Chicago police raided the wrong house at least 21 times between 2017 and 2020, according to an inspector general report released this week, but shoddy record keeping means the true number is unknown.

The Chicago Office of Inspector General released its final report Wednesday on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) search warrant policies, concluding that CPD’s inadequate record keeping made it impossible to count or fully analyze wrong-door raids. The records the inspector general did get, however, showed that inexperience and failures to do basic investigative work contributed to botched raids. …

A yearslong investigation by the local news outlet CBS 2 repeatedly uncovered Chicago SWAT teams relying on unverified search warrants to ransack houses; hold families, including children, at gunpoint; and, in one case, handcuff an 8-year-old child. In another case, 17 Chicago police officers burst into a family’s house with their guns drawn during a 4-year-old’s birthday party. The members of one Chicago family say officers raided their house three times in four months looking for someone the residents say they don’t know.

[The most disturbing part of this report is the fact that even an IG couldn’t figure out the real total for sure. People can get killed on raids like these, and they have already cost Chicago taxpayers millions of dollars in settlements. — Ed]