After errant raid of social worker’s home, Chicago mayor says city will not block residents’ access to their own police records

CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday said her administration will no longer withhold video from residents seeking police records about their cases and acknowledged that the city’s handling of a wrongful raid on social worker Anjanette Young’s home harmed her relationship with Chicagoans.

The comments came as Lightfoot spent a third day dealing with continued criticism about her response to revelations about the February 2019 raid where Young was handcuffed naked by officers who had wrongly entered her home.

“There’s a lot of trust that’s been breached, and I know there’s a lot of trust in me that’s been breached, and I have a responsibility to build back that trust,” she said.

On Wednesday, Lightfoot falsely denied that her administration withheld footage of the raid from Young. On Thursday, Lightfoot acknowledged her administration had denied an open records request submitted by Young for the footage and said that shouldn’t happen.

“Any time a person who’s a victim requests information about an incident that happened to them, our government’s obligation is to respond in a fulsome, transparent and immediate way,” Lightfoot said.

In his first public comments on the case, police Superintendent David Brown also sent a stern message to officers who mistreat citizens such as Young when entering their homes with a search warrant.

“If that was your mother, how would you want her to be treated?” Brown said of the incident that happened before he joined the department. “We hire people who we think know right from wrong. And if they don’t know right from wrong, they don’t need to be police officers.

“Treat everyone with respect,” he added. “Everyone deserves a measure of respect.”

The controversy erupted on Monday night after Lightfoot’s Law Department attempted to block the local CBS station from airing body camera footage of Chicago police officers mistakenly raiding Young’s home in February 2019, before the mayor took office.

Officers arrived at the wrong address and found Young naked, then handcuffed her, the video showed.

City lawyers also filed a request to have Young sanctioned for allegedly violating a confidentiality order on the video, though Lightfoot on Wednesday said Young should not be punished — just her lawyer, if a judge rules in that way.

A federal judge rejected the Lightfoot administration’s unusual request to prevent a television station from airing a news report. The courts long have ruled against efforts to prevent news companies from publishing reports, saying it’s an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

On Thursday, the mayor also acknowledged that members of her team told her about the raid in November 2019, as CBS was doing continued reporting on search warrants being served at the wrong addresses, which the TV station has covered extensively. Lightfoot said her administration would release the emails, though they did not immediately do so.

“It was literally somebody saying, mayor, here’s another one, (some) words to that effect, I’m paraphrasing, and I said let’s talk about it, let’s get (former chief risk officer Tamika Puckett) involved, and there was a subsequent email from her because I was pushing her on what are we doing, where are we on revising the search warrant protocols, and she gave a detailed update,” Lightfoot said.

During Thursday’s news conference with Lightfoot, Brown reiterated some of the changes to the department’s warrant policies made in January, resulting from CBS reporting. For instance, officers need to corroborate information they received from a confidential informant with a third party who has not been paid for their cooperation with law enforcement.

Brown said officers must exercise “due care” when they encounter children in cases when they get a search warrant authorizing them to enter someone’s home, and a complaint will be filed against them if the warrant was executed at the wrong home. And for consistency, he said, information about the informants can only be restricted to officers working on narcotics and gang teams.

This month, Brown said, the department established that “no-knock” warrants would be approved only by a high-level commander, and if there is a justifiable danger to life and safety in those checks. Plus, the department is in the process of adding body cameras to SWAT, narcotics and gang officers.

Brown said police officers must be the first to admit their mistakes without a judge telling them to.

“The video of the raid of Ms. Young’s home is hard to watch. It’s hard not to feel Ms. Young’s anguish and fear and pain when viewing that video,” Brown said. “I have been personally nurtured by very strong, smart Black women in my entire life. Ms. Young reminds me of those women who nurtured me.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration famously fought to keep secret a video showing white police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, but a county judge ordered his administration to release the video. Emanuel has since been dogged by accusations that he covered up the scandal to preserve his 2015 reelection campaign, an allegation he’s denied.

Chicago has since instituted a rule allowing the release of police shooting videos and audio within 60 days. Lightfoot said she will pursue changes to make other video releases easier.

In an interview with the ChicagoTribune earlier this week, Young’s attorney Keenan Saulter criticized the city for its handling of the situation. Saulter said he believes the city’s motivation was more about keeping an embarrassing incident secret.

“This city has a history of attempting to cover up unfavorable video,” Saulter said. “That’s all we’re dealing with here.”

Young also talked about the wrongful raid in a news conference Wednesday.

“Making me stand in front of them naked, putting handcuffs on me while I was naked, no one should have to experience that,” Young told reporters. “That night, February 21, 2019, will be something that I will carry with me always.”