CBS 2 Reporting On Police Raids Highlighted In 'Last Week Tonight' With John Oliver
By CBS Chicago Staff
CHICAGO (CBS) — In a segment about police raids on Sunday, John Oliver and "Last Week Tonight" cited CBS 2's years-long investigation into a pattern of wrong raids by the Chicago Police Department.
Oliver aired clips from two CBS 2 investigative reports, including what happened to Anjanette Young, to comment on one of CBS 2's key findings: how police disproportionately use search warrants to target Black and Brown communities.
"Let's start with what you probably know already," Oliver said at around the 5:15 mark. "Which is, not all of us are at equal danger of being raided. When CBS 2 in Chicago did an investigation of several years' worth of search warrants, they found that certain neighborhoods tended to be hit a lot more often than others."
After more than a year of fighting CPD for the data, a CBS 2 analysis of three years' worth of search warrant outcomes revealed police executed the most search warrants in communities of color, including Englewood, Austin, North Lawndale, Garfield Park and Humboldt Park.
In that same timeframe, only a small percentage of search warrants were executed in white communities. For example, none were executed in areas like Wrigleyville, Edison Park, Magnificent Mile, Printers Row and Museum Campus.
Highlighting multiple news reports across the country, Oliver also commented on how the execution of search warrants can end in violence. He cited the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
The interactive visualization below represents search warrants executed by Chicago Police from 2016 to 2019. Toggle between various categories to learn more about how officers use search warrants as a policing tool. You can categorize the data by year, search warrant type, outcome and more.
"Lives are getting destroyed from police raids," Oliver said. "And even if nobody gets physically hurt, that does not mean no damage is done. Having your home violated is a traumatizing experience, often exacerbated by how targets of raids are treated."
Oliver pointed to what happened to Anjanette Young as an example. At the 21:40 mark, he aired a clip from CBS 2's investigative report that first showed the body camera video of what happened to Young, an innocent social worker.
The video reveals how CPD officers burst into her home – the wrong home – after failing to investigate a bad tip from a confidential informant. Officers handcuffed Young while she was naked. The video shows Young crying for help, asking police for answers.
"You don't have to shout," the sergeant can be heard telling Young in the body camera video.
"They broke into a home, having done next to no due diligence and handcuffed her completely naked before eventually throwing a blanket over her while she was still handcuffed," Oliver commented. "And then they said, you don't have to shout. Shouting is not the drastic measure being taken here."
In the segment Oliver discussed the wrong raid on the Blassingame family, also uncovered by CBS 2. The suspect had been in prison for years at the time of the raid, and the family said police pointed guns at children in the home.
"And when you treat people like that, it is clear you have no interest in forging a heathy relationship in the community you're supposed to be serving," Oliver said. "Instead, the community has to live with the knowledge that no space is truly secure from the threat of police violence. That is the message that is received loud and clear from a very young age."
Young and the Blassingame family are among dozens of people CBS 2 found were victims of wrong raids by CPD. The erosion of community trust – and the trauma inflicted on children as a result of bad raids in Chicago – were the subject of CBS 2's half-hour documentary, "[un]warranted".
