CHICAGO — In a one-on-one interview Friday evening, Mayor Lightfoot said she did not see the video of a botched police raid at a woman’s home until this week.

After initially saying she knew nothing about the case, Lightfoot backtracked and said she was actually alerted about the case with a few details last year.

In February 2019, Anjanette Young was traumatized after police burst down her door and handcuffed her while she was naked. The person CPD was actually looking for was next door and on electronic monitoring.

The city went to court to keep the video from being aired.

“Ms. Young was completely denied her dignity as a human being,” Lightfoot said.

Lightfoot said someone in city government had to have seen the video, which bothers her.

“Along the way, people that work for the city government saw that videotape, they had to of, there’s no question in my mind,” Lightfoot said. “What’s been bothering me, is how did they not see what we all saw?”

The mayor has promised major changes to try to rebuild trust, but said it isn’t on the same level as the murder of Laquan McDonald.

“There’s a lot of differences… but we’re talking about the murder of a young man. And I don’t want to ever diminish what happened to Ms. Young, we can’t and I never will, but there is a difference between what happened to her and the murder of a young man in the street for no reason,” Lightfoot said. “I can’t let us conflate the two, that would be a disservice to Laquan McDonald and his family.”

Mayor Lightfoot said she was outraged to learn that there were additional body cameras that were not initially turned over. She has instructed her corporation counsel to withdraw sanctions against Young’s attorney.

A group of pastors met with Mayor Lightfoot Friday afternoon virtually and held a news conference in the evening. They said COPA has been a failure as the agency continues to investigate the situation.

On Friday night, the mayor’s office released the following statement.

On February 21, 2020, the City’s Law Department provided Plaintiff’s counsel with Body Worn Camera (BWC) video connected to the report of the incident. At that time, the Law Department clearly failed to search all potential locations where corresponding BWC video could be located. 14 videos were turned over to Ms. Young’s counsel. Seventeen days later, on March 9, 2020, Plaintiff’s counsel voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit against the City which halted any further searches for video by the Law Department in response to the order. Following the CBS report this week, in order to ensure complete transparency, the Mayor directed that all BWC footage be released to Ms. Young, CBS and the public. It was at that time that six additional videos were discovered.   

While this failure to produce the additional six videotapes was inadvertent and not intentional, nonetheless, it was completely unacceptable. The Mayor has directed that all individuals responsible for this discovery failure be identified so they can be held accountable.