‘I feared for my life’: Chicago woman was targeted in raid when police went to wrong address

During a botched raid by Chicago police, Anjanette Young waited naked, handcuffed and terrified, insisting at least 43 times that officers had targeted the wrong home.

“I was afraid if I did anything, or made any moves, that they would shoot me,” she told Good Morning America on Friday. “They had guns pointed at me. I feared for my life that night.”

In February 2019, Young, a Black social worker, was inside her apartment, changing her clothes after work when police loudly broke through her door with a battering ram.

Body camera footage was released this week showing the raid after Young filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request so the public could see it.

The footage shows an entourage of screaming male officers crowding into the apartment, where Young stood unclothed.

The room was so dark that all she could see were the lights and scopes on guns pointed at her, she said.

Police draped a series of garments around her – a short coat that primarily covered her shoulders, then later a floral print blanket – but because she was handcuffed, she couldn’t hold any of the makeshift clothing together.

“They viewed Ms Young as less than human,” Keenan Saulter, Young’s attorney, told local TV station CBS 2, which showed the footage, blurring portions that showed Young unclothed.

Eventually, an officer helped her keep the blanket closed, and after around 13 minutes of humiliation, she was finally escorted to her room so she could get dressed.

“Oh my God, this cannot be right,” Young shrieked at the officers. “How is this legal?”

The painful incident lasted about 40 minutes, all because police didn’t do due diligence researching an informant’s bad tip before securing a search warrant. Officers were looking for a 23-year-old suspect who lived next door to Young, and who could have been tracked by the electronic monitoring device he was wearing at the time, CBS 2 reported.

Young said the incident has left her with lifelong trauma.

“I have an obligation to make that wrong right,” said Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor, on Thursday. “It’s been painful, painful and upsetting.”

Lightfoot had initially tried to distance herself from the incident by saying it happened before she took office in May 2019. Her administration tried unsuccessfully in court to block WBBM-TV from airing the footage this week, which Young obtained through her lawsuit with the city.

Young was denied access to the video in a November 2019 Freedom of Information Act request to the city. The city also tried to have Young sanctioned for apparently breaking a confidentiality agreement.

Later, Lightfoot apologized.

She said Young shouldn’t be punished and vowed to make changes in the department on the warrant process and use the video to train officers on what not to do. Lightfoot said Thursday that the city would also make changes to allow victims to get video faster without having to file a request.

“Anytime a person who is a victim requests information about an incident that happened to them, our government’s obligation is to respond in a fulsome, transparent and immediate way,” Lightfoot said at the news conference.