Chicago cops raid innocent social worker's home and handcuff her while she's naked while searching for suspect who lived NEXT DOOR, bodycam footage shows
Distressing police bodycamera footage shows the moment Chicago cops broke into the home of an innocent naked social worker and handcuffed her, only to later realize they raided the wrong house.
On February 21, 2019 social worker Anjanette Young had returned home from her shift at a hospital and was undressed in her bedroom when a group of officers, with at least nine bodycameras, broke down her door with a battering ram and crowbar.
The officers were looking for a 23-year-old suspect who allegedly had a gun, but they didn't verify the address before conducting the search warrant. That suspect lived in the unit next door to Young.
Video footage was released publicly for the first time this week and Young cried as she watched it back and revealed she's still traumatized.
'It’s one of those moments where I felt I could have died that night. Like if I would have made one wrong move, it felt like they would have shot me. I truly believe they would have shot me,' Young tearfully said in an interview with CBS 2 Chicago.
Distressing police bodycamera footage shows the moment Chicago cops broke into the home of innocent naked social worker Anjanette Young and handcuffed her on February 21, 2019, only to later realize they raided the wrong house
Young had returned home from her shift at a hospital and was undressed in her bedroom when a group of officers broke down her door with a battering ram and crowbar. They handcuffed her and ordered her to stand in the living room even as she had no clothes on
'It’s one of those moments where I felt I could have died that night. Like if I would have made one wrong move, it felt like they would have shot me. I truly believe they would have shot me,' Young tearfully said. She has filed a lawsuit against the police following the botched raid
A view of officers breaking down Young's front door with a battery ram and crow bar above
Young had filed a Freedom of Information ACT request for the video to show the public. A court forced Chicago police to turn over the footage as a part of Young’s lawsuit against the department.
'I feel like they didn’t want us to have this video because they knew how bad it was. They knew they had done something wrong. They knew that the way they treated me was not right,' Young said.
In her interview she wore a shirt bearing the face of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT from Louisville, Kentucky who was shot dead during a botched police drug raid. Just as with Young's case, the Louisville police were searching for a suspect who did not live in Taylor's home.
In the disturbing footage Young appeared shocked when the officers burst into her home after tearing down the door and shouted 'Police search warrant! and 'Hands up, hands up!'
'It was so traumatic to hear the thing that was hitting the door. And it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to put on clothes,' Young said.
In the clip Young became distressed as she was forced to stand in the living room naked and handcuffed as officers swarmed her apartment.
She yelled at least 43 times 'You've got the wrong house!'
'What is going on? 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 shouted at one point of the clip.
Officers tried to cover Young up by putting a hoodie on her and a blanket over her shoulders, but because she was handcuffed, they kept slipping off her shoulders leaving her exposed
Officers asked her if she knew the armed suspect they were looking for and she said, 'I don't know who that person is.' The suspect turned out to be her neighbor and had no connection to her
Young was forced to stand uncomfortably handcuffed and partially naked in front of the group of officers as they peppered her with questions in the botched raid
She told the officers a total of 43 times that they had raided the wrong address
At first an officer tried to put a hoodie sweater on her but it kept falling off. Then another officer ultimately threw a blanket over her shoulders but because she was handcuffed the blanket slipped off her shoulders, leaving her exposed again.
'I'm just standing there, terrified, humiliated, not even understanding why in that moment this is happening to me,' she said reflecting on the incident.
In the clip she begged officers to let her get dressed and she told them she believed they had bad information. She had lived in the home alone for the past four years.
'Oh my God, this cannot be right. How is this legal,' she wailed.
It turned out that police had visited her home acting on a bad tip.
A day before the raid a confidential informant told the lead officer on the raid that he recently saw a 23-year-old man who was a known felon armed with a gun and ammunition. They gave the faulty address to police and cops didn’t independently verify if the address was correct.
It turned out the suspect lived in the unit next door to Young and had no connection to her whatsoever.
The suspect was awaiting trial on home confinement and was wearing an electronic monitoring device, meaning cops could have easily tracked his exact location.
In one portion of the footage two officers seated in a squad car discuss the approval of the search warrant. One officer says that warrant wasn't initially approved
A second officer asked the first officer, 'What does that mean?'
The first officer said that a person must have made a mistake in making the warrant
In one portion of the footage two officers seated in a squad car discuss the approval of the search warrant.
'It wasn’t initially approved or some cr**,' one officer said.
'What does that mean?' the second officer asked.
'I have no idea. I mean, they told him it was approved, then I guess that person messed up on their end,' the first officer said.
'That piece of paper search gives them the right to, you know, that says you can do X, Y, Z based on what’s on that paper. So if you get it wrong, you are taking 100 percent control of someone else’s life and treating them in a bad way,' Young said.
Eventually the officers let Young put on clothes and said 'We believe your story'
Eventually the officers let Young put on clothes and said 'We believe your story.' Cops then left and tried to fix the badly damaged front door but couldn’t.
'If this had been a young woman in Lincoln Park by herself… a young white woman let’s be frank, if the reaction would have been the same. I don’t think it would have been…They viewed Ms. Young as less than human,' her attorney Keenan Saulter said to CBS 2 Chicago.
'The work is warranted – they need to do the work. But they need to do it right. They can’t just callously do it and leave people’s lives in ruins because they got it wrong,' Young said.
On Tuesday the Civilian Office of Police Accountability said they're investigating the footage and incident.
They didn't launch the investigation until nine months after the incident when it was first reported by CBS2. Last month COPA said it 'is still in the process of serving allegations and conducting all necessary officer interviews.'
Neither the police department nor COPA would comment on the investigation.
'The work is warranted – they need to do the work. But they need to do it right. They can’t just callously do it and leave people’s lives in ruins because they got it wrong,' Young said. In her interview she wore a shirt bearing the face of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT from Louisville, Kentucky who was shot dead during a botched police drug raid. Just as with Young's case, the Louisville police were searching for a suspect who did not live in Taylor's home
COPA spokesman Ephraim Eaddy would only say that under city policy the only videos it will release before an investigation is complete are those in which an officer has fired a weapon or in incidents when there is great bodily injury.
That policy clearly bothered Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
'I want to be careful here because I respect the independence of COPA, but give me a break that we didn't put this video out in all this time. It's ridiculous, it really is,' she said at an unrelated press briefing.
Lightfoot, who took office after the incident, said concerns about officers searching the wrong homes has led to changes in search warrant protocols.
'I'm not going to sit here and tell you that we've solved every problem, but we responded to what we were seeing was way too many circumstances of officers going into the wrong home,' she said.
'I watched that video and I put myself in that poor woman's place and thinking about somebody breaking in to your home,' Lightfoot said.
'You have no idea who they are, in the middle of night... So I think we have taken steps to address that issue,' she added.