ANJANETTE YOUNG, WHOSE HOME WAS WRONGLY RAIDED, BACKS BRANDON JOHNSON
Social worker Anjanette Young, who was forced to stand naked while an all-male team of police officers raided her home — the wrong home — endorsed mayoral challenger Brandon Johnson on Tuesday.
Young’s decision to choose one of the candidates seeking to deny Mayor Lori Lightfoot a second term — four years to the day after the botched raid — is no surprise.
Although Young has received a $2.9 million settlement from the city, Lightfoot and her City Council allies have blocked the so-called Anjanette Young ordinance, which goes far beyond the police raid reforms imposed by the mayor and Chicago Police Supt. David Brown.
Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, has embraced those same, more sweeping reforms.
But Young’s endorsement of Johnson is nevertheless significant, because it could remind progressive voters about Lightfoot’s opposition to those reforms and the controversy surrounding Lightfoot’s changing story on what she knew and when she knew it about the Feb. 21, 2019, raid on Young’s home.
“I’ve had enough of the lies that have been told to me by our current mayor . ... It’s time for me to hold her accountable . ... It’s time for her to move out of City Hall to give someone else room to do the work that she has refused to do,” Young told a news conference outside City Hall.
“We need someone who is not afraid to make changes to the police department.”
Young said Lightfoot is “mistaken” when she says it’s a two-candidate race between her and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas. She is “equally mistaken when she says she is the only viable Black candidate,” Young said.
Johnson “supports the things that matter to me . ... He is committed to making sure that the trauma that I endured ... never happens to another person,” Young said.
The humiliation Young suffered was “unconscionable,” Johnson said.
“As mayor of the city of Chicago, I will protect Black women. We’re gonna pass the Anjanette Young ordinance. We’re gonna ensure that the type of brutality and the errors of this police department — that we put an end to that.”
Lightfoot has argued her own search warrant reforms are enough.
On Tuesday, the mayor took Young’s endorsement of Johnson in stride.
“She has a right to support anyone that she wants,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot said she met with Young and apologized for the “horrible trauma” the social worker endured.
When settlement negotiations began, Lightfoot said, “we asked specifically, several times, in writing, if there was anything else that she wanted and we were told, in writing, by her lawyer: ‘No. There was nothing else.’ Which frankly was a surprise to me given the fact that she had articulated specific interest in other things ... beyond a monetary settlement.”
Last fall, a Council committee shot down more sweeping search warrant reforms that, among other things, would have required warrants to be executed only after a “written plan” using the “least intrusive” tactics possible.
Prior to the 10-4 vote, Young pleaded with alderpersons to approve the ordinance.
“Imagine it was your mother who was standing there,” Young said then. “None of us would have wanted our mother to have that type of experience.”
The mayor had insisted at first that she knew nothing about the raid until December 2020, when WBBM-Channel 2 aired bodycam video of the raid.
After reviewing internal emails, however, the mayor admitted a top aide had warned her about the raid in November 2019.