A Black woman is trying to feel safe in her own home after bodycam footage shows that police wrongly entered her home with their guns drawn and handcuffed her while she was naked.
Anjanette Young filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year for the video to show the public what happened to her that day. Chicago Police denied her request, but a court ordered them to hand over the footage… and she was in disbelief.
“I feel like they didn’t want us to have this video because they knew how bad it was,” Young said. “They knew they had done something wrong. They knew that the way they treated me was not right.”
In the videotaped on Feb. 21, 2019, a group of male officers entered her Young’s at 7 p.m. Young has just finished her shift at the hospital and had gone into her bathroom to undress. She then heard loud knocks on her door before officers broke the door down using a battering ram.
That’s when she said she heard a loud, pounding noise.
Outside, officers repeatedly struck her door with a battering ram. From various angles, the video captured the moments they broke down the door and burst through her home.
“It was so traumatic to hear the thing that was hitting the door,” Young said, as she watched the video. “And it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to put on clothes.”
“There were big guns,” Young recalled. “Guns with lights and scopes on them. And they were yelling at me, you know, put your hands up, put your hands up.”
Eventually, an officer wrapped a short coat around her shoulders — leaving the lower half of her body completely exposed. Another officer later wraps a blanket around her, covering her body.
“It felt like forever to me,” she said. “It felt like forever.”
About two minutes after police entered the home, an officer found a blanket and wrapped it around as a tearful Young repeatedly asked officers who they were looking for. They had the wrong address. She lived alone.
