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CHICAGO (CBS) — Two City Council committees are holding a public hearing Tuesday morning to question Chicago Police Department officials about their search warrant policies, in the wake of a CBS 2 investigation that revealed officers wrongly raided innocent social worker Anjanette Young’s home last year, and handcuffed her while she was naked.
The Committee on Public Safety and Committee on Health and Human Relations will meet remotely at 11 a.m. to give aldermen the opportunity to question CPD about how Young’s case was handled, and to look into the department’s overall policies and procedures regarding search warrants. No votes will be taken during the meeting.
The hearing comes as three members of Chicago’s law department are out of their jobs, following what Mayor Lori Lightfoot calls the mishandling of the Anjanette Young case. The City Council Black Caucus is introducing a resolution calling for the city to abolish warrants based only on information from paid informants and changing the city’s police on the release of video footage.
This is a result of CBS 2 Investigators exposing Anjanette Young’s case and many other victims of bad raids. Young was a victim of a botched raid conducted by Chicago police, which was recorded in February of 2019. Lightfoot had criticized the city’s Law Department for seeking to block CBS 2 from airing video footage of the wrong raid of Young’s home. A federal judge denied that request, and Lightfoot has since said that it was a mistake, though she has denied knowing about the request beforehand.
Several aldermen had invited Lightfoot to personally appear at Tuesday’s hearing, but she has said she won’t attend, saying “I think the aldermen have it covered.”
Monday, Mayor Lightfoot also announced every officer involved in the wrong raid of Young’s home has been placed on desk duty until the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) concludes its investigation of the 2019 incident. The mayor said the officers were removed from the street at the direction of Chicago Police Supt. David Brown, amid a COPA investigation that has dragged on for more than a year.
CBS 2 will be following Tuesday’s joint committee hearing, and will have regular updates here:
11:58 a.m.
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), who chairs the City Council Black Caucus, said aldermen are committed to making a series of changes in city policies, and have called for a series of ordinances to address the issue of wrong raids:
- Abolishing the practice of issuing warrants based solely upon the use of paid informants.
- Keeping a database of reliability of sources used for search warrants, to see patterns of erroneous information.
- A standardized process for search warrant applications, States Attorney review, judicial sign off, and post execution results.
- Changing the City’s policy on the release of video footage. As under current rules, the release of video for this type of incident is NOT to be released, per the policy; and this must change.
- Passage of Civilian Oversight measures for the Chicago Police Department
- Question the actions and/or inactions of the City of Chicago employees including the COPA Administrator, CPD Chains of Command, members of the Law Department; and also review the roles of the Cook County States’ Attorney and members of the Judiciary. This must be answered with the appropriate individuals held accountable.
- Call on the Inspector General to conduct a complete investigation of this incident.
- The establishment of a City Council Committee on Litigation Review and Risk Management to provide oversight and review of our Risk Management, Litigation Strategy, and Settlement practices.
“At the end of the day, our job is to work and fix the policies that created the situations in which that we’re faced. I believe that, if we take these steps as a council working through our committee structure, we’ll be able to see the change that our citizens would like to see,” Ervin said.
Meantime, Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) and Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) have introduced a proposed order for a six-month moratorium on the practice of “no-knock” warrants at CPD while the city weighs more sweeping search warrant policy changes, and called for the committees to consider that measure at Tuesday’s hearing. However, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), who chairs the Health and Human Relations Committee, said Tuesday’s meeting was scheduled as a subject matter hearing only, and called for a 5-minute recess to consult with the city’s Law Department to determine if it would be proper to weigh the proposed order under those circumstances.
It’s important to note, however, that in the wrong raids covered extensively by CBS 2, police did not seek “no-knock” warrants, even though they carried out warrants as if they were in most cases; knocking on doors, but not giving the people who lived in the homes time to answer before breaking in.
11:30 a.m.
The meeting started with public comment from several people calling on aldermen to approve proposals for a civilian police oversight board, and accusing the city of trying to cover up the circumstances of the raid on Young’s home.
One caller said he’s not interested in any “crocodile tears or fake apologies” from the mayor, and demanded “systemic structural change” from the city.
A vote on a plan to create a civilian police oversight board has been delayed for months, amid a dispute over who would have ultimate authority for setting Chicago Police Department policy. The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability, a group of community activists which has been negotiating the proposed Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, wants the new oversight board to approve all CPD general orders and policies, but the mayor wants to have final say.
Callers also said what happened to Young is not unique, and has happened far too many times before, accusing aldermen of doing nothing to protect minorities from such abuses by CPD.
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