Black female aldermen’s search warrant reform to get hearing before public safety committee
The chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee agreed Wednesday to hold a hearing on sweeping search warrant reforms championed by Black female aldermen, aimed at preventing a repeat of the botched raid on the wrong home that forced Anjanette Young to stand naked before male police officers.
But Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) refused to commit to a specific date, noting ordinances pertaining to civilian police oversight, consent decree compliance and domestic violence against women are also pending before his committee and those reforms are equally important.
Meanwhile, Taliaferro urged Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) and the other co-sponsors of the so-called “Anjanette Young Ordinance” to meet with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and try to strike a compromise between their version and the search warrant reforms unveiled by the mayor and Chicago Police Supt. David Brown last week.
A former CPD officer, Taliaferro said parts of the ordinance would “make police practices much better” but others “would cause harm to police officers” and the general public.
Without a copy of the ordinance, Taliaferro could not pinpoint what makes it unsafe for police officers. He talked only in general terms about how dangerous and deadly it can be for police officers to execute a search warrant and raid the home of someone believed to be a criminal suspect.
“Sometimes in the execution of an arrest warrant, folks will defend themselves. Folks will shoot at police,” he said. “They’d rather go out in a shooting, rather than being arrested. I’ve heard people say, ‘I’m not going back to jail.’ Their primary focus is to harm anybody who tries to get in their way.”
Hadden said it’s “good to hear” Taliaferro agreed to a hearing, but she wants a specific date — and soon.
“I respect his leadership and want to see him run his committee the way that it needs to be run in order to not hold up important legislation,” she said, but she added: “The people of Chicago can’t wait forever. We’re gonna need a date.”
As for Taliaferro’s claim that parts of her ordinance could be unsafe for police officers, Hadden looks forward to hearing how.
“Chairman Taliaferro has been a police officer. I respect his opinion and his viewpoint. That’s exactly why we need a hearing,” she said.
Hadden has vowed to forge ahead with her own ordinance, arguing it is stronger in “17 different ways” than the reforms outlined by Lightfoot and Brown.
Among other things, the proposed ordinance forbids no-knock and requires residential raids to be conducted between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., using the “least intrusive” tactics possible. Police also would be required to take “all available measures to avoid executing the warrant when children under 16 are present.”
Asked Wednesday about Taliaferro’s call for a compromise, Hadden said: “Input from the mayor and the police department is absolutely something that we would love to hear about our ordinance because we want to hear from impacted people. But no one has reached out to talk about it.”