Chicago police raid wrong home, make Black woman stand naked in handcuffs for 10 minutes
By Walter Einenkel
Daily Kos
December 15, 2020
It took a year and a Freedom of Information Act request, but Anjanette Young has finally gotten video of the night Chicago Police broke down her door, handcuffed her naked, and searched her home. Young told CBS 2 “I feel like they didn’t want us to have this video because they knew how bad it was. They knew they had done something wrong. They knew that the way they treated me was not right.”
This is just one step forward for Young after the traumatizing events of Feb. 21, 2019. Around 7 PM, Young had just gotten home from work and was changing out of her work clothes when she was startled by CPD battering down her front door. Naked, Young was confronted by no less than nine male officers with guns and lights drawn, shouting “Police search warrant,” and “Hands up, hands up, hands up.” It turns out that the police were raiding the wrong apartment, a raid based on “a bad tip” they received and didn’t bother to follow up on.
In the video, Young can be heard, obviously distraught and scared, saying over and over again that the officers have the “wrong house.” She asks what they are looking for. She is nude and handcuffed and a blanket is put over her shoulders while no less than five men nonchalantly walk around her modest apartment, looking for whatever they want. Because Young’s hands are handcuffed behind her back, she cannot even keep the blanket over her shoulders to cover herself in front of this group of armed strangers.
According to CBS 2, Chicago’s city lawyers attempted to stop the broadcast of the video by filing an emergency motion in federal court on Tuesday. Maybe Young’s pleas, falling on dispassionate ears, of “How is this legal?” was something the city, which has paid out untold millions in taxpayer money to settle out of court without video being shown to the public over the years, wanted to hide.
According to CBS 2, the video shows two officers possibly referring to their weak-ass warrant, with one officer telling the other “It wasn’t initially approved or some crap.” CPD wouldn’t comment on what that overheard conversation was about. What is known is that CPD were looking for a 23-year-old suspect, and were given the wrong address by an informant. They did nothing to verify the address, and to clarify how incompetent and abusive and negligent these officers are, the alleged suspect they were looking for “was wearing an electronic monitoring device” at the time and could have very easily been located. Read that again. Think about that.
Keenan Saulter, Young’s attorney, told the news that besides the very clear incompetence on the part of the CPD, one cannot forget how painfully different things very likely would have been if Young was a white woman in a tonier part of town. Young is only allowed to get dressed after about eight minutes once a female officer shows up. About 20 minutes later, after a sergeant has arrived and spoke—off camera—to the alleged police officer with the warrant, Young is uncuffed and the sergeant apologizes for the situation.
Officers then attempted to fix her door with a hammer. When that didn’t work, they tried to wedge an ironing board in between the door.
To be clear, this happened in February of 2019. It was not until November of 2019, after CBS 2 aired a report about the event, that the Chicago Police Department even opened up an investigation into what happened. I don’t know how you don’t fire everyone in that video.
The Chicago Police Department has one of the worst histories of torture and predatory civil rights violations against the Black community. The racism in the police force is systemic and even Black Chicago police officers are on the receiving end of it within their own force. The only good thing about this story is that Young was not physically hurt or killed by these officers, as our country’s law enforcement apparatuses are not known for taking into account the welfare of the families or children they hurt when they invade Americans’ personal space.
5 comments:
Chicago may need to ban all warrants not just no-knock.
An operational plans meeting attended by each officer and team member is a must. Then the operational plan must be signed off on by a supervisor and attached to the warrant. This is basic stuff. Things can go wrong quickly. One other thing. Judges better start reviewing the affidavits and not just signing the warrant. I've seen it done many times.
I certainly agree about judges not doing their job. Why do the judges always get a pass?
In a real city with real cops they used to have a higher ranking cop whose sole responsibility was to make sure they were hitting the right damn place. I guess in Chicago nobody cares.
They know things that most people don't want revealed or know about.
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