Bodycam video of the February 2019 raid on Young’s home that the Lightfoot administration tried desperately to conceal was so damaging, Corporation Counsel Celia Meza personally made the presentation to alderpersons Monday.
Anjanette Young, the social worker who was forced to stand naked before a dozen male Chicago police officers while they executed a search warrant at the wrong address, will get $2.9 million under a settlement unanimously advanced Monday.
The voice vote by the City Council’s Finance Committee sets the stage for full Council approval on Wednesday, culminating a yearlong ordeal that Mayor Lori Lightfoot has acknowledged breached public trust in her administration.
Bodycam video of the February 2019 raid on Young’s home that the Lightfoot administration tried to conceal was so damaging, Corporation Counsel Celia Meza made the presentation to alderpersons during Monday’s hearing.
Meza told the Finance Committee that officers were at Young’s home “executing a valid, legal search warrant” that turned out to be based on false information that a male with a gun was living at that address and that the officers “knocked and announced” themselves before entering Young’s home.
The corporation counsel further noted that, although the raid continued for roughly 40 minutes, Young was forced to stand in a “complete state of undress” for just 16 seconds. A jacket was then placed around her shoulders for 13 seconds, followed by a blanket, the corporation counsel said.
It took a full 10 minutes before Young was allowed to get fully dressed, and only after a female officer arrived on the scene.
In September, the city filed a motion to dismiss Young’s lawsuit and five of the six counts were dismissed.
Meza said the count that remained was the social worker’s claim that the conduct of officers was “willful and wanton,” and would allows attorneys to take “very broad discovery” that could be exceedingly costly to Chicago taxpayers because it would involve deposition of all 12 police officers involved in the raid.
The city’s case would be further damaged by the fact that the Civilian Office of Police Acountability recommended the firing of one officer involved in the raid and suspensions for five others, Meza said.
For those reasons and more, Meza argued that $2.9 million was a good deal for Chicago taxpayers. It’s on par with the $2.5 million paid in 2014 after another raid on the wrong home where a “a gun was unfortunately pointed at a 3-year-old,” Meza siad.
“In this case, we have the indignities that Ms. Young suffered and the fact that she was in a state of undress for a total of approximately 16 seconds and, arguably before a jury, the 13 seconds where the jacket was put on and the 9 1/2 [minutes] where she had a blanket over her. ... A jury could find that that was 9 1/2 minutes too long. That was 16 seconds too long,” the corporation counsel said.
Meza noted that lawyers for people wrongly convicted are arguing for $1 million for every year spent in prison.
“In this particular instance, it is not unreasonable to assume that there would be a request for anywhere between $13 million and $16 million. Thirteen million for every officer and the city that was involved in execution of this search warrant. [Or] it could be $16 million for the 16 seconds that she was left in a complete state of undress,” Meza said.
In June, Alderpersons Ray Lopez (15th) and Jeanette Taylor (20th) used a parliamentary maneuver to delay Meza’s appointment to protest her decision to file a motion to dismiss Young’s lawsuit after the social worker refused to accept what her attorneys viewed as a “low-ball” offer to settle for $1 million.
On Monday, Lopez argued that $2.9 million was “not enough” to compensate Young for the “horrible way she was treated that day” and for what he called the “re-victimization by this administration constantly going after her.”
from Chicago Sun-Times - All https://ift.tt/3DSYNSa
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