Chicago is aghast.
We all shudder at the thought of police battering down the door of an innocent person, Anjanette Young. The door could just as easily have been anyone’s, because this a city where cops are too careless of residents’ rights.
We are infuriated when we see police body-cam video of nearly a dozen armed police officers terrorizing Young with guns and remaining in her home for more than 40 minutes, when all she had done was complete a day’s work as a licensed social worker at a hospital and return to her home.
We are appalled that the officers kept a terrified Young, who was getting ready to go to bed, naked and handcuffed instead of letting her put on clothes while they wandered around her home, though they finally draped her in a blanket and eventually let her get dressed. Young posed no threat to anyone.
We are scandalized that once again we are left with questions about the conduct of Chicago police that we hoped we would never have to ask again:
Why didn’t police carefully verify the address they had received from an informant before they engaged in such a mind-boggling violation of privacy and security as breaking down Young’s door? Why did an assistant state’s attorney and a judge approve a search warrant based on such sketchy information?
The most cursory effort at confirmation would have stopped this abomination before it started. The known felon with a gun and ammunition whom police were looking for, who lived nearby, was under electronic monitoring and could easily have been found. Young herself told the officers more than 40 times they were in the wrong house.
Why did they treat an innocent person so inhumanely? It should have been obvious moments after police entered Young’s home that she posed no threat. Was this part of a police practice to intimidate and dehumanize Young? Police easily could have wound up shooting Young by mistake, as can happen when guns are drawn needlessly.
Why did Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Law Department go to court to block CBS from airing the video depicting this outrage, an effort the judge denied? The answer, it seems clear, is it embarrasses the city and the police department. Police release video all the time when they feel it is in their interest.
And in a page right out of a Kafkaesque playbook, the city tried to sanction Young for allegedly violating a confidentiality order by releasing the video. But the idea that this video could be suppressed was ridiculous. Did the city learn nothing from its epic failure in attempting to suppress the video of the shooting of Laquan McDonald? Did the city learn nothing from thinking it could suppress the video of then-Police Officer Anthony Abbate beating a female bartender?
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Why is the Civilian Office of Police Accountability still dragging its feet nearly two years after this shocking maltreatment of an innocent city resident occurred in February 2019? Although the story was reported in the news media at the time, COPA waited to launch an investigation until Nov. 12, 2019, after Young sued the city. So far, the agency, which says it is investigating, has provided no answers about this case.
Where is the accountability? All of Chicago needs to know why and how this could happen. On Thursday, Lightfoot admitted she had been notified of the raid a year ago and corrected her earlier denial that the city had refused Young’s Freedom of Information Act request for the video.
Chicago is supposed to be in a moment of transparency and of reform. Chicago is supposed to be in a moment when police are working to rebuild trust in the community. Chicago is supposed to be ending the era when the city digs deep into taxpayers’ pockets for massive payouts to settle cases of police misconduct. It is the taxpayers, not police or city officials, who are penalized for this type of wrongdoing, and the mounting tab is becoming unaffordable.
Lightfoot has apologized and on Thursday promised that the city will do better. But what we need is confidence that these wrongs will be corrected.
Mayors have come and gone, as have police chiefs and police oversight agencies. What hasn’t changed is the need for true, lasting reform.
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