COP IN RAID ONCE INVOLVED IN ANOTHER WRONG SEARCH
One cop in Anjanette Young’s apartment took part in different search on wrong home; another fatally shot a man months later
One of the Chicago police officers on the bungled 2019 raid on Anjanette Young’s apartment is a defendant in a lawsuit accusing him of participating in a mistaken search of a different home in 2017.
Another officer on the Young raid was involved in a fatal shooting that remains under investigation.
City records show many of the officers on the Young raid have never faced a citizen complaint of misconduct and none of the other officers have ever had a complaint sustained against them.
The Chicago Sun- Times examined police reports, disciplinary records and court documents involving the officers who mistakenly searched Young’s home near the United Center on the Near West Side on Feb. 21, 2019.
The police department recently put 12 of them on desk duty after CBS2 Chicago aired disturbing video footage of the raid, but police officials wouldn’t explain the reason for the late- coming reassignments.
The officers’ body- worn cameras show Young naked and handcuffed as she frantically told them they’d barged into the wrong address. An officer eventually put a blanket over the social worker’s shoulders as the search continued.
A judge approved the raid after an informant gave the wrong apartment unit number for the target of the raid, whom the informant said he’d known for a decade. The target lived in another apartment in Young’s building. The officers were looking for a handgun.
The release of the video from the raid has created a political and legal tempest.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot initially said she learned of the raid after CBS aired the video last week, then acknowledged her staff emailed her about it last year when the TV station was reporting on search warrants officers serve on the wrong addresses.
Mark Flessner, the city’s corporation counsel, has resigned at the request of Lightfoot,
and Young’s lawyer could be sanctioned by a federal judge for releasing the video.
The Sun- Times isn’t naming the dozen officers who were placed on desk duty because authorities have not publicly accused them of misconduct in the raid.
One is a defendant in a lawsuit saying he was part of a mistaken search. On Nov. 7, 2017, the officer was on a team that raided an apartment near 35th and Damen. A man was handcuffed as he and his wife and young sons watched officers search the home for almost two hours. The actual targets lived in an apartment upstairs, the lawsuit said.
“Chicago police terrorized the innocent family in their home,” the lawsuit said, noting the officers’ body- worn cameras documented the raid.
In a court filing in that pending federal case, the city denied the search was invalid.
That officer has received four civilian complaints in seven years on the job with no sustained allegations. In 2017, he rescued a bloodied suburban boy staggering on a West Side street. Four people have been convicted of kidnapping and abusing the special- needs teenager on Facebook Live.
Another officer who’d taken part in the Young raid fatally shot Sharell Brown in a West Side gangway less than three months later on May 11, 2019. The officer was responding to a call to look for a man with a gun, according to documents on the Civilian Police Review Authority’s website. Police said they recovered a gun from Brown. Brown’s family has said they believe he did not have a gun.
The agency, which examines police shoot
ings and allegations of misconduct, is continuing to investigate, a spokesman said.
The officers placed on desk duty in the Young raid have had a total of 18 civilian complaints filed against them during their careers, but none was sustained, according to disciplinary records. Many of the complaints were dismissed because the accuser failed to sign an affidavit.
A sergeant has had 11 complaints, the most of the officers on the raid. He joined the department in 2002 and has been on the police force far longer than the others. Four complaints against him were dropped because of a lack of an affidavit. He’s received dozens of department awards, records show.
Five officers on the Young raid have had no civilian complaints made against them during their careers, records show. They joined the police force in the mid- 2010s. The cop who got the judge’s approval to search Young’s apartment has had two unsustained complaints, records show.
On Jan. 3, the police department updated its search- warrant policy to reduce the chance of mistaken raids.
The policy requires officers to take extra steps to verify the correct address and whether children live there. It bars officers from paying “John Doe” informants, who aren’t registered with the department and remain anonymous. The informant in the Young raid was a John Doe.
On Tuesday, Police Supt. David Brown told aldermen the policy should be revised again to require corroborating evidence for search warrants and approval by a deputy chief or above.