Chicago’s Top Lawyer Resigns After Police Raid Footage Fight

Mark Flessner, the City of Chicago’s top lawyer, stepped down from his post over the weekend at the request of Mayor Lori Lightfoot as the city grapples with the legal fallout of a botched 2019 police raid.

Chicago’s former corporation counsel said in a Tuesday interview that Lightfoot asked him to resign on Sunday morning. The move came a week after Flessner and the city filed a motion in court seeking to prevent body camera footage from the raid, which targeted the wrong apartment, from being aired on local news station CBS Chicago.

Flessner has denied allegations of ill intent in filing the motion. He said he opposed publishing the footage because it would breach a confidentiality agreement previously ordered by Northern District of Illinois Judge John Tharp Jr.

“I was sitting in my office about 5:30 on Monday night, a week ago yesterday, and one of my deputies came into my office and said, ‘A lawyer has violated Judge Tharp’s confidentiality order, and we want to file a motion to enforce the order and bring it to the judge’s attention.’ I said, ‘Fine,’” Flessner said. “I’m a federal court guy, and when people violate court orders, that’s a big problem. So that’s what I focused on.”

Tharp is holding a hearing Tuesday morning to determine whether a violation occurred, Flessner said. The judge’s courtroom deputy, Alberta Rone, said she was unable to respond to a request for confirmation.

On Monday, Lightfoot’s office announced it had appointed Celia Meza as the acting corporation counsel. Meza, the first Latina to hold the corporation counsel job, moves from the mayor’s office where she was Lightfoot’s counsel and senior ethics advisor.

Public Attention

The body camera footage obtained by CBS shows Chicago police entering Anjanette Young’s apartment in February 2019, where they handcuffed her while she was naked. Police later realized they had incorrect information about the apartment’s occupants, according to a complaint against the city and several individual police officers filed by Young’s lawyers in Illinois district court six months after the raid.

The incident gained public attention earlier this month after CBS released footage. It showed Young repeatedly asking the officers to let her get dressed.

The city and the officers through Flessner filed a motion on Dec. 14 asking the court to prevent CBS from airing the video footage. They argued that the body cam footage was released to CBS on the condition that it was not shared publicly “given the deeply personal nature” of the video.

Lawyers for the city and the officers previously “outlined concerns that this video would be shared with the media in a salacious and unfair manner designed to elicit a reactionary response, which carries the risk of poisoning the public’s view of the case, and the Individual Defendants themselves,” they said in the court filing.

Lightfoot, who took office just months after the raid last year, asked the city’s Law Department to withdraw the motion on Dec. 18. She said in a Monday press briefing that she “sought and accepted” Flessner’s resignation, which she called a “difficult” but “necessary step.”

She added that all the officers involved in the raid on Young’s home have been placed on desk duty.

Flessner assumed his role as Chicago’s corporation counsel in May 2019 after nearly seven years with Holland & Knight. Earlier in his career, he spent over a decade with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, most recently as assistant U.S. attorney. He said he hasn’t thought about what he will do next in his career, but does not anticipate a return to a large law firm.