Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, who ran for a platform of police reform and racial justice, said on Friday that the city’s attempt to stop a local TV station from broadcasting police video of a failed raid was “a mistake.”
Her announcement came when the city formally withdrawn a motion to stop the CBS branch in Chicago from broadcasting the video of police raided the wrong house and handcuffed resident Anjanette Young, who was naked.
“The action brought against the CBS2 news station filed by the city’s legal department was a mistake,” said Lightfoot.
The city also withdrew a motion for sanctions against Young’s attorney, Keenan Saulter, who obtained the police agency’s camera video of the botched raid through a federal court. Lightfoot said she knew nothing about the video or the city’s attempts to keep it a secret.
City attorneys had claimed the apparent leak to the TV station that aired the footage Thursday violated the court order that Young had allowed it to be obtained.
The city was “deeply concerned that there had been a violation of a court order,” the lawyers said upon their withdrawal.
Lightfoot had said earlier this week that the raid took place in February 2019 before its inauguration and that the video, which she said she saw for the first time on Tuesday, was terrible.
A dozen rifle-armed officers stormed into Young’s house while she was getting ready to go to bed and handcuffed her as she tried to use a duvet to cover her naked body.
“You have the wrong house!” Young, 50, argued repeatedly.
Police had acted on a tip from a confidential informant about a suspect wanted for unlawful use of a gun by a criminal and possession of ammunition and a small amount of drugs. It turned out that the suspect lived nearby and was already electronically checked by the prison authorities.
Young, who is black, has filed a lawsuit against a police station that has long faced allegations of racism.
“To invade my house as it was, and to have police officers yell at me for 40 minutes and calm me down while I was naked in handcuffs,” Young said at a news conference on Wednesday. “Nobody should go through that.”
On Friday, black clergy, including Reverend Jesse Jackson, were to hold a press conference on the matter. Reverend Marshall Hatch of New Mount Pilgrim Church in Chicago released a statement demanding that the city council hold public hearings to hold the police and its surveillance panel to account and to find out if Lightfoot knew more about the matter than she let see.
“We’ve had enough covers in this town,” he said. “It’s time for transparency.”
Lightfoot was chosen by a city rocked by the fatal shooting of black teen Laquan McDonald in October 2014. The city opposed the release of dash cam video of the murder, which made a lie about the police claiming that the shooting was justified.
Samira puskar contributed.