In the days after a TV station aired disturbing video of police barging into Anjanette Young’s home and handcuffing her while she was naked, Mayor Lori Lightfoot emailed Law Department staff urging them to show more empathy to victims.
“Damage has been done, confidence shattered and the disclosures over the week have caused anger, confusion, and hurt. This goes way beyond any single case because important trust has been lost. People are hurting,” Lightfoot wrote in the Dec. 17 email obtained through an open records request.
“The challenges have been exacerbated by the Law Department’s handling of this matter over the last few days. I know you all work hard, but I fear some important values have been lost. We can never lose sight of the people who are alleging being victimized by city actors.”
But while Lightfoot personally apologized to Young for the errant raid and has vowed to resolve her lawsuit against the city, records and interviews suggest her administration has continued to play hardball in defending the police department’s actions.
It’s a pattern that began with the Lightfoot administration’s decision to deny Young’s request for access to police footage from the wrongful 2019 raid on her Near West Side home and continued last month with the mayor’s lawyers moving to dismiss Young’s case.
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Legal documents filed by the city in June show Lightfoot officials have downplayed one of the more horrifying elements of the bungled raid, how long Young was left exposed as officers swarmed her home while acting on a bad tip about a felon with a gun.
Anjanette Young and attorney Keenan Saulter speak regarding developments on Young's case and efforts to work with the City of Chicago to bring the matter to a resolution outside of the Thompson Center in Chicago on June 16, 2021. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
In handling Young’s case, Lightfoot faces a challenging political and legal dynamic. She wants to show empathy toward Young while also overseeing a Law Department charged with mounting a defense in a case that could cost the city millions of dollars.
But some wonder why the administration isn’t doing more to live up to the mayor’s promises.
“What’s morally and (ethically) right or appropriate shouldn’t be at odds with any actions our city is taking in order to protect itself,” said Far North Side Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, who has pushed an ordinance to impose tighter restrictions on search warrants that is opposed by Lightfoot.
“Can we do both? I think we can,” Hadden said. “I think folks with maybe more legal experience and more legal practice are so used to finding loopholes or fine print or utilizing every particular legal tool in order to obfuscate what’s really happening or have as small a liability as possible. That may be what they’re trained to do but … maybe it’s not the way we should act.”
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For her part, Lightfoot recently said she wasn’t responsible for the failure to reach a settlement agreement with Young and instead cast blame on the other side.
“You can’t settle with someone who doesn’t want to settle,” she said after a heated City Council meeting in late June.
In response to questions about how it handled the case, Lightfoot’s Law Department released a statement this week saying the administration “is dedicated to bringing the litigation in this matter to an equitable and expeditious resolution so that Ms. Young can continue her process of healing and move forward.”
However, the city also said that Young’s attorney walked away from a mediation that “would have fairly addressed Ms. Young’s traumatic experience, but also (been) fair to the taxpayers.”
Lightfoot administration lawyers have repeatedly minimized the harm Young experienced during the raid, even as Lightfoot publicly condemned the incident.
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The city’s recently filed motion to dismiss the fact Young was handcuffed while naked and said she was “escorted to her bedroom to get fully dressed” about 10 minutes after officers determined their target wasn’t present.
“Though (police) attempted to cover her with a nearby blanket seconds after handcuffing her, the blanket did not stay fully closed in front,” city lawyers noted.
City lawyers also said in the motion that Young’s lawsuit “failed to establish a legal wrong.”
Body camera footage shows Chicago police officers conducting an errant raid on social worker Anjanette Young’s home on Feb. 21, 2019.
Lightfoot lawyers argued in December that they withheld the video from Young because they believed it was “an attempt to provide the media with the body worn camera to paint an inaccurate picture of what happened during the subject search warrant.”
Lightfoot’s former corporation counsel, Mark Flessner, shrugged off the incident during a staff call with Lightfoot the morning after CBS-2 first aired disturbing footage from the raid last December, sources told the Tribune.
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After a staffer asked about the case, Flessner said it wasn’t a “big deal” and noted officers let Young get dressed after she was handcuffed without any clothes on, sources said.
Lightfoot kept Flessner on board for days after the remark, which has not been previously reported, but accepted his resignation the following weekend as the scandal snowballed. Flessner this week declined to comment.
Young’s video became national news in large part because Lightfoot officials sought an order to prevent CBS-2 from airing the footage and requested sanctions against the plaintiff, Young, for sharing video of the raid with media. Lightfoot lawyers later said they only wanted sanctions against Young’s lawyer but dropped the request altogether as the scandal spiraled.
Previously unreported emails obtained by the Tribune through open records requests show Lightfoot was deeply involved in the city’s public response to the botched police raid, urging her staff to come up with a social media plan, drafting statements and asking to be booked on a Black radio station to mitigate the fallout.
A day after Lightfoot’s lawyers filed the motion, a CBS producer emailed Lightfoot’s then-deputy press secretary, Pat Mullane, to request an interview with Lightfoot. In the email, the producer said CBS planned to ask questions “about this last minute court action to keep the video concealed and the city denying Young’s FOIA for her video.”
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“These actions raise serious questions about transparency,” the producer wrote.
Mullane also said in the emails to staff that he would tell the producer they can’t accommodate an interview “since this is ongoing litigation.”
Former Law Department spokeswoman Kathleen Fieweger responded by copying two other city lawyers, Caryn Jacobs and Victoria Benson, “for their views on talking to them even (off the record).”
Mullane sent an email to fellow staff members saying “Here’s what I think the mayor should say.” The rest of that email is redacted. Former Law Department spokeswoman Kathleen Fieweger responded by copying two other city lawyers, Caryn Jacobs and Victoria Benson, “for their views on talking to them even (off the record).”
As the day unfolded, Lightfoot’s press team worked to understand and contain the situation. Former Lightfoot communications director Michael Crowley emailed colleagues, “We’re working with Law on a detailed ticktock to make sure we’re all on the same page about the actual details here.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot after speaking about the Anjanette Young raid on Dec. 21, 2020, at City Hall. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
By early afternoon, Fieweger and a city lawyer had assembled a timeline and a “litigation history,” though the city redacted those emails.
At an unrelated news conference, Lightfoot said she couldn’t comment on her administration’s request for sanctions over the release of the video by Young’s team.
“A federal judge put rules in place,” Lightfoot said. “It’s for that judge to determine whether or not that was appropriate.”
The mayor also noted the raid took place weeks before she was elected, though it was her administration that tried to keep the video from being made public. Later, Lightfoot released a statement saying she “had no knowledge” of the matter involving Young before CBS aired video of the errant raid.
That statement wasn’t true, however. Lightfoot later acknowledged that she had been informed about the botched raid in 2019, though she downplayed what she was told.
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The next morning, Lightfoot circled back to ask if the statements went out and added, “We need to put together a social media response as well.”
But as the story continued to unfold that week, Lightfoot worked to stem the public relations hit by emailing top staffers a long statement she wanted them to distribute.
“If anyone has any questions or revisions then we should do a call,” Lightfoot wrote.
The next morning, Lightfoot circled back to ask if the statements went out and added, “We need to put together a social media response as well.”
Before her customary post-City Council news conference, Lightfoot emailed her then-chief of staff, top city lawyers and communications staffers, political strategist Joanna Klonsky and her pollster, Jason McGrath, with a statement she planned to give.
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“Here is the statement that I intend to give at the 2:00 presser,” Lightfoot said. “Sorry for the short turn around, but I want only red flags.”
Classen, her chief of staff, responded, “No flags. Looks good.” The pollster, McGrath, said he “wouldn’t change a word.”
At the news conference, Lightfoot apologized to Young and said she could’ve been a victim of the same mistreatment by police. But the news conference turned into a disaster after she falsely denied that her administration withheld the video from Young, setting off another round of negative media coverage.
Lightfoot emailed Flessner and other staffers to request half an hour the next morning “to address all of the law department lawyers who handle any cases involving the police department.”
Supporters gather during a rally on Jan. 18, 2021, outside Progressive Baptist Church for Anjanette Young and all women who have been traumatized by police violence and misconduct. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
Just before 10:30 p.m., Lightfoot emailed Flessner and other staffers to request half an hour the next morning “to address all of the law department lawyers who handle any cases involving the police department.”
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That evening, Lightfoot emailed staffers to ask for time on WVON’s morning show and asked a staffer to “set up a call with the black faith community so that they can hear from me tomorrow.”
By the time Lightfoot next addressed a news conference, she was completely apologetic — even apologizing to a Tribune reporter for attacking his credibility.
Lightfoot also made waves internally when she didn’t endorse Flessner after she was asked about potential resignations in the Law Department. A reporter tweeted her noncommittal answer, which Flessner sent to Lightfoot in an email with a question mark in the subject line, records show.
That Sunday, Flessner submitted his resignation to Lightfoot in an email signed “Your friend.”
Days later, the immediate crisis began to pass as Lightfoot apologized to Young during a face-to-face meeting. Afterward, the mayor and Young released a joint statement pledging to work together on bringing change to the police department.
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But even as Lightfoot continued her public relations effort, her pick to replace Flessner, Celia Meza, revised the joint statement with Young to say “problematic” issues led to the errant raid, rather than “systemic” problems, as Young’s attorney proposed.
gpratt@chicagotribune.com
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