Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot
Lori Lightfoot Top Chicago attorney resigns after botched police raid on black woman’s house. LAKE (D) said that the police officers who were part of a raid last year that falsely targeted the home of local social worker Anjanette Young, who was handcuffed while naked, have since been “ taken off the street. ”
Lightfoot announced this on Monday during a press conference, CNN reports. During the event, Lightfoot reportedly told the press that the agents had been assigned to desk duty while her civilian police station continues to investigate the case.
The city’s leadership came under scrutiny this month after it was discovered that local officials were trying to prevent a CBS station in Chicago from broadcasting police CCTV footage of the botched raid on Young’s home.
According to the local station, CBS 2, the city’s legal team had filed an emergency motion to block the outlet from broadcasting the footage last week. However, the station said the motion was rejected when the report aired.
CCTV footage of the body was captured in late February showing a group of officers breaking into the door of Young’s home, storming in while naked and handcuffed to her as part of a raid that was later revealed to be aimed at the wrong property .
Police reportedly received a search warrant for the raid based on inaccurate information obtained from an informant. The informant at the time reportedly said that a criminal with a gun had been in Young’s home.
According to CBS 2, it was later discovered that the suspect that the agents were the target of the raid lived next door to Young. At the time, the suspect also reportedly had an electronic measuring device.
During the raid, Young was able to repeatedly tell officers that they had entered the wrong place.
“There is no one else here, I live alone. I mean what’s going on here? You have the wrong house. I live alone, ”she told officers in the footage.
Minutes after the officers entered her house, one of them laid a blanket on Young. But she was still handcuffed at the time and couldn’t keep the blanket in place during the raid.
Lightfoot said last week that she was “blinded” by the emergency motion filed by her legal department to block the release of the camera footage of the body.
“Filing a motion against a media outlet to prevent anything from being published is something that should rarely, if ever, happen,” she said at the time. “And if I had been told this was in the works, I would have put it in his tracks.”
Ahead of her comments on Monday, Chicago’s top attorney, Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner, announced he was resigning after the release of the footage sparked a wave of backlash.
Lightfoot said on Monday that she “sought and received his resignation.”
“I firmly believe that delayed justice is justified. And frankly, there is no excuse that this issue has been languishing for a year without any significant movement on the part of COPA [the civilian oversight board], ”She added, according to CNN.
Young has reportedly taken legal action against city police for blocking the release of the images.
Young’s attorney Matt Topic also knocked Lightfoot out in a statement to CNN on Monday, saying, “This mayor doesn’t seem to have done anything about transparency, but a continuation of what Rahm has. [Emanuel] did and [Mayor Richard] Daley did it for them. “
“They just refuse to follow what the law says, they are not about to follow the law,” Topic added.
The city’s government also came under scrutiny for Emanuel’s response to the police’s 2014 murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald while he was mayor of Chicago. Emanuel reportedly worked to block the release of footage showing a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, who shot the black teenager.