
*Anjanette Young said she was relaxing on Thursday night with an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” when Chicago police burst in with guns drawn and handcuffed her while she was naked. As it turns out, the cops raided the wrong house — a common occurrence in the city.
“I’ll never forget it. February 21st,” Young said. “[I] had undressed in my bedroom, getting ready to get comfortable. And then I hear these loud slams.”
Anjanette said she grabbed a jacket right as the cops burst through the front door with their guns pointed.
“Before I knew it, there was a swarm of police officers,” she said. “They had these big guns, long guns with scopes and lights… I thought they were going to shoot me.”
Young said officers yelled at her to put her hands up, so she complied, causing the jacket to fall out of her hands. Police handcuffed her while she was still naked.
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Anjanette Young can’t shake Feb. 21 out of her memory. Her home doesn’t feel as safe as it used to, because that night it was invaded. Chicago police officers pointing guns were there to execute a search warrant, but they were in the wrong home. https://t.co/qyPRY3Rj3v
— CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) November 12, 2019
“I can just remember crying and yelling, ‘Please let me put my clothes on…you have the wrong place,” she said. “I can see it all over again…I can see them walking around my house and feeling like, feeling humiliated.”
Police raided her home acting on a tip from an informant about a 23-year-old man with ammunition and a handgun. But CBS 2 found they didn’t do sufficient research, which would have revealed (through publicly available information) the address of the suspect they were in search of was listed address across the street from Young’s home.
“It just felt like they didn’t even consider me a person or had any concern of who may live in the home because they didn’t even check,” Young said. “Everything about that apartment is in my name.
“If they had done any front end research,” she continued, “I think I would never be sitting here telling this story.”
The officers eventually let her make a phone call, and she phoned Reverend Ray Hawkins, the associate pastor at her church. When he arrived on the scene to console her, he found Young “shaking and crying” and “totally in the nude [during the raid].”
“…Just the humiliation. The total dehumanizing of a person,.” Hawkins said.
Young is among dozens of innocent victims who have been traumatized by wrong police raids.