Chicago police shoot man who broke into Homan Square facility and grabbed guns during SWAT training

CHICAGO (CBS) – A man was shot after sneaking into a Chicago Police Department facility in Homan Square late Monday morning, and getting his hands on two guns during a SWAT training exercise.

Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said, around 11:30 a.m., a man walked up to the security shack outside the Homan Square facility, near Homan Avenue and Fillmore Street, and asked where he could go to retrieve property that was being held there. 

After the guard directed him to the public entrance on the other side of the building, the man instead walked west toward Homan Avenue, and came across a fire escape, where he manipulated several nearby items to enable himself to reach the fire escape’s metal stairs, pull them down, and climb up to the 5th floor, where he walked in through a door that had been propped open for ventilation, because that floor has no windows, according to Brown.

The Homan Square site is home to the Chicago Police Department’s evidence and recovered property section; and serves as the base for several specialized units, including the Bureau of Organized Crime, the SWAT unit, evidence technicians, and the CPD ballistics lab.  

When the man reached the 5th floor of the facility, there as a SWAT training exercise underway on the 5th floor, and several guns had been laid out on a table to be used in the training. Officers taking part in the training exercise saw the man pick up two guns from the table.

Brown said those guns were either empty, or loaded with so-called “simunition” – a reference to non-lethal pellets used in training exercises, which sting when they strike someone, but don’t cause serious injury or death. But the invader did not know that fact.

Officers taking part in the training immediately notified other officers who were not part of the exercise, and were armed. Those officers immediately responded, and after the man pointed the two guns at them, at least one officer shot the man, according to Brown.

The man, who is from Waukegan, and has a lengthy criminal arrest record, was taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook County. Brown said his injuries were not life-threatening.

One police officer who sprained his ankle while responding to the incident was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital for treatment.

Brown said it’s possible that officers taking part in the training believed the man was part of the exercise when they first saw him.

“Obviously, someone coming from a stairwell outside startled everyone. Who is this person? Is this person associated with the training?” Brown said. “We do have live actors sometimes that come in plain clothes.”

The superintendent declined to say if police ordered the man to drop the guns before he was shot, saying that will be part of an investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). Brown said it’s unclear what, if anything, the man might have said to police after picking up the guns.

Brown also said it’s unclear if the man was genuinely at Homan Square to recover property that had been seized by CPD, or if his claims were just a ploy to get inside.

“We’re not sure if he was actually trying to find property. He does have a pretty lengthy criminal history of arrests, but we’re still researching how many of those arrests have led to convictions,” Brown said. “It could be that he had a legitimate reason to go retrieve property that we may have seized, but we just don’t know that to confirm it at this point.”

The superintendent said the man’s criminal history includes arrests on drug charges, for burglary from vehicles, and for stolen vehicles.

There were more than 20 people on the 5th floor at the time of the training exercise. Brown said three uniformed officers who are assigned to City Hall and/or Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home were part of the training exercise, but no members of the mayor’s formal non-uniformed security detail were taking part in the training. 

So how was the man not only able to breach the building – through a propped open door – but also grab a police weapon?

Brown said that will be part of the police shooting investigation the COPA is conducting. 

Retired FBI agent and security expert Phil Andrew said it is very fortunate the situation was not worse.

“Mistakes happen everywhere, but I think the important thing is the transparency; the full investigation here about trying to mediate this for the future,” Andrew said.

Andrew believes the location of Homan Square in the middle of a West Side community leaves Chicago Police vulnerable as the department keeps operating there.

“It’s just the wrong facility for the time that we are in today in modern policing,” he said.

The close public access to where so much CPD operation goes on, Andrew says, raises some bigger red flags on why the Homan Square facility remains in use.

“This is an old building that has been retrofitted so many times to meet the needs of CPD, and it just simply can’t sustain that,” he said.

We were earlier told we could see the suspect in this incident charged as soon as later Monday night. But no charges had been announced as of just before 10 p.m.

COPA asked anyone with information on the shooting to call 312-746-3609.