Global Courant
CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago police sergeant has been fired for his role in a botched 2019 raid on the home of a black woman who was handcuffed naked after police officers were sent to the wrong address.
The Chicago Police Board voted 5 to 3 on Thursday to remove Sgt. Alex Wolinski for multiple rule violations and “failure of leadership” in the raid on Anjanette Young’s apartment, according to a 31-page written ruling, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
Young, a social worker, was getting ready for bed in February 2019 when several officers serving a no-knock warrant burst into her apartment on Chicago’s Near West Side looking for a man believed to have an illegal weapon.
Police camera footage of the raid showed Officers handcuffing Young, who was naked when police arrived, as she repeatedly told them they were in the wrong place. The city’s legal department said Young was naked for 16 seconds, but the covering officers who put her on kept falling off before she was allowed to get dressed several minutes later.
The botched robbery and the way the city handled it caused anger from clergy, lawmakers and civil rights activists who denounced it as racist and an affront to a black woman’s dignity.
Young later sued the city about the raid, leading the Chicago City Council to unanimously vote in favor in December 2021 pay her $2.9 million to settle her lawsuit.
The then Superintendent of Police, David Brown, filed administrative charges against Wolinski in November 2021 and recommended that he be fired.
Wolinski, who joined the Chicago Police Department in 2002, was charged with violating eight department rules, including dereliction of duty, disobeying an order and disrespecting or assaulting anyone.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability also called for Wolinski’s resignation and the suspension of several other officers who were present during the raid, although no other officers have been charged in the raid to date. Chicago grandstand reported.
Although the incident occurred before former Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office in May 2019, her administration later attempted to block the televised broadcast of the police video and rejected Young’s freedom of information request to obtain video of the incident. Young later obtained it through her lawsuit.
