photo courtesy of NBC News
Chicago police sergeant Alex Wolinski was fired Thursday, June 15, for his leadership role in the raid gone wrong in the home of a Black woman in 2019. At the Chicago apartment of Anjanette Young, officers handcuffed her and forced her to lie naked after they busted into the wrong house.
The Chicago Police Board cast a 5-3 vote in favor of firing Wolinski for reportedly violating multiple rules and expectations from the department regarding the proper procedure. The voters decided that Wolinski committed a “failure of leadership,” according to the 31-page written ruling report from the discussion. Wolinski, who had been a member of the Chicago Police Department since 2002, was accused of violating eight rules in total, some of which included “inattention to duty, disobedience of an order and disrespect to or maltreatment of any person.”
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Young was in her own home back in February of 2019 when officers following through on a no-knock warrant burst into her Chicago West Side place while looking for a man with an unregistered weapon. Despite seeing that Young was a woman, the body cam footage showed the officers handcuffing Young as the woman told them they were in the wrong place. The police officers prevented her from getting dressed, and she was naked and uncovered on camera for 16 seconds. They covered her with a sheet, but it repeatedly kept falling off.
The ruling read, “Though it was clear that the officers were not at the residence of the intended target, [Wolinski] nonetheless allowed Ms. Young to remain naked and handcuffed for an extended period of time — over 10 minutes.”
The outcry surrounding the shocking behavior of the Black woman caused an investigation to begin. Young sued the city for their mistreatment, and the Chicago City Council unanimously voted to give her a nearly $3 million settlement.
Young told the outlet that Wolinski’s firing is hardly enough to atone for his role in what happened to her.
“[This is] only a small piece of the justice for which I have been waiting. While my heart goes out to his family because they now suffer the consequences of his abhorrent misconduct, I wish all eight members of the Chicago Police Board would have recognized the need and urgency for Sergeant Wolinski’s removal.”