A woman who was handcuffed naked as Chicago police mistakenly raided her home in 2019 has canceled a planned meeting with Mayor Lori Lightfoot over disagreements on a public forum that was to be held afterward, the woman's attorney said Monday.
Anjanette Young requested to meet privately with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, followed by a public forum with members of City Council, both to be held on Wednesday, according to a statement from the law firm of Young's attorney Keenan Saulter.
Young's lawyer said the city's acting corporate counsel advised him that Lightfoot accepted the private meeting but declined to participate in the forum, to which all 50 aldermen had been invited.
Young's attorney noted that Young had previously only invited seven aldermen to the forum, to be held at Progressive Baptist Church, where Young is a member, but later extended the invitation to the entire City Council after "informal pushback from individuals associated with" the mayor.
Young's lawyer said the city's corporate counsel told him that Lightfoot would speak to the press instead of participate in the forum, which he called "an opportunity for transparency and healing for Ms. Young and the citizens of the City of Chicago."
"To be clear, this means that the Mayor declined Ms. Young’s request to meet with her in the manner that Ms. Young had requested—a manner that was best for her, her healing and transparency," the statement from Saulter Law reads.
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When asked for comment, Lightfoot's office said in a statement, "As the Mayor has said previously, she is eager to meet with and to hear directly from Ms. Young to continue the process of healing. Hopefully such a meeting will be possible soon."
Young's invitation came after Lightfoot previously asked to meet with her in person as she apologized for the "colossal mess" created during the city's handling of the case.
"It left me upset, angry, appalled as a human being and as a Black woman," Lightfoot said earlier this month. "And I immediately put myself in Miss Young's place and I know that this could happen to me, it could happen to any other Black or Brown person not in Chicago, but elsewhere."
The raid occurred on Feb. 19, 2019, but came to light in recent days after police body camera video was made public showing a handcuffed Young standing naked in her home for several minutes. Young, a social worker, is heard in the video telling officers that they are in the wrong home, and she and her attorney confirm that her home was not the target of the search warrant.
Video of the incident was later obtained by Young as part of a lawsuit against the city, and was obtained by several Chicago news outlets, including NBC 5.
In the fallout from the raid, Chicago's top attorney resigned, Lightfoot announced an independent investigation, and the 12 officers were placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of an investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
Several Chicago aldermen had reportedly requested the Inspector General look into the city's handling of Young's case.
In a letter to the Chicago City Council last week, Lightfoot said her office will fully cooperate with any investigation by the Inspector General’s office, and said she hired a former federal judge to conduct a full investigation into the city’s response to the botched raid.
When the video was released, Lightfoot initially said she was not previously aware of the botched raid, only to walk those comments back the next day, saying she was informed of the raid more than a year earlier.
Young's attorney said that, combined with Lightfoot's unwillingness to participate in the forum, made her apology "ring hollow."
"For Ms. Young, the Mayor’s apologies without action ring hollow and fall on deaf ears," the statement reads. "The Mayor’s apology, more than a year after she found out about Ms. Young’s treatment at the hands of the Chicago Police Department (by her own admission) is not justice.
