A still image from a Chicago Police Department body camera video shows a police raid at the home of Anjanette Young in February 2019. (WTTW News via Ja’Mal Green)

Three aldermen dropped their call for a special meeting of the Chicago City Council late Friday, amid a growing furor over Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s handling of a video showing Chicago police officers handcuffing a naked woman during a mistaken raid of her home in February 2019.

Hours after Alds. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward), Stephanie Coleman (16th Ward) and Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) filed the request for the special City Council meeting, they dropped that demand.

The aldermen had planned to ask the City Council to approve an order that would stop the city’s Law Department from sanctioning Anjanette Young, the social worker whose home was raided, or her lawyer for releasing the video of the raid. 

Young told officers 43 times that they were in the wrong home and begged them to let her get dressed.

Hours after the special meeting was called, the city’s top lawyer Mark Flessner —  following Lightfoot’s direction — told a judge the city did not want Young or her attorney Keenan Saulter to face sanctions in connection with the release of the video.

“I again want to reiterate and affirm my commitment to righting the wrongs in this case and moving forward with full transparency and accountability,” Lightfoot said in a statement announcing the court filings.   

Lopez said the mayor’s actions were sufficient to avert the special meeting.

“We rescind our call [because] this was not about politics but about doing right by Ms. Young,” Lopez tweeted. “We are now on a moral path forward!”

The filings signed by Flessner sought to disavow several actions taken by the city’s lawyers that Lightfoot blasted as inappropriate. 

“While we remain concerned that a violation of a court order may have occurred, I believe that we should give Attorney Saulter the benefit of the doubt that he did not appreciate that the court’s confidentiality order continued in full force and effect, even after the voluntary dismissal of the case in March 2020,” according to the filing. “We urge the court to take no action against Attorney Saulter.”

The court filing also “specifically affirms” that the city never sought to sanction Young but asked the judge to sanction Saulter because city lawyers “take very seriously our responsibility as officers of the court and were very concerned that a violation of a court order had occurred.” 

In addition, the filing seeks to withdraw a request made by city lawyers that urged the judge in the case to prevent CBS2-TV from airing the video of the raid. 

The judge already rejected that request, which violated the First Amendment, but Lightfoot said that she wanted the record to reflect that the request “was a mistake.” 

In a separate letter to Lopez, Coleman and Taylor, Flessner told them “there are two more cases pending in which Ms. Young is a plaintiff against the city, and I want to assure you that the Law Department is committed to finding a resolution to these lawsuits expeditiously.”

Before the special City Council meeting was called, a joint session of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee and Health and Human Relations Committee had been scheduled to meet at 11 a.m. Tuesday for a hearing on the rules governing the Chicago Police Department’s use of search warrants.

It is not clear whether that hearing will take place.

Lightfoot on Thursday acknowledged that she has known about the raid since November 2019, even though she told the news media on Wednesday that she learned about the raid for the first time Tuesday morning from CBS2-TV.

Lightfoot said Thursday that the raid — and efforts by city lawyers to prevent Young from getting a copy of the video and to stop CBS2-TV from publishing the video — had damaged her efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department.

“We will do better, and we will win back the trust that we have lost this week,” Lightfoot said. “I have a responsibility to build back that trust.”

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]