In November 2020 the mayor and Minneapolis police announced the department would limit the use of no-knock warrants, and in running for re-election Frey repeatedly claimed he banned the practice outright.
Amir Locke’s death exposed this as a lie. And Locke’s case wasn’t the only one; Minneapolis police never let up on no-knock warrants. When confronted and caught in this lie, the same mayor with the camera-ready hair who told Vogue: “I want to be in the arena, in the mud, doing the work every day,” offered up a meaningless word salad rather than owning his mistakes. The same man who told Vogue that mayors have the toughest jobs among politicians and must step up to deal with systemic inequities rather than offer empty gestures, who said, “you can’t hide as mayor,” bailed on a press conference rather than face questions about Locke’s killing.
Frey will only get more unwanted attention in the coming weeks and months as the questions around Locke’s death continue, and this time it’s likely he won’t get the cloying gaze or marshmallow-soft line of inquiry he found when he courted revisionist history. If anyone could have predicted what is now unfolding in Minneapolis, it’s Jacob Frey. In the almost two years since George Floyd was killed, there have been no lasting efforts to change how police work or address the systemic problems that continue to result in the destruction of black life.
If anything, Frey has worked against reconciling that recent past through a middling commitment to complacency and midwestern progressivism that holds “hear no evil, see no evil” as a central value. What’s clear to just about anyone watching right now is that Minneapolis continues to be at the mercy of an uncontrolled and unaccountable police department that treats black bodies as inconsequential, while a non-insubstantial number of residents see black life as inconvenient. Amir Locke didn’t need to die. In the time since Floyd’s death, Locke joins Winston Smith, who was killed by a U.S. Marshalls task force and local police in broad daylight in South Minneapolis, and Dolal Idd, who was killed in a shootout with police at a gas station.
If history were to be defined by the sort of uplifting political narrative that Frey and Vogue worked so eagerly to craft, now would be the time for Frey to step up, to “get in the arena,” as he would put it, and actually utilize his power as a public servant to meaningfully improve life for everyone who lives in Minneapolis. And yet, Frey has been presented with that opportunity many times before. Instead of rising to the challenge, all that he’s been capable of giving back to the city that entrusted him with a second term as mayor is more negligence and suffering.
Maybe the next magazine profile will make note of how paper-thin Frey’s progressivism really is, or who it really serves.
– Justin Ellis
Excerpted from “Minneapolis Deserves More
Than Jacob Frey’s Story”
Defector
February 9, 2022
Excerpted from “Minneapolis Deserves More
Than Jacob Frey’s Story”
Defector
February 9, 2022
Related Off-site Links:
Cover-Up in Minneapolis? Police “Executed” Amir Locke in “No-Knock” Raid, Say His Parents and Activists – Democracy Now! (February 8, 2022).
Minneapolis Police Kill Black Man While Serving No-knock Warrant; Activists Demand Answers – Henry Pan (Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, February 2, 2022).
Protesters March in Downtown Minneapolis, Calling for Justice for Amir Locke – MPR News (February 5, 2022).
Minneapolis Police Release Bodycam Footage of Amir Locke Killing – Henry Pan (Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, February 4, 2022).
Locke Family: Amir Was Law-abiding, “Loved By All”; Attorneys Blast No-knock Entry – Jon Collins (MPR News, February 4, 2022).
Black Mothers and Women Press for Accountability in Police Killing of Amir Locke – Cole Miska (Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, February 7, 2022).
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis Had Promised to Improve Police Relations – Farah Stockman (The New York Times, November 3, 2021).
UPDATES: After Amir Locke Police Killing, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey Should Resign – Robin Wonsley Worlobah (Teen Vogue, February 10, 2021).
Amir Locke Killing: Prosecutors Won’t File Charges Against Minneapolis Cop – Jon Collins (MPR News, April 6, 2022).
Amir Locke’s Mother Says She Is “Disgusted” With the City of Minneapolis After Charging Decision – Shaymus McLaughlin (Bring Me the News, April 6, 2022).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “This Has Got to Stop”
• “And Still and All, It Continues”
• Bearing Witness
• The Problem Is Ultimately Bigger Than Individuals. It’s Systemic
• “I Can’t Breathe”: The Murder of George Floyd
• Something to Think About – May 28, 2020
• Honoring George Floyd
• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: Quote of the Day – June 9, 2020
• Something to Think About – July 21, 2020
• Rallying in Solidarity with Eric Garner and Other Victims of Police Brutality
• In Minneapolis, Rallying in Solidarity with Black Lives in Baltimore
• “Say Her Name” Solidarity Action
• “We Are All One” – #Justice4Jamar and the 4th Precinct Occupation
• Nancy A. Heitzeg: Quote of the Day – March 31, 2016
• “This Doesn’t Happen to White People”
• Remembering Philando Castile and Demanding Abolition of the System That Targets and Kills People of Color
• “An Abolitionist Demand”: Progressive Perspectives on Transforming Policing in the U.S.
Image: Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis pictured in 2020. (Photo: Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via Associated Press)
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