A Chicago woman is suing the city’s police department, alleging that it helped to arm the teenager who shot her two years ago.
Twanda Willingham was shot in the leg with a Glock 21 pistol in August of last year, about eight months after the gun was handed over to the Chicago Police Dpeartment during a “buyback” event at St. Sabina Church. As Fox 32 reports:
… the weapon disappeared while in transit between the church and a nearby police station—just blocks apart. It was not recovered until November 2024, when ballistics testing linked it to Willingham’s shooting and at least two others.
Authorities later found the gun in the possession of a 16-year-old boy.
Despite what Fox 32 reported, the lawsuit doesn’t claim that the Glock disappeared “in transit”. It contends that the gun was taken by a CPD officer after it arrived at the Gresham District station.
“CPD Officers are also not immune to the allure of Glock pistols,” the lawsuit says. “CPD Officers assigned to work the Turn-In event at St. Sabina remarked on how good the Glock 21 pistol looked. CPD Officers who were not working the buyback event at St. Sabina showed up at the tactical team office to get a look at the Glock 21 pistol.”
Willingham’s lawsuit says an officer or officers took the gun from the station and sold it or gave it to someone. Willingham names Sgt. Robert Brown, who oversaw the buyback event, and other, “unknown” police officers as defendants along with the city of Chicago.
The defendants tried to cover up the gun theft, according to the suit. A tag identifying the Glock had been slipped onto another gun, and an envelope for that gun was later found in the trash.
The lawsuit notes that the name of Officer Krystal Rivera was placed on those inventory records even though “she had nothing to do with the recovery of the guns, in an attempt to make it more difficult to track the Glock 21 pistol’s disappearance and hinder recovery efforts.”
Rivera was later shot and killed on June 5 by her partner, Officer Carlos Baker, another member of the Gresham District tactical team, in what the police department has said was a friendly-fire accident.
As the Chicago Sun-Times reports, Rivera’s family has been demanding an independent investigation into her death because they don’t believe the official account from police and prosecutors, who maintain that Baker accidentally shot Rivera while she was facing away from him as have said Baker accidentally shot Rivera in the back while pursuing an armed suspect.
The lawsuit doesn’t accuse Baker or any other officer of murdering Rivera to help cover up the theft of the Glock, but Willingham’s legal team does contend that the Glock was stolen by unknown officers and sold on the street after steps were taken to cover their tracks.
Brown, who was in charge of the buyback, received a one-day suspension for “failure to adequately secure and care for department property,” but a criminal investigation into how the gun ended up in the hands of the teen was closed without any charges being filed. The Sun-Times reports that an internal affairs investigation was shut down as well, but was re-opened after the paper published a story about the disappearance of the Glock.
As for the teen who was caught with the gun, he pled guilty to illegally possessing a firearm earlier this year, but hasn’t said how we got the pistol and who gave or sold it to him. The Chicago Police Department, meanwhile, has continued to hold these compensated confiscation events throughout the city, including two “buybacks” that took place at the end of May.
This is yet another reason why gun “buybacks” are such a bad idea. There’s no evidence whatsoever that they reduce violent crime, accidents involving firearms, or gun-involved suicides. They do, however, provide crooked cops with the opportunity to pick up a new gun using a five-fingered discount; either to keep for themselves or to sell on the street.
I’d say that Willingham has a pretty good case to make that the CPD bears at least some responsibility for her being shot with a gun that was supposed to be under its control. And given the lengths that the department has gone to avoid investigating the actions that led to the gun’s disappearance, her lawsuit may be the only way to find out what actually happened in the Gresham District station on that cold December day in 2023.
Editor’s Note: The city of Chicago is suing Glock and trying to get their guns banned for sale in the state of Illinois, when it should be digging into how this pistol disappeared from police custody.
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