A Chicago police supervisor now faces firing for his role in the wrongful raid of social worker Anjanette Young’s home a few years ago.

       Sgt. Alex Wolinski faces dismissal for eight different police department rule violations — ranging from bringing discredit to the department and failing to promote its efforts to disrespecting a person and incompetency — according to city records filed last week to the Chicago Police Board.

       The Feb. 21, 2019 raid at Young’s Near West Side home was highlighted as part of an extensive WBBM-Ch. 2 series on faulty search warrants executed by Chicago police officers. Late last year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Law Department attempted in court to block Ch. 2 from airing body camera footage of Young’s home and police handcuffing her while she was naked.

       The body camera footage was evidence in a lawsuit that Young filed against the Police Department for the raid.

       The Law Department was unsuccessful in preventing the news station from airing the story, which ran in mid-December 2020, sending shock waves through City Hall. It prompted police Superintendent David Brown, who was not leading CPD at the time of the raid, to revamp the Police Department’s search warrant protocols.

       It also led Lightfoot — who also was not mayor at the time of the raid — to sign an executive order designed to make it easier for people who file complaints against police with COPA to get copies of video and other materials in cases in which they’re involved.

       The disciplinary charges filed to the police board last week also come after the Civilian Office of Police Accountability completed a 16-month investigation into the raid, finding more than 100 allegations of misconduct by over a dozen officers.

       The law firm representing Young, Saulter Law P.C., has criticized COPA for taking so long to finish the investigation.

       The disciplinary charges filed by Brown on Nov. 4 allege, among other things. that Wolinski “failed to intervene in the disrespectful treatment” of Young and oversaw the execution of the warrant without practicing the “Knock and Announce Rule” at her home in the 100 block of North Hermitage Avenue.

       The charges also allege Wolinski did not promptly give Young a copy of the warrant, nor did he notify a SWAT team to assist in the police action.

       Wolinski’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

       So far, no other officers under investigation for the raid face firing from the police department. Wolinski’s disciplinary hearing before the police board won’t take place for several months, but the board ultimately will decide whether he should lose his job as a police officer.

       For Lightfoot, the raid at Young’s home and the city’s response to CBS-2′s reporting has become a major political crisis.

       The mayor initially said she had only learned of the raid in December 2020 after Ch. 2 aired police body camera footage that showed Young repeatedly telling officers who barged into her home that they had the wrong place.

       Soon after, the mayor acknowledged that members of her staff told her about the raid via emails in November 2019, as Ch. 2 was reporting on search warrants being served at wrong addresses. She also said she had no recollection of the emails.

       The mayor also angrily disputed that the city declined to give Young a copy of the video before later acknowledging she was wrong. The Law Department’s top attorney, Mark Flessner, resigned over the scandal. Two of his high-ranking staffers also left.

       In recent months, Lightfoot has highlighted reforms to how city police execute search warrants, but her efforts have been criticized by some activists as insufficient.

       The city’s inspector general’s office also has completed its investigation of the raid, but those findings have yet to be released. Former federal judge Ann Claire Williams also was tapped by Lightfoot to review the case, but the results of that probe have also yet to be released.

       Chicago police sergeant faces termination over raid of social worker Anjanette Young’s home

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