A Black woman who received a multi-million dollar settlement from the city of Chicago after police mistakenly raided her apartment says that the money did not equate to justice. She recently noted that she would have been happier if the officers would have been fired and she “didn’t receive a dime.”
Anjanette Young’s home was raided in 2019 by police. The woman’s home was raided based on false information that said a male with a gun lived in her house. During the 40 minute raid, officers handcuffed Young and made her stand in “a complete state of undress” for 16 seconds in front of a dozen male Chicago Police officers.
Young said she was humiliated and now suffers from PTSD.
Video captured the botched raid and the woman saying, “You have the wrong house, I live alone.” Footage shows that at a certain point she was covered with a jacket and then by a blanket.
An officer tells her to “relax.” She responded again in outrage, “You got the wrong house.”
It wasn’t until ten minutes into the raid and after a female officer arrived on the scene, that Young was permitted to get dressed. The person the police were looking for was in the next apartment with electronic monitoring bracelets.
Young sued the city.
Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, said that people lost “a lot of trust” in her because the police force tried to conceal the smoking gun bodycam video. Many people believe she lost the trust of the people, according to “CBS Mornings,” because she initially denied knowing about the incident.
The city’s inspector’s general, in its 2021 Fourth Quarter Report, said that the city did intentionally try to conceal the video and stop Young from receiving the bodycam footage for her case.
It noted that the “City government failed to appropriately respond to a victim of a CPD wrong raid, failed to act with transparency in City operations, and performed a series of governmental actions in a manner that prioritized communications and public relations concern over the higher mission of city government” by withholding the video.
The video proved to be key evidence as it showed in detail the officers’ behavior.
After rejecting the city’s offer to settle for $1 million months earlier, Young accepted a $2.9 million settlement in December of 2021.
Now, in an interview with Gayle King on “CBS Mornings,” Young said, “I tell people that I didn’t lose my life, but I lost a lot of my life that night.”
She said that she felt “vulnerable,” and that if she had done anything differently than what they told her to do, she could have been killed.
King asked her if she believed that the settlement that she received was, in her opinion, justice.
Young said the money did not equate to justice for her. She would have rather the officers been fired than received any compensation. She said, “The money is not justice and I never went into the legal proceedings looking for money.”
“When I hired my attorney, I immediately told them that I wanted them all fired,” she told King. “In any other profession, if you go to work and you harm someone this type of way, you lose your job.”
“As a social worker, if I go to work, and I harm someone, I would lose my job, I would lose my license,” she shared.
The city’s inspector general’s office believes that at least eight of the cops should be suspended or fired. Young states that their report validates what she has been saying all along. She believes that a wave of reforms must happen for this to really make a difference, changing the way that law enforcement is trained and engages with the public.
“My skin color is different from all of the men that were in the room that night,” she stated after noting that her race played a part in how they treated her. “They had no compassion for people and families of color. They’ve done this to other families primarily in the Black and brown communities. What happens to me does not happen in the white affluent communities in Chicago.”
King then referenced that the only reason people were able to actually see the raid was because Young went to court to force the city’s hand to release it.
When asked if she would ever feel at peace, she said, “I don’t think that this will ever go away. I am choosing to find ways to live on purpose and not allow this one incident to define me for the rest of my life.”
She said the money has not changed her life and is “almost an insult.”
Holding back tears she said, “In a sense, it is saying, ‘This is what we value that situation to be.’ … Even the mayor said, ‘This will allow her to have resources to take care of herself.’ There is no amount of money that will right this wrong.”
“I would have been more satisfied, if all 12 officers had gotten fired and I didn’t receive a dime,” Young stated.
The review from the inspector general’s office was completed in October, CBS 2 reports, but Mayor Lightfoot has not committed to releasing all 163 pages.
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