CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - A bad Chicago police raid at the home of a woman last year has Mayor Lori Lightfoot on the defensive, and the city is going after the woman’s lawyer in court.
"My God, what is going on here?" shrieks Anjanette Young, in CPD body cam video provided to CBS 2 by Young and her lawyer after they obtained it from the city.
Anjanette Young, a hospital social worker, was naked and handcuffed when Chicago Police officers broke down her door and burst into her home during an overnight raid with a no-knock warrant on Feb. 21, 2019.
"I felt so violated. Here it is this man who’s walking up to me and putting me in handcuffs and I have no clothes on.…and I’m just standing there. Terrified. Humiliated," she said.
Young told CBS 2 she wanted the body camera video to show the public what happened to her that day. But when she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the video last year, the police department denied it. The department also denied a similar FOIA request by CBS 2.
Ultimately, a federal court forced CPD to turn over the video as part of her lawsuit against police.
CBS 2 obtained the video, and hours before it aired as part of an investigative report Monday at 10 p.m., city lawyers filed an emergency motion in federal court in a last-minute attempt to stop the story. CBS 2 went with the story, and while the report was being broadcast, a judge denied the city’s motion.
Lightfoot was asked at a news conference Tuesday why her administration went to court to kill the story, but instead she pointed out it happened before she was mayor.
“That raid actually took place in February of [2019], even before the first of two elections was decided, so that was not something that happened on my watch,” Lightfoot said.
However, her administration did fight to keep the body cam video from going public and is complaining to a federal judge about Young’s lawyer releasing the video to CBS 2. She told reporters Tuesday because of problems with no-knock warrants, her administration this year strengthened the rules for obtaining them.
“And I am not going to sit here and tell you that we’ve solved every problem, but we responded to what we were seeing was way too many circumstances of officers going into the wrong home,” Lightfoot said.
“And I watched that video and I put myself in that poor woman’s place. And thinking about somebody breaking into your home, you have no idea who they are, in the middle of the night and with a child, and the trauma that that causes. So, I think we have taken steps to address that issue.”
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The Mayor also pinned the blame for the delay in publicly releasing the body cam video to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), an independent agency.
"Give me a break that we didn’t put this video out in all this time. It’s ridiculous," she said.
There has been all kinds of negative reaction to this incident, including a tweet from Illinois Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton who said Anjanette Young told police 43 times they had raided the wrong house and no one believed her. She tweeted "This could have been you. It could have been me. She was traumatized, dehumanized, and humiliated. And it is unacceptable. #ProtectBlackWomen."
Mayor Lightfoot released a full statement regarding the CPD body camera footage from the February 2019 incident:
“Today, I became aware of an incident involving Ms. Anjanette Young from February 2019, before I became Mayor, and I saw a video today for the first time. I had no knowledge of either until today. I had a very emotional reaction to what was depicted on the video as I imagine that many people did.
“In 2019, I directed the City’s chief risk officer to review CPD’s search warrant policies and practices, and recommend improvements where appropriate. As a result of that work, and in conjunction with the CPD risk manager, a new search warrant policy went into effect in January 2020. Among the various changes, the new policy requires additional CPD supervisory review and sign off before a search warrant can be sought from a judge, and there must be separate verification that the property in question is indeed the correct location in which evidence of criminal activity can be found.
“I have further directed a review of how this matter was handled by various City departments to determine that there was compliance with City procedures.
“Since this matter is the subject of litigation and an open COPA investigation, I will have no further comment.”