“I believed in you as a Black woman running as mayor of City of Chicago,” said Anjanette Young, “I did vote for you. I told my friends to vote for you.”
A new video has surfaced of Chicago police handcuffing an innocent woman naked in her own home during a raid at the wrong apartment. That woman was Anjanette Young and now she is calling out Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfooot and her department for allegedly trying to keep the video a secret and prevent CBS Chicago from telling her story, CBS News Chicago reported.
“I believed in you as a Black woman running as mayor of City of Chicago,” said a dismayed Young, “I did vote for you. I told my friends to vote for you.”
That trust was broken, Young said.
On Wednesday at a news conference outside the Chicago Public Safety Headquarters, Young was seeking accountability. “It is the job of the police to serve and protect. Well, they didn't do that for me,” she said. “They didn't care about me.”
The day of the incident in February 2019, Young, a social worker said she had just returned home from work when the police busted in. ”It happened so fast,” she said of the humiliating 20-minute ordeal, “I didn't have time to put on clothes.”
In the video footage, Young told the officers at least 43 times that they had the wrong apartment as they continued to search her home. Young had reportedly been exposed for at least two minutes after police entered the apartment before she was given a blanket that she said continued to slide down. One of the officers did wrap a short coat around that partially covered her, but her front remained open, CBS Chicago reported.
The Chicago Police Department said the raid occurred after an informant said a felon in the apartment had a handgun. The real target of the raid was in the same complex as Young, but his exact location should have been able to be determined since he was wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet at the time, the news outlet reported.
Once officers realized they were in the wrong apartment they apologized to Young and told her that “we believe your story,” the video showed. However, Young, who said she was traumatized, told CBS News that she felt that if she would have made one wrong move, “it felt like they would have shot me.”
In 2019, Young filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to gain access to the video, but it was denied by the Chicago Police Department. She was only granted access to it after a court required it as part of her lawsuit against the department. Once in her possession, the department filed an emergency motion in federal court to stop CBS Chicago from airing the footage, a move that failed.
Young’s attorney, Keenan Saulter, admonished the city for dragging their feet over their FOIA request to view the body cam video of the wrong raid.
“You’re telling a woman you violated that she doesn’t have the agency over the images of her own body,” said Saulter, who expressed disappointment when, he said, Lightfoot seemed to have “doubled down on the attempts to cover up these videos.”
Saulter said his client’s treatment was an example of what Black people are forced to deal with where police are concerned. "If this had been a young woman in Lincoln park by herself, in her home naked — a young white woman, let's just be frank — if the reaction would have been the same? I don't think it would have been."
Lightfoot apologized during a news conference after Young’s remarks were made and said she was "blindsided" by her law department's actions and said "Young's dignity was taken from her and that was completely inexcusable," CBS Chicago reported.
“I was completely and totally appalled” by the video, she said. “I could have easily been Ms. Young, and I can put myself in her place," she said.
When she was asked on Tuesday why her administration attempted to stop CBS Chicago from airing the footage, Lightfoot did not provide an answer, but stated the raid was "not something that happened on my watch," as it had occurred before she took office.
However, according to CBS, Lightfoot was in office when CPD denied request for the video by Young and CBS.
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