The Black woman who took on the city of Chicago following a wrongful police raid that left her handcuffed and naked in her home five years ago returned to City Hall on Friday to deliver a stark message.
“I need the public to know, and I need city government to know, that Anjanette Young is not going away until we have some real accountability in this city,” the social worker whose story sparked widespread outrage told reporters.
Change to the way Chicago police handle search warrants must come quicker, Young said.
On Feb. 21, 2019, police botched the execution of a warrant and went to the wrong home, restraining Young instead of an unrelated male suspect while she was getting ready for bed. Officers did not allow her to put clothes on and handcuffed her during their search.
Since then, Young has crusaded against the Police Department’s search warrant process via a proposed namesake City Council ordinance. But efforts stalled under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration, which instead baked in smaller changes via internal CPD directives.
In December 2021, aldermen approved a $2.9 million settlement for Young.
She went on to back now-Mayor Brandon Johnson in the 2023 election, and on Friday Young and Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, said they were optimistic their proposed reforms will be added to the police department’s court-ordered consent decree. But the two also expressed impatience at the timeline.
“You see us wearing these sweatshirts,” Hadden said. “They say, ‘I am her.’ Anjanette made these hoodies to help us show our solidarity with not just her, but with all Black women who are disregarded, humiliated and disrespected by our society.”
Young added, “I endorsed the new administration, and I campaigned for them. And my statement to them is, let’s get at the table and make this happen. … The eyes are on the city right now.”
Spokespeople with the Johnson administration and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office — which is a party to the Police Department consent decree process — did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The raid at Young’s home was captured on officers’ body cameras and quickly went viral after the video was publicly released, sparking one of Lightfoot’s biggest police accountability scandals of her term. The footage was first reported by WBBM-TV Ch. 2 in its series of stories about faulty search warrants — after the mayor’s administration took the extraordinary step of seeking a court order to stop the outlet from broadcasting the video.
In 2022, Hadden attempted to push the Anjanette Young ordinance forward in a City Council committee but failed in a 10-4 vote. That was after a previous version presented to the body in 2021 also failed to garner a floor vote as Lightfoot argued such reforms should be reflected within Police Department directives, not codified in law.
The legislation would have banned no-knock warrants except in the case of “exigent circumstances,” such as someone facing imminent physical harm. No-knock warrants allow officers to forcibly enter homes without announcing themselves, most notably in the 2020 police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in Louisville, Kentucky, during a flawed drug investigation.
Hadden said the ban on that type of search warrant will be one of their top demands in negotiations with consent decree stakeholders. Other reforms they have called for include mandating officers conduct more surveillance on the location before seeking a warrant, requiring the police department to publish data on raids and tightening up standards for informants.
Under Lightfoot, the Chicago Police Department did make changes to its warrant policy that went into effect May 2021, and Hadden has acknowledged those reforms touched upon many of the Anjanette Young Ordinance’s proposed changes. They required a department member at the rank of lieutenant or above to be at the scene when the warrant is executed, and for each member of the team serving the warrant to wear body cameras.
A female member of the department also is required to be present while the warrant is being served. In addition, the more unusual “John Doe” and no-knock warrants must be authorized by bureau chiefs. John Doe warrants are based on anonymous, but verified, tips.
But Hadden and Young say these changes and more need to be reflected in something more permanent, such as the consent decree. If that does not move fast enough, then Hadden said she will reintroduce the ordinance and try again to go via the City Council route.
Though Young struck an authoritative tone when speaking out for police accountability on Friday, she also said she continues to grapple with the trauma of that day. She will not spend the fifth anniversary of the raid in Chicago, she said.
“Yes, I’m going to leave the city, and I’m going to go away and have some quiet time for myself and reflect on life — and reflect on the fact that God spared my life that night,” Young said. “And then I’m also going to refresh and come back ready to do more work in the city.”
ayin@chicagotribune.com
