Thread by @BLMChi

In an hour, we will be holding a press conference outside City Hall with @thewapb @BwopC @BlkRemembrance as part of the Nia Collective for #AnjanetteYoung.

We are demanding an end to all home raids by CPD.

At 11 City Council will hold an emergency hearing on search warrants.

@thewapb @BwopC @BlkRemembrance For the next hour, we will share info on Chicago police raids as well as dive into recent cases that illustrate the horror that is imposed on families that are overwhelmingly Black and brown.

Police raids are racilalized, & class based, attacking Black, brown poor communities.

CPD regularly raids the wrong homes, and fails to assess whether children reside in the homes or take precautions to avoid
traumatizing children. When entering homes, officers typically break down the door &
charge into the living space with guns drawn, scaring everyone present.

CPD points assault rifles and handguns directly at young children and their parents; they handcuff children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children; they subject family members to verbal abuse; and treat families w/ lack of respect for their humanity.

After taking and breaking personal items, including children’s toys, CPD leaves families unprotected, with broken doors and locks, exposed and vulnerable to further violence.

#EndRaids

CPD has refused to track or document, much less analyze search warrants, thereby ensuring the continuation of its unconstitutional practices. For decades, community members have made misconduct complaints about these incidents, but they are rarely if ever sustained.

#EndRaids

The release of the video of the raid on #AnjanetteYoung's home, the recent killing of Breonna Taylor in a similar raid by police in Louisville and the worldwide protests that have followed dramatize all that is stake—the lives and safety of Black and Brown families. #EndRaids

The vast majority of CPD’s raids target families in Black or Brown neighborhoods. The 5 neighborhoods with the greatest number of raids are Englewood, Austin, North Lawndale, Garfield Park, and Humboldt Park—all predominately Black or Brown, and poor. storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/63ce57…

Similarly, the neighborhoods with the greatest percentage of negative raids as compared to their total number of search warrants are also Black or Brown and poor.

The neighborhoods with the lowest number of negative raids are all overwhelmingly white and wealthy.

#EndRaids

Despite the Consent Decree & repeated lawsuits, CPD continues to to terrorize children and families in residential raids without fear of consequence. According to CPD data, CPD conducted over 6,800 residential raids pursuant to warrants between January 2016 & mid-2019

#EndRaids

Nearly 3,000 of those raids, or 43%, failed to result in an arrest. The top ten neighborhoods with the most search warrants executed are also those with majority Black and/or Latinx populations. These neighborhoods are also some of the poorest in Chicago.

#EndRaids

Roughly one-third of all Chicago households include children under 18 years old.

A conservative estimate indicates that far more than a thousand children have been victims of CPD home raids in the past three years.

#EndRaids

On January 29, 2015, brothers Jaden Fields, Jeremy and Justin Harris (ages eleven, six, and four, respectively) and their cousin Nasir Norman (age eleven) were doing homework and playing video games in the front room of their home.

chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/11/05/ano… #EndRaids

Suddenly, without warning, a team of Chicago police SWAT and plainclothes officers broke into the back door of their apartment; threw flashbang grenades inside; and screamed, cursed, and pointed assault rifles at the children.

#EndRaids

The search warrant’s actual target not only did not live in the apartment, but was serving a twenty-year prison sentence 200 miles away.

#EndRaids

In August 2018, an armed SWAT team set off loud flashbang grenades outside the home of Ebony Tate and broke open the front door of her apartment without knocking or presenting a search warrant.

chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/03/06/sgt… #EndRaids

Officers pointed assault rifles at Ms. Tate, her four young children, and her 55-year-old mother, and then searched her apartment for over an hour while forcing Ms. Tate and her family to sit on the running board of the SWAT truck in various states of undress. Cops found nothing.

In February 2019, CPD raided a family’s home during their 4-year-old's birthday party. CPD pointed guns at the family, shouted profanity and insults, and left the child’s birthday cake on the floor. The target of the warrant had not lived there for 5 years chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/03/25/chi…

In Nov 2017, officers executed an invalid search warrant for the wrong apartment and repeatedly pointed guns directly at the family’s five- and nine-year-old children while they cried and pleaded for the officers not to shoot their father.

chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/10/03/chi…

#EndRaids

On February 8, 2019, a team of CPD officers raided Krystal Archie’s apartment, ordered Ms. Archie’s 14, 11 and 7 year-old children to the floor, and pointed assault weapons at their faces and heads.

chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/07/19/wro…

#EndRaids

Officers made thoughtless and cruel jokes as they rifled through Ms. Archie’s home and needlessly damaged the family’s personal property. The raid yielded no contraband whatsoever.

#EndRaids

In the early morning hours of March 25, 2019, CPD officers again targeted the wrong address and raided yet another home of a mother and her children who had been sound asleep when CPD burst in

chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/05/28/ano…

#EndRaids

During the raid, Chicago police handcuffed the family’s eight-year-old son and forced him to stand alone outside in freezing rain for 35 to 40 minutes while officers tore through the family’s home.

#EndRaids

On February 26, 2020, around 15 plain-clothes officers (some wearing “Ninja" masks) broke into Sharon Lyons’s home with rifles, flashlights, and machine guns, without announcing their identity as police.

chicago.cbslocal.com/they-had-the-g…

#EndRaids

The officers pointed guns in the faces of Ms. Lyons, her three adult sons, and her four-year-old granddaughter Lillie. One of Ms. Lyons’s sons is autistic. He cried and became hysterical when the officers pointed guns at him because he did not understand what was happening.

The search ultimately yielded no arrests and no contraband. The officers left Ms. Lyons’ home with a broken door and locks.

#EndRaids

A day later, another group of mostly plain-clothed officers used a battering ram to break into the home and conduct a night-time raid of an innocent Iraqi American/Latinx family.

#EndRaids

Officers pointed guns at a 70-year-old grandmother and her 4-year-old granddaughter in her lap, as the grandmother was reciting her night-time prayers before bed. When the mom went to the room to check on her daughter, a cop turned and pointed the barrel of his gun in her face.

CPD cursed and shouted at the family as they held them at gunpoint. As the officers continued to train their guns on the grandmother, mother, and child, other officers tore apart the family’s apartment, broke their furniture, and made nasty comments about their home.

CPD left the family shaking in fear around one in the morning amongst the rubble of their broken belongings and broken front door.

#EndRaids

This pattern of poorly substantiated search warrants, raids of incorrect residential addresses, excessive use of force, and property destruction during the execution of warrants is not a recent development; it has been going on for decades, as long as CPD has existed.

#EndRaids

There is no "accountability". The 12 cops authored the most affidavits in support of the search warrants that resulted in negative raids between 2016 and 2019 amassed 446 misconduct complaints. Of those complaints, 118 were for illegal searches.

#EndRaids

Only two of those 118 complaints were sustained and resulted in minimal discipline—a single day suspension and a reprimand. The same twelve officers responsible for the most negative raids accumulated 88 brutality complaints. None led to any discipline by CPD.

#EndRaids

With Lori as mayor, CPD revised its search warrant policy in early January 2020 to by including 19 words to its warrants policy. This is what Lori is referring to when she said she made "reforms".

#EndRaids

However, these revisions fail to cure or remedy the problem of raids or even prohibit any particular conduct such as refraining from pointing weapons at young children.

#EndRaids

Therefore we are calling for the end of all home raids. CPD's behavior is eerily reminiscent of Klan attacks on Black homes, of slave patrols and abuse, of violations of the basic human expectation of the right to be safe inside one's own home from attack.

#EndRaids

Join us in 8 minutes at a press conference calling for the end to CPD raids.

Watch live here: facebook.com/theniacollecti…

#EndRaids

You can watch the 11 am City Council emergency hearing on search warrants here: chicityclerk.com #EndRaids