Victim of botched Chicago police raid says settlement money doesn't bring her peace: "I lost a lot of my life that night"
The Chicago woman who was targeted by a 2019 botched police raid told "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King that watching the body camera video from that day is hard.
"Watching that video is always hard because it just takes me back to that moment," Anjanette Young said. "And one thing that stands out the most to me as I think about this and live through this over the years is how vulnerable I was in that moment."
Young, who worked as a social worker, was in the middle of changing her clothes after returning from a work event when officers raided her house. She says she was left naked and handcuffed for 40 minutes—despite her pleas to officers to allow her to put her clothes on.
"The fact that I continued to ask if I could get dressed. I continued to ask them if I could call someone. What stands out to me most is that I was invisible to them because no one even responded to me saying, 'Yes, you can get dressed later,' or, 'Let us finish this,'" said Young.
The person police were searching for lived next door and was wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. Police later learned they received bad information from an informant but the damage was done.
"I tell people that I didn't lose my life that night, but I lost a lot of my life that night," said Young.
"At some point, did you think you could lose your life?" King asked.
"I actually thought that if I had done anything different than what I was doing, I would have died that night. They yelled, 'Put your hands up,' and that's what I did. And I stood there in fear and praying and hoping that they would not shoot me," Young replied.
The Chicago Police Department and city officials originally tried to block the body camera footage from being released after Young and her lawyers shared it with Chicago's CBS station WBBM-TV.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot initially denied knowing what happened to Young, but later admitted she was briefed on the incident in November 2019. Young said that the mayor "lied continuously" after the video was released only later to retract her information.
A third-party investigation ordered by Lightfoot found "failures in oversight and accountability" by multiple city agencies but determined the mayor and the city did not purposefully conceal information about the botched raid.
The city's Office of Inspector General released a scathing report that found that the city did work to prevent Young from obtaining body camera video and that it "prioritized communications and public relations concerns over the higher mission of city government."
Mayor Lightfoot said she doesn't agree with the conclusion.
Last month, Young was awarded a $2.9 million settlement. She said the money doesn't bring her peace and is almost "an insult."
An oversight agency recommended eight of the officers involved in the incident be suspended, or fired. So far, none of the officers has received disciplinary action—something Young said would have been worth more than the settlement money.
"I would have been more satisfied if all 12 officers had gotten fired and I didn't receive a dime," she said.
Young plans to use a portion of the money to continue to help other people, which she did before the incident as a social worker. She says she doesn't want the incident to define her.
"I don't ever think that this will go away. I'm choosing to find ways to live on purpose and not allow this one incident to define me for the rest of my life," Young said.
She is fighting for search warrant reform in Chicago through the "Anjanette Young Ordinance," and launched the virtual platform, "I Am Her," to encourage other women to speak out about injustices they've experienced.
"I know that there are other women out here who have had similar experiences," Young said. "Maybe not with the police department, maybe in the workforce, maybe with some other government agency to say, 'I am her' and we're not in this alone, or you're not in this alone."
