MAYOR REWRITING RULES OF THE RAID
Lightfoot, Brown unveil search-warrant reforms to prevent repeat of botched intrusion of Anjanette Young’s home
Even if Anjanette Young had been “the biggest drug kingpin” in Chicago and the raid on her home had been at the right address, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said, she should have been treated with “dignity and respect.”
The fact that it was a botched raid on the wrong house and humiliated an innocent woman, forcing Young to stand naked, crying, pleading and handcuffed before male police officers, made the indignity infinitely worse.
On Wednesday, Brown joined Mayor Lori Lightfoot in unveiling an array of proposed reforms governing what happens before, during and after search warrants are executed by Chicago police officers.
The goal is to rebuild public trust shattered by the now-infamous video of Young standing naked in front of officers who waited 45 minutes before allowing the trembling social worker to get dressed when a female officer was summoned.
“If Ms. Young was the biggest drug kingpin, we still should have treated her with dignity and respect . . . . Her dignity and respect had nothing to do with whether or not she was actually the focus of this or this was a mistake and this was the wrong house,” Brown told a City Hall news conference.
“Following these policies and procedures with an emphasis on ‘everyone deserves a measure of respect’ actually enhances our ability to do our job and creates an environment of trust in the community, which is a force multiplier in our being effective in reducing crime.”
The reforms are not nearly as sweeping as those unveiled last week by Black female aldermen. But Lightfoot hopes they can regain the trust she admittedly lost by changing her story about what she knew and when she knew it regarding the February 2019 raid on Young’s home and by her administration’s efforts to withhold bodycam video of the incident. Under the new guidelines:
◆ No-knock warrants will be prohibited except in “specific cases where lives or safety are in danger.” And even then, they must be approved by a “bureau chief or higher.”
◆ All other search warrants must be approved by a “deputy chief or higher.”
◆ Before either type of search warrant is executed, the team involved must conduct a planning session to identify “potentially vulnerable people who may be present at the location,” including children.
◆ An independent investigation will be required before warrants are served to “verify and corroborate that the information used to obtain the warrant is accurate.”
◆ At least one female officer must be present when search warrants are served.
◆ Officers will wear and activate body cameras and “document any and all instances in which a firearm is pointed” during the search.
◆ Any search warrant served at a wrong address or one obtained using information that turns out to be false will be “considered a wrong raid,” triggering an internal investigation, a “critical incident after-action review” and a report to the presiding judge.
Lightfoot said the proposed changes will “strengthen the integrity of the process.”
If officers fear scrutiny by a highranking supervisor, “it’s probably a search warrant that never should be executed in the first instance,” the mayor said.
“We are going to get this right and we’re gonna make sure that people’s rights are respected,” Lightfoot added. “If officers don’t get it right . . . we’re gonna take decisive action to make sure that those kinds of problems simply do not repeat themselves.”
Keenan Saulter, Young’s attorney, said the mayor’s changes fall
“woefully short” of the reforms Chicagoans need to “feel secure in their homes from these violent and often wrongful raids.”
Instead, Saulter urged Lightfoot to “join with us” in supporting the plan that has Young’s enthusiastic support — the ordinance introduced by Black female aldermen.
Among other things, it would ban no-knock warrants and require all other search warrants be executed in the “least intrusive” manner possible to prevent property damage and protect the “physical and emotional health” of those involved.
Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th), one of the City Council members behind the proposal, said she still prefers it to the mayor’s plan.
“With the history of the police
department and their inability to follow their own rules, we need something stronger, which is what we have proposed with Ms. Young.”
Saulter noted 3,000 of the 6,800 home raids conducted by Chicago police officers from 2016 through 2019 “did not result in a single arrest.”
The raid on Young’s home is “just one egregious example of a documented pattern of illegal, violent and dehumanizing raids that have traumatized thousands of Black and Brown families, for which CPD has failed to hold a single officer to account,” Saulter said.
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara could not be reached for comment on the proposed changes, which will be the subject of a 15-day public comment period.