Activists say the Minneapolis Police Department’s initial portrayal of the “no-knock” SWAT team raid that killed Amir Locke — and the portion of body camera footage released to the public — are the latest evidence that police and their backers are willing to distort the truth in a political effort to shield their embattled system from scrutiny.
Protesters flooded the Twin Cities streets this weekend, following the arrest of Minneapolis police fatally shot Locke while executing a “no-knock” search warrant at an apartment on February 2. The police executed a “no-knock” search warrant at an apartment on February 2nd. This is the latest police-perpetrated murder of a Black man.
Family members and civil right attorneys claim Locke was “executed”SWAT team broke into the apartment in downtown where the 22-year old was asleep on a couch at 7 a.m. The team was executing a search warrant for the police in neighboring St. Paul and opted for a “no-knock” entry — a controversial and deadly practice that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s campaign boasted about “banning”While running for reelection, he used a pro-police platform last ye.
No-knock warrants are banned in some cities, and in 2020 Minneapolis adopted a policy meant to restrict and clarify when police can make an “unannounced entry” into a household. However, reporting in the wake of Locke’s killing revealed that no-knock warrants had clearly not been “banned” as Frey’s campaign and its supporters have claimedMinneapolis police and prosecutors have both requested multiple no-knock warrants in 2022. accordingTo the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Frey quickly put a moratorium last week on no-knocks as his administration and police tried to quell media attention. raising painful memoriesInitial efforts to downplay the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and other police-perpetrated killings in Minneapolis, and elsewhere, were unsuccessful. No-knock warrants became infamous after the police-perpetrated killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, which — combined with Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis — fueled protests around the world.
“Cops lie; we know cops literally lie,” said Miski Noor, an organizer with the Black Visions Collective, an activist group pursuing police abolition in Minneapolis, in an interview. “We cannot get accountability, and that’s why we say they are functioning just the way they are supposed to — to control Black and Brown bodies and others who are disenfranchised.”
Lock was reportedly staying as a guest at a relative’s apartment when the SWAT team opened the door with a key obtained from the building’s management. Locke was wrapped in a blanket and woke up to the sound of police shouting and flashing bright lights while an officer kicked the couch. Locke was holding a gun. his family and attorneys sayHe was licensed to carry. Within 10 seconds of SWAT team members entering, he was shot to death.
In an initial statement, the police said the gun was “pointed in the direction of the officers,” but the videoIt appears contradictThis claim shows Locke waking up from a deep sleep, with his gun pointed away by the body-worn camera. Last week, Minneapolis Police Chief Amelia Huffman reiterated the claim that officers entered the room to announce their presence. However, the video shows an officer opening the door and entering the apartment while the SWAT team began shouting.
“Bodycam footage clearly shows that police failed to ask Amir Locke to drop the gun, to warn that they’d shoot, or to take any other actions available to them while they were executing a search warrant,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said in a statement. “Instead, an officer chose to shoot and kill a man sleeping on a couch, who was still wrapped up in a blanket, within 9 seconds of entering an apartment.”
The police also referred to Locke as a “suspect” in their initial press release, but officials later confirmed that Locke was not named in the search warrant or a suspect in the homicide investigation that prompted the early morning home invasion. The police also included photos of Locke’s legally owned gun, angering activists and family members who say the police wrongly attempted to paint him as disobeying the law.
Huffman, Frey and the local media outlets that immediately trumpeted the city government’s version of Locke’s killing “repeated a well-worn pattern of dishonesty,” according to a statementISAIAH is a multi-racial coalition that includes faith-based communities in Minneapolis.
“There is really justified anger about not just the murder of Amir Locke, not just the fact that it was completely avoidable, but that actually resembles this pattern,” said JaNaé Bates, communications director for ISAIAH, in an interview. “There is a clear pattern that we see where MPD does something awful … then they put out a press release that lies about what actually happened.”
Bates is the former spokesperson of the campaign behind a 2021 ballot measure that would have required city officials to make the kinds of deep, structural changes in policing and public security that activists demanded after the deaths of Floyd Locke, Daunte Wayne, Philando Castille and others. The initiative would have abolished the city’s quota for police officers, allowing for larger investments in other public safety intervention, such as unarmed mental healthcare responders and a stronger safety net.
Although the ballot initiative received a substantial 43 percent of the vote in November it didn’t reach the required 51 percent for passage. Still, more than 62,000 voters supported a measure that would have been a first in the United States — outnumbering the voters who listed Frey as their first choice for mayor on the city’s ranked-choice ballots. Frey, facing two opponents to the initiative, stood with the police and argued against the measure. He also argued that the existing system could be incrementally reformed as new public security services are created on the side.
Although Frey’s reelection campaign touted the ban on no-knock warrants as evidence that policy reform is underway, his campaign scrubbed the claim from its website last week after Locke was killed in the no-knock raid. Frey admitted this week that his campaign’s language did not reflect the “necessary precision or nuance” of the 2020 policy change. Frey’s new moratorium still allows the police chief to approve no-knock raids in certain “dangerous” scenarios, accordingTo the Minnesota Reformer.
“Back when Mayor Frey first said he banned no-knock warrants, we refuted that over and over again … but didn’t have as large of a bullhorn,” Bates said.
Bates stated that Minneapolis police spending has increased. increased since 2020, when “defund the police” protests erupted after the murder of Floyd and others. The city continues to “overspend” on police officers while neglecting investments in other services, such as fire departments and the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, she said.
Noor emphasized that organizers are tired of rhetoric, obfuscations and minor reforms; they’re calling for large-scale transformation.
“To be Black in Minneapolis over the past few years has been a lot of grief, and I think I also feel an exhaustion in community, where we are just so tired of this in so many ways,” Noor said. “I think that, this is why we said reform isn’t enough. It is impossible to reform this murderous institution. We catch them in lies.”
