Chicago mayor says police officers involved in botched raid on Anjanette Young’s home ‘taken off the street’

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said the police officers who were part of a raid last year that wrongly targeted the home of local social worker Anjanette Young, who was handcuffed while she was naked, have since been “taken off the street.” 

Lightfoot made the announcement during a press conference on Monday, according to CNN. During the event, Lightfoot reportedly told the press that the officers had been assigned to desk duty as her Civilian Office of Police Accountability continues its investigation into the case.

{mosads}The city’s leadership has come under scrutiny this month after it was discovered that local officials tried to prevent a CBS station in Chicago from airing police body camera footage of the botched raid on Young’s home. 

The city’s legal team had filed an emergency motion seeking to block the outlet from broadcasting the footage last week, according to the local station, CBS 2. However, the station said the motion was rejected as its report aired.

The body camera footage was captured in late February and showed a group of officers breaking down the door of Young’s residence, charging in while she was naked and placing her in handcuffs as part of a raid that was later revealed to have targeted the wrong residence. 

The police had reportedly secured a search warrant for the raid based on inaccurate information obtained from an informant. The informant reportedly said at the time that a felon had been at Young’s residence with a weapon.

According to CBS 2, it was later discovered that the suspect the officers had targeted in the raid lived next door to Young. The suspect also reportedly had on an electronic monitoring device at the time.

During the raid, Young could be seen repeatedly telling officers that they had entered the wrong residence. 

“There’s nobody else here, I live alone. I mean, what is going on here? You’ve got the wrong house. I live alone,” she told officers in the footage.

Minutes after the officers entered her home, one placed a blanket on Young. But she had still had on handcuffs at the time and was unable to keep the blanket in place during the raid.

Lightfoot said last week that she was “blindsided” by the emergency motion filed by her law department to block the release of the body camera footage.

“Filing a motion against a media outlet to prevent something from being published is something that should rarely, if ever, happen,” she said then. “And had I been advised that this was in the works, I would have stopped it in its tracks.” 

Ahead of her comments on Monday, Chicago’s top attorney, Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner, announced he was resigning after the release of the footage generated a wave of backlash.

Lightfoot said on Monday that she “sought and received his resignation.”

“I firmly believe that justice delayed is justice denied. And frankly there is no excuse that this matter has languished for a year without any significant movement on the part of COPA [the civilian oversight board],” she added, according to CNN. 

Young has reportedly launched a legal challenge against the city’s police department for barring the footage’s release.

Young’s attorney Matt Topic also knocked Lightfoot in a statement to CNN on Monday, saying, “This mayor does not appear to have done anything on transparency, just a continuation of what Rahm [Emanuel] did and [Mayor Richard] Daley did before them.”

“They just refuse to follow what the law says, they’re not at a point of following the law,” Topic added.

The city’s government also came under scrutiny for Emanuel’s response to the 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald when he was mayor of Chicago. Emanuel reportedly worked to block the release of footage that showed a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, fatally shoot the Black teenager.