The Chicago Police Department is under investigation and the city Mayor Lori Lightfoot has come under fire on Wednesday for trying to block the public from seeing footage of police officers raiding the wrong home with guns drawn and handcuffing a naked Black woman.
The city chief prosecutor, Kim Foxx, blasted Mayor Lightfoot for covering up the assault on Anjanette Young and the city’s many steps to conceal the video.
“The audacity that the city calculated its embarrassment over the release of the video, is a clear violation of Ms. Young’s body and autonomy,” Foxx tweeted. “This was a complete and utter dismissal of her humanity. Her humanity was, literally, stripped from her.”
Local CBS affiliate WBBM-TV in Chicago released body camera footage on Monday of police barging into Young’s home. The 50-year-old clinical social worker had just finished her shift at the hospital and was getting undressed when a group of male officers knocked down her door with a battering ram and entered with their guns drawn.
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In the disturbing footage, Young can be seen fully naked looking scared and confused while being handcuffed. She told the Chicago officers at least 43 times that they had the wrong information and were in the wrong house, but they wouldn’t believe her.
Police were looking for a known felon in his 20s who possessed guns and ammunition, according to the department’s search warrant obtained by WBBM. It was only later that police were convinced by a confidential informant that they were at the wrong address, the news station said.
There’s no evidence that officers independently verified the informant’s claim, and the suspect ― who lived next door to Young ― was wearing an electronic monitoring device that would have made it even easier for police to loca7te him.
“This disturbing video explicitly illustrates who the victim is, who deserves justice, and who holds the power,” Foxx said. “Let’s be clear, this is her body and this is her trauma. To imagine what Ms. Young experienced at the hands of those who were supposed to protect her is shameful.”
Young tried for nearly two years to obtain footage of the humiliating raid on her home, but the Chicago Police Department initially denied her Freedom of Information Act request. A judge eventually ordered police to release parts of the footage to her after Young filed a FOIA lawsuit.
Hours before WBBM aired the bodycam footage on Monday, Lightfoot’s lawyers filed an emergency motion in federal court to stop the CBS station. The lawyers also wanted to sanction Young, alleging she broke a confidentiality order by sharing the video of her own trauma with a news outlet. The lawyers’ filing, which was denied by a judge, argued that the video would be shared “in a salacious and unfair manner designed to elicit a reactionary response.”
“This is what’s wrong with our criminal justice system, this is why there is a lack of trust,” Foxx tweeted. “I hope that Ms. Young is somehow able to move beyond this with the dignity that she was deprived.”
Watch the report below via CBS News.
