“If you ask me what I want from this, I want accountability. I don’t need social media followers, I don’t need that type of stuff. Accountability.”
Fifty-year-old Anjanette Young spoke to reporters outside of Chicago police headquarters. In the last two days, body cam footage has circulated media outlets after Young filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2019 to obtain the video of the botched raid by the Chicago Police Department.
On the evening of February 21, 2019, nearly a dozen police officers broke down Young’s door, in an attempt to execute a search warrant. It took police over an hour to listen to a pleading Young who told them they had the wrong home at least 43 times.
Footage of the raid shows Young naked and handcuffed, pleading with police. “This can’t be right,” Young can be heard saying. “You got the wrong house!”
Young is a clinical social worker with a 20-year career helping victims of violence. Her hope is that accountability will come now that the footage is out.
“I feel like they didn’t want us to have this video because they knew how bad it was,” Young told CBS 2, “They knew they had done something wrong. They knew that the way they treated me was not right.”
Supporters of Young took to Twitter to condemn the extreme measures Young, a self-declared private person, had to take in order to get accountability from police authorities.
On Monday (December 14), Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot filed an emergency motion in federal court in an attempt to stop CBS Chicago from airing the footage, but the court denied the motion.
Lightfoot dodge the question into why but told reporters in a press conference that reforms including a location verification on search warrants were implemented during her administration.
Police conducted the raid of Young’s home based on an informant, who gave police Young’s address, as reported by the Huffington Post. There is no evidence that shows police verified the information, and according to CBS 2’s findings, the person they were looking for lived next door to Young and was wearing an electronic monitoring device.
CBS 2 has done an extensive investigation into the city’s history with bad police raids, a pattern that has left many like Young seeking justice.
Ald. Stephanie Coleman called for “an immediate investigation to make sure that accountability is being held. No more concealing or any of that. Justice has to be served. Not only for Ms. Young but any other woman in the city of Chicago, no matter what ward they live in. This is wrong.”
Photo: Getty Images