police districts — where Reed was pulled over and killed — which span Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Little Village and North Lawndale.
And a 2021 Block Club analysis found drivers on the West Side were stopped most often by police — and the vast majority of stops didn’t lead to tickets.
The complaints detailed in Friday’s documents focused on officers working in the 11th and 15th police districts on the West Side.
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
