About three dozen people braved the cold at Daley Plaza on Saturday morning to show to support of the Anjanette Young Ordinance which is being considered by the Chicago City Council.
The ordinance is named for Chicago social worker Anjanette Young who was home alone and changing her clothes when Chicago Police officers burst into her home and handcuffed her naked in February of 2019, but officers had the wrong home.
Body camera video showed a terrified Young repeatedly telling officers they were in the wrong place.
Young, herself, was one of those who spoke at Saturday's rally saying the ordinance would, among other things, "ban CPD from using no-knock warrants, unannounced warrants that don't give family members enough time to respond to the door, it requires officers to not use information from confidential informants, and they actually make sure the person they're looking for is at the address they're at."
Alderwoman Maria Haddon of the 49th Ward on the North Side said, "we've got partners here today, folks from our civil liberties and civil rights groups who've been working and collecting the stories and data of residents all over the city who have experienced similar wrong raids, similar injustice, and not even the apologies."
Alderwoman Sophia King of the Fourth Ward on the South Side is also one of the supporters of the ordinance. She said, "we saw ourselves and still see ourselves in Ms. Young. We knew that it could have been us. It's still hard to comprehend the indignity that Ms. Young was subject to, but we need to something about it and as City Council members, we can."
The City of Chicago agreed to pay $2.9 million to resolve a lawsuit brought on by Anjanette Young over the botched, wrongful raid but she said it was never about the money, telling supporters on Saturday, she's "grateful that God spared my life on February 21, 2019, and entrusted me to walk in this assignment that I never would have chosen for myself."
A federal judge has granted a motion to change the CPD consent decree to now include oversight on the department's search warrant policies and procedures, but the push for this ordinance continues in Chicago City Council.
