21 hours Ago By Mariah Woelfel
While Friday marks the 6th anniversary of the infamous wrongful police raid on Anjanette Young’s home, so goes, too, another year without her namesake ordinance meant to reform police search warrant practices passed or, this year, even introduced for consideration. “My hope is that we don’t go another year without getting a tangible policy in place,” an optimistic Young told WBEZ late last month as the anniversary approached. But Wednesday’s City Council meeting came and went without mention of the so-called Anjanette Young Ordinance.
On Friday, Young is expected to stand with her longtime city council ally, Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th Ward, to redeclare their commitment “to fight for common-sense reforms” to police search warrant practices, a news advisory reads. It is “unlikely” those reforms will include a ban on no-knock warrants, though, Hadden told WBEZ again Wednesday.
Hadden said Young is frustrated with the mayor’s office over the delay, and the fact that they are “not in agreement, fully, on some language.” “It is frustrating to know that what Ms. Young, myself, and advocates have been working on, and what we’re looking for, hasn’t changed,” she said.
Still, she later acknowledged that a major change on her and Young’s part has been a willingness to pass an ordinance without a no-knock ban. Who’s at fault for yet another anniversary marked without an ordinance on the books is a point of contention between the mayor’s office and Hadden, a progressive council member who has grown increasingly critical of the Johnson administration. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who’s coming up on his second anniversary in office, campaigned on passing the Anjanette Young Ordinance, which from its inception included a ban on controversial no-knock search warrants.
Hadden contends she and Young have been nudging the mayor starting in “the fall, late summer of 2023.” “We really started kind of pushing, trying to have legislation ready to introduce by February of 2024, and that failed. They weren’t able to do it,” Hadden said.
But the mayor’s office, in an email obtained by WBEZ from a top aide to two city council allies inquiring on the status of the proposal, appears to push back on any suggestion that Johnson is to blame for the hold up. The email included two draft proposals that an aide claims were written at the direction of Young and Hadden and that, the aide writes, the mayor’s office is ready to support. “We are happy to introduce whatever language is most aligned with what feels like justice to her as the legislation uses her namesake and was inspired by her tragedy,” wrote Kennedy Bartley, Johnson’s chief of external affairs, in one email.
Hadden would not say which part of the draft ordinances are at issue, but said it did not relate to language about no-knock warrants. She said Young would give more specifics at Friday’s news conference. Perhaps most noteworthy, though, is that neither of the drafts WBEZ obtained include a comprehensive no-knock warrant ban.
One draft appears to place at least one restriction on the use of no-knock warrants. In an interview with WBEZ late last month, Hadden pointed to the mayor’s office when asked why a full ban was taken out, saying “I’ll leave that to the administration” to answer. On Thursday she expounded, saying it’s in part because she and Young don’t want to introduce something that the Chicago Police Department doesn’t support.
“We’re working with the departments that are going to be impacted by this. Like we are actually working with the police department, ” Hadden said. “So we’re not just trying to impose something.
And if they’re telling us that this is a thing that goes too far, like that’s part of the legislative process, right?” Chicago police declined to disclose its current position on no-knock bans or restrictions, instead referring WBEZ to the mayor’s office. Hadden noted that the raid on Young’s home was not a result of a no-knock search warrant, and said she and Young are focusing reform efforts elsewhere. “The no-knock piece, while important as we look at like what happened with Breonna Taylor and what’s happened in other places, one of the things that we’re really looking at, though, are actually stipulations and guidelines for the practice and procedure around knock-and-announce warrants, which we don’t currently have,” Hadden said.
The two different drafts proposals, both written by the mayor’s office or Department of Law, would both require CPD to file quarterly and annual reports with the mayor’s office and city council on the number of complaints against the department that involved a residential search warrant. Either of the proposals would also require the department to provide “statistical summaries” on a monthly basis detailing the number of residential search warrants the department requested, how many were approved, and detailed outcomes, including what evidence police found during the raid and any associated arrests. The department’s superintendent would be required to testify to the council quarterly about this data.
“Right now, everything is happening behind closed doors, and we don’t have the actual numbers to be able to hold them accountable for their actions,” Young told WBEZ in late January. The second draft would ban no-knock warrants in a narrow circumstance: “when the only offense alleged is possession of a controlled substance unless there is probable cause to believe that the controlled substance is for other than personal use.” That language mirrors a similar proposal at the state level that Young is also working on.
It was drafted by the city’s Department of Law, according to the email from Bartley. Bartley said she requested the draft earlier this month after Young expressed interest in a stronger version. Hadden threw cold water on that draft, though, saying she would only support it if the mayor’s office could get CPD on board with it.
Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th Ward, speaks during a press conference outside City Hall in the Loop as Anjanette Young, a social worker whose home was wrongfully raided by Chicago police officers, listens, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times Young told WBEZ in January that she felt an outright ban on no-knock warrants wouldn’t be politically viable. A previous version failed under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. And Ald.
Chris Taliaferro, 29th Ward, the chairman of the council’s Committee on Police and Fire — where the ordinance would be vetted — has said previously he believes such policies should be developed internally by the police department, not codified in city code. But the omission of a ban in the Young ordinance drafts has baffled even some of the council’s more moderate and conservative members, who said they would be ready to support it. “I think a no knock warrant [ban] has to be brought up,” exclaimed Ald.
David Moore, 17th Ward. “I support CPD, but I support, also, doing what is right. And there’s been situations — both in Illinois and out of the state of Illinois — that have shown that no-knock warrants do not turn out right, and it’s going to cost taxpayers a lot when these things happen.
” Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th Ward, one of the council’s most conservative members, was in rare alignment with council progressives on the original Anjanette Young Ordinance and said any new proposal should “amend how we execute no-knock warrants.” “I’m more than certain that if [Young] felt that there was an ability to move forward something stronger, as we had all tried previously, then she may, in fact, side once again, with all of us who were supportive of her efforts,” Lopez said.
Neither Lopez nor Moore had seen drafts of the ordinance when they spoke to WBEZ. Hadden emphasized that she is working directly with the department that the ordinance is attempting to reform. “While it’s great to know that we have some colleagues that would support it, it’s not necessarily what the department will get on board with,” she said.
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