Crime & Law
City Lawyers Recommend Paying $640K to 2 Families Who Say They Were Held at Gunpoint During Botched No-Knock Raids
(WTTW News)
Taxpayers should pay $640,000 to two Chicago families who said their children were held at gunpoint during botched no-knock raids of their apartments, lawyers for the city of Chicago recommended Thursday.
With the Finance Committee scheduled to consider resolving the lawsuits on Thursday, and a final vote by the full City Council set for Oct. 16, the financial burden of police raids that violated department policy is set to grow. In all, botched raids have cost the city more than $5.5 million since 2020, according to a WTTW News analysis.
City lawyers recommended paying $400,000 to settle the lawsuit filed by the Lyons family, whose apartment was raided by police in February 2020 by police officers.
Sharon Lyons, 55, and her 4-year-old granddaughter were home sick when 16 officers, some wearing “‘Ninja’-type masks covering their faces below the eyes’” broke down the door to their apartment and ordered Lyons to the floor at gunpoint, according to the lawsuit.
The officers then entered the bedroom where the girl was sleeping and pointed their guns at her, according to the lawsuit. Officers held the 4-year-old in that room for 30 minutes, according to the lawsuit.
Officers told the Lyons family that they obtained a no-knock search warrant for their apartment based on a tip from an informant that a person named “Blondie” was selling drugs from their apartment, according to the lawsuit.
No drugs were found in the apartment, according to the lawsuit.
Members of the City Council will also consider paying an additional $240,000 to the Garcia family, whose apartment was raided in March 2021 by officers looking for illegal drugs.
The warrant obtained by police allowed them to search another apartment in the four-unit building, according to the lawsuit.
Although Chicago police officers did not have a warrant allowing them to enter the Garcia home without announcing themselves and giving the occupants a chance to open the door, officers used “a battering ram to smash in the side door, causing extensive damage to the structure of the door and door frame” to their apartment, according to the lawsuit.
After having guns pointed at them, George Garcia and Kymberly Blevins were handcuffed and separated from their 11- and 3-year-old children during an extensive search of their home, according to the lawsuit.
When officers did not find any drugs, they became “more destructive and caused unnecessary property damage including cracking a minor child’s tablet, breaking off the screen for the front door, and damaging the refrigerator and needless destruction of food, for example by placing batons into mayonnaise jars,” according to the lawsuit.
In July, the City Council agreed to pay $2.5 million to the Mendez family, whose apartment was raided under similar circumstances to what happened to the Lyons and Garcia families.
Chicago police officers raided the Lyons and Garcia homes after other officers raided the home of Anjanette Young in February 2019. During that botched raid, officers handcuffed the social worker while she was naked, sparking a political firestorm after CBS2-TV aired body-worn camera video of the raid in December 2020.
The City Council agreed in December 2021 to pay Young $2.9 million to resolve her lawsuit.
Since that video put CPD’s use of search warrants in the spotlight, officials have significantly revised the department’s policy five times under intense pressure from Young, a coalition of groups advocating for police reform and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
The latest version of the proposed policy would not ban officers from serving no-knock warrants or from pointing guns at children or handcuffing them during raids, records show.
But it would require officers to “avoid handcuffing or intentionally pointing firearms at children unless reasonably necessary,” according to the revised policy.
Current CPD policy requires no-knock warrants to be approved by a deputy chief and used only in cases where there is a documented “danger to life or safety.”
Since 2019, the number of homes searched by CPD dropped nearly 85%, according to CPD data.
Officers served just 210 residential search warrants in 2024. In comparison, the department executed 1,382 search warrants in 2019.
Between Jan. 1, 2019, and June 30, Chicago police served just 15 no-knock warrants, according to records obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
In other action, the City Council will consider paying $175,000 to William Bell, a Chicago man who was stuck by a police vehicle while being chased by police officers in July 2018. Bell was running through a vacant lot when he was struck by the vehicle and suffered a broken jaw, according to his lawsuit.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
