The following opinion article by LWVNC President Jo Nicholas appears in today's News & Observer and Charlotte Observer:
Again, we are horrified.
Anjanette Young, a veteran social worker in Chicago, was handcuffed, held naked and harassed for half an hour after nine police officers rammed their way into her private home unannounced, fully armed, with a search warrant granted on faulty information.
They had the wrong address.
Careless, inept handling of a search warrant was just part of it. Ms. Young, a Black woman who was undressing after work, had to stand without clothing, mortified, as the officers tore through her things searching for something she never had. Forty-three times she cried “I live alone, you got the wrong place.” Describing the ordeal afterwards, she said, "It didn't feel like any man in there cared anything about me as a woman or a female … They didn’t care about what was happening to me…I was terrified…I thought if I did anything out of the ordinary, they would shoot me.”
Ms. Young felt unheard, unseen as a fellow human. Invisible. The police officers invading her home demonstrated no empathy. This stressful situation leads them to their implicit biases, where they could not hear Ms. Young's assessment of the situation. To remove implicit biases from our society will take generations. What is required are policies and procedures that instruct our police force to practice objective and evidence-based policing.
This was a horrendous abuse of power and a vivid example of callousness. Could the same thing happen to an innocent person—man or woman—in North Carolina?
We are educating our members on policing in their communities. The League of Women Voters of NC, through its Policing Practices Working Group, conducted a five-part program examining the interaction of communities with their local law enforcement. The sessions covered topics such as hiring standards and practices, training, and internal and community oversight. League members from throughout the state are interested in building stronger relationships between the police and the communities they serve.
North Carolina has a regulation intended to limit the use of no-knock warrants. But the statute needs to be stronger. Currently, it does not require that necessary probable cause be specifically listed in the warrant before breaking and entering. It must also clarify the meaning of “unreasonable delay” after officers announce their presence in the execution of a search warrant. The NC Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice has just recommended amending NCGS 15A-251, the Entry by Force statute, to limit abuse. The League of Women Voters of North Carolina looks forward to reviewing the full recommendation and supporting the endeavor as it certainly fits within our mission of “defending democracy.”
The cruel, inhuman, demeaning treatment of Ms. Young must never be forgotten and never repeated.
In its mission to defend a fully inclusive democracy, the League champions the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. The Fourth Amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The enforcement of this right requires that we, as citizens, summon the courage to speak out every time we see individuals’ civil liberties threatened.
