Anjanette Young ordinance slated for vote — without no-knock warrant ban
Instead the Anjanette Young ordinance, named after the Black social worker who police handcuffed and left naked in her home while serving a warrant at the wrong address, will require cops to wait 30 seconds before entry. It's a compromise accepted by both Young and her main council ally, Ald. Maria Hadden, one that reflects the shift in the political climate since demand for police accountability reached a fever pitch during the Black Lives Matter movement that exploded in 2020.
The new version grants Hadden, Young and her supporters the ability to claim a win that they say will still protect Chicagoans. But the struggle thus far to build consensus behind the tougher ordinance, despite the citywide furor over police mistreatment of Young, reflects the difficulty activists faced in turning energy around the George Floyd protests into legislation.
While Young and Hadden said they still support a no-knock ban in the future, and Johnson campaigned on such a law, the mayor has avoided giving his current stance on the issue.
'It's an ongoing conversation,' the mayor told reporters this week about whether a no-knock ban remains on his agenda. 'These reforms and transformations certainly don't come easily, but it doesn't stop us, prevent us or curtail us, quite frankly, from pursuing justice.'
The pivot comes after five years of Young and Hadden focusing on no-knock warrants, which allow officers to forcibly enter homes without announcing themselves, as the chief target of the legislation. Their calls to abolish those search warrants joined the nationwide movement triggered by the 2020 police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in Louisville, Kentucky, during a flawed drug investigation.
But while outlawing no-knock warrants may make for a more impressive win, Young said the sharp drop in those types of raids occurring over the years allowed her to feel comfortable with taking the ban out for now.
'Now ultimately, would I love to see no-knock warrants completely banned in the city, the state and across the country? Absolutely,' Young said. 'But I feel hopeful in the sense that if this ordinance passed, we have a tangible piece of legislation that allows for accountability.'
To be sure, the wrongful 2019 police raid on Young's home was not the result of a no-knock warrant. Rather, police conducted a knock-and-announce raid at the wrong address, which the mayor argued in July should be the focus of the ordinance instead because those comprise the majority of Chicago police search warrants.
Johnson did not say which party suggested taking the no-knock ban out. But according to Hadden, police Superintendent Larry Snelling's team did so and the mayor's office did not object to the change.
After looking at Chicago police data showing no-knock warrants have been 'barely used,' Hadden said she and Young agreed it was not worth jeopardizing the success of an ordinance that had been subject to years of false starts and stops.
'We want to get something passed that's actually addressing the problematic behavior, and if that means some compromises, we're willing to do it,' Hadden said. 'We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.'
CPD officers last year executed 210 residential search warrants — an 84% decrease from 2019, the year of the Young raid, when officers used residential search warrants nearly 1,400 times, according to figures provided by the Police Department. Data on how many were no-knock warrants was not publicly available.
Over the last six years, internal Chicago police directives as well as the federal consent decree on the department have also been expanded to add new provisions surrounding search warrant execution.
Even the weaker version could put Johnson at odds with Snelling, whose office has not endorsed the 30-second rule that the mayor has pitched as a more precise tool to prevent botched police raids.
That could stymie buy-in from pro-law enforcement aldermen who might be reluctant to buck police leadership — and set the stage for an awkward split between the mayor and his top cop.
Chicago police declined to comment on the pending legislation. Johnson confirmed at an unrelated news conference, however, that Snelling was hesitant to endorse the latest version.
'There are some concerns that the superintendent has raised. We're going to continue to work through this process,' Johnson said. 'The most important thing though that I know that the superintendent is committed to — this is my commitment — is to work to make sure that that trauma that Ms. Anjanette Young experienced, that that doesn't happen again. And I commend Anjanette Young for her steadfastness and commitment to ensuring that this ordinance not only sees the life of day, that it actually becomes law.'
The ordinance is currently in the council Police and Fire Committee after Hadden introduced it last month. If it passes there, it could get an up-or-down vote in the full council as soon as September.
Ald. Chris Taliaferro, the mayor's handpicked chair of the committee, said he hasn't made up his mind on the measure yet, but 'even a time limit placed on entry needs to be discussed … to see what is not only best for our residents, but what's best for the safety of our police officers as well.'
The official language requires cops 'knock and announce the officer's presence at a volume loud enough for the officer to reasonably believe the occupants inside can hear, allow at least 30 seconds before entry, and delay entry if the officer has reason to believe that someone is approaching the dwelling's entrance with the intent of voluntarily allowing the officer to enter.'
There is an exception during 'an exigent circumstance,' such as imminent danger of death or grave injury 'provided that the imminent danger is not created by law enforcement service and executing the residential search warrant.'
Besides that provision, the latest version also requires the Police Department to establish a policy addressing gun-pointing and any raids at homes with children 16 and younger as well as the elderly and disabled.
On Feb. 21, 2019, police botched the execution of a warrant and went to the wrong home, restraining Young instead of an unrelated male suspect while she was getting ready for bed. Officers did not allow her to put on clothes and handcuffed her during their search. The raid at Young's home was captured on officers' body cameras and quickly went viral after the video was publicly released, sparking one of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot's biggest police accountability scandals of her term.
Since then, Young has crusaded against the Police Department's search warrant process and was awarded a $2.9 million settlement in December 2021.
In 2022, Hadden attempted to push the Anjanette Young ordinance forward in a City Council committee but failed in a 10-4 vote. That was after a previous version presented to the body in 2021 also never garnered a floor vote as Lightfoot argued such reforms should be reflected within Police Department directives, not codified in law.
The earlier legislation would have banned no-knock warrants except in the case of 'exigent circumstances.'
One critic of Johnson's decision to back off a no-knock warrant ban in the new version came from an unlikely corner of the City Council.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, a member of City Council's more conservative bloc, called for a six-month moratorium on no-knock warrants in 2020. He said last week, 'If someone like me who is unashamed of my support for law enforcement can propose significant and sweeping changes to our warrant execution, why can't a progressive mayor?'
Meanwhile, Illinois Democrats are still working through their own proposal for a statewide ban. This past session in the General Assembly, Young testified before state lawmakers on legislation sponsored by state Rep. Kam Buckner, a Chicago Democrat, to prohibit most no-knock search warrants.
It passed committee before lawmakers adjourned, and Buckner said he intends to move it along either in the fall veto session or next year. The former mayoral candidate noted that it had bipartisan support and also the backing of the Illinois State Rifle Association.
'If Democrats in the city of Chicago can't figure out how to get this done, but you have Republicans from downstate and from rural districts who understand the need and the necessity, it's a little curious,' Buckner said. 'But I believe that we'll find a way to get there, both in the city and in the state.'
Young said she wasn't involved much in politics before the botched raid in 2019. Now, she can rattle off the City Council legislative process, the ins and outs of court cases on other wrongful police raids and the latest negotiations with the consent decree monitor.
She said she isn't fazed by the latest hurdle in her long-winding road to get to what she hopes is the final stage of her namesake ordinance, either.
'Things start to fade when no one is paying attention, and so I refuse to let the city of Chicago or the state of Illinois not pay attention to me and what happened to me,' Young said.
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