Crime & Law
Suspend 4 CPD Officers Who Stopped, Shot Dexter Reed for Violating Rights of 4th Driver: Former Top Cop
An image captured by a Chicago Police Department officer’s body-worn camera shows Officer Aubrey Webb, right, engaged in a verbal altercation with a man he and four other officers searched on Feb. 23, 2024. (Civilian Office of Police Accountability)
Four of the five Chicago police officers who pulled over Dexter Reed and killed him in a barrage of gunfire after he fired at officers in March 2024 violated the constitutional rights of another Chicagoan less than a month before the fatal shooting and should be suspended, the agency tasked with investigating police misconduct and former Supt. Larry Snelling agreed, according to records published Thursday.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has not yet released the results of its probe into the March 21, 2024 traffic stop of Reed or the shooting that killed him, records show. Four officers fired 96 shots in 41 seconds at Reed, hitting him 13 times, shortly after Reed shot and wounded a fifth officer, according to a preliminary investigation by the agency better known as COPA.
Investigators had already determined that the tactical team that stopped Reed improperly stopped and searched Chicagoans during three separate traffic stops on Sept. 21, 2023, March 1, 2024, and March 6, 2024, records show.
COPA determined that Officers Aubrey Webb, Thomas Spanos, Victor Pacheco and Gregory Saint-Louis improperly stopped and searched a Black man outside his Homan Square home in February 2024, and recommended that each be suspended for up to 30 days, records show.
Snelling agreed with COPA’s findings, but recommended that Webb be suspended for 20 days, Spanos for seven days, Pacheco for five days and Saint-Louis for three days, records show.
“The sustained allegations against Officers Pacheco, Saint Louis, Spanos, and Webb are serious and involve a violation of (the man’s) civil rights under both the federal and state constitutions,” according to COPA’s conclusion, which did not name the man in keeping with the agency’s rules.
All of the officers also failed to document their stop and search of the Black man “in several ways which interfere with the accountability process and failed to accept responsibility,” COPA concluded.
Saint Louis, who was shot in the hand by Reed during the March 21, 2024, traffic stop, is on disability and is not an active member of CPD, records show. The fifth and final officer who stopped Reed, Alexandria “Ally” Giampapa did not take part in the February 2024 stop that sparked the complaint, records show. Giampapa resigned from CPD and is now a police officer in Tipp City, Ohio.
Webb, Pacheco and Spanos did not respond to a request for comment from WTTW News. All remain assigned to the Harrison (11th) Police District, where all of the stops that COPA found violated CPD policy and Chicagoans’ civil rights took place, a CPD spokesperson said. Each of the three officers earn $111,252 annually, according to a city database.
The incident at the center of the most recently completed probe began in the late afternoon of Feb. 23, 2024, when the officers — patrolling Chicago’s West Side as part of a plainclothes tactical team — observed the man get out of a car and enter an apartment building. The car’s registration was expired, and its windows appeared to be darkly tinted in violation of city ordinance, officers told investigators.
After the man declined to stop and speak with the officers, Spanos and Saint Louis entered the two-flat building to follow the man, according to the probe. That prompted the man to turn around leave the apartment building, where Pacheco had opened the door of his unlocked car and shined his flashlight inside, according to the probe.
Once outside, the man confronted Webb, who told him “I’m going to beat your a--,” according to footage captured by one of the officers’ body-worn cameras reviewed by COPA.
As the officers left the scene, the man asked the officers for their names and badge numbers, according to the probe. CPD policy requires officers identify themselves when asked by a member of the public.
“The officers did not provide the information,” according to COPA’s report. “The officers did not provide documentation of the stop ... nor did the officers make any reports or radio transmissions in connection with the encounter. The officers did not activate their body-worn cameras devices during the encounter.”
The body-worn camera footage reviewed by COPA was captured when Spanos’ camera automatically turned on, according to the probe.
After the officers left the scene, they “immediately proceeded to perform a traffic stop on a nearby vehicle, and their body-worn cameras were activated for that unrelated, subsequent event,” according to COPA’s probe.
When the man went to the 11th District police station to file a complaint, the on-duty desk sergeant refused to complete the required forms because the man did not know the officers’ names, according to COPA’s report. That refusal violated CPD policy, COPA concluded. Snelling determined that sergeant should not be disciplined even after COPA recommended he face a 30-day suspension because the man was not sure he was the officer who refused to take his complaint. COPA leaders accepted that recommendation, records show.
As the man left the police station without being allowed to file a complaint, he saw the same officers making another traffic stop and again asked them to identify themselves. Only Spanos did so, according to the report.
The officers’ decision to follow the man into his apartment building was not justified and violated his constitutional rights, COPA concluded.
While COPA investigators determined the agency did not have enough evidence to determine whether Pacheco’s decision to search the man’s car was justified, investigators determined Webb “resorted to intimidation” during his interaction with the man, according to the report.
“COPA concludes that Officer Webb’s actions and language here did not promote trust between CPD and members of the public, nor were they professional and courteous,” according to the report.
The officers’ decision not to activate their body-worn cameras violated CPD policy, as did their decision not to notify dispatchers that they had stopped the man and their decision not to document the incident and give the man the required receipt documenting the stop.
The man told COPA investigators that he had been stopped outside his home five times by the same group of officers in the months leading up to the February 2024 incident. Two of those stops also triggered complaints that prompted investigations, records show.
“COPA discovered no evidence that (the man) was individually targeted for enforcement action; the officers generally treated as someone who was unknown to them each time they stopped him,” according to the probe.
In all, four complaints against Webb involving traffic stops have been sustained, resulting in recommended suspensions totaling 85 days, records show. Pacheco was also named in those complaints, and faces suspensions totaling 23 days, records show, while Spanos was named in three of those complaints and faces suspensions of 24 days, records show.
Reed’s family has sued the city, alleging his civil rights were violated by the officers who stopped and fatally shot him. That COPA and Snelling agree the officers violated department rules in other traffic stops could help Reed’s family prove that the city and CPD should be held liable for his death, because officials knew officers were improperly stopping drivers and pedestrians on the West Side before Reed’s death and did nothing to stop it.
Andrew M. Stroth, the lawyer representing Reed’s family, has said the 26-year-old was killed by a “rogue unit” of CPD officers.
The Chicago City Council refused to settle that lawsuit, despite the recommendation of the city’s lawyers. Saint Louis has counter sued Reed’s estate, asking for compensation for his injuries.
COPA identified a troubling pattern of undocumented and aggressive traffic stops on the city’s West Side at least a year before Reed’s death, WTTW News reported in October 2024. But COPA did not alert the commander of the Harrison Police District until six days after Reed’s death that the agency had received numerous complaints related to CPD members “detaining, searching, and/or subjecting citizens to force. COPA’s investigation of these complaints has been impeded by a consistent lack of documentation, Body Worn Camera (BWC) footage, and accurate recordkeeping.”
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
