The latest victim is 22-year-old Amir Locke (right), who was shot to death last Wednesday by Mark Hanneman, a SWAT officer of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). Amir’s killing took place inside a Minneapolis apartment, where police were executing a no-knock warrant in a homicide investigation. Amir was not named in the warrant.
Amir Locke was born in Maplewood, Minnesota, and raised in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul suburbs. According to his mother Karen Wells, Amir was starting a music career and planned to move to Dallas the following week. He did not have a criminal record in Minnesota.
Amir’s parents are calling their son’s death an “execution.” They stated that Amir did not live at the apartment and that he was “at a sleepover at his cousin’s place.” The family also said that Amir was “a deep sleeper” and may have been startled by the loud entry of police and “grabbed for his gun.” The family has confirmed that Amir had a gun license and a concealed carry permit, and that he had a gun for protection due to his work for DoorDash.
Minnesota attorney Jeff Storms and civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci are representing Amir’s family as legal counsel.
One of the most cogent and informative commentaries I’ve read on this tragedy is by Minneapolis writer, editor and community activist Susan Maas. Her February 3 letter-to-the editor of the Star Tribune is reprinted in its entirety below.
The article about the fatal shooting at the Bolero Flats Apartment Homes by a Minneapolis police officer says the “shooting comes at a crossroads for the city’s police force, which is still trying to reform itself after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin ...” (“Mpls. Cop Shoots, Kills Man in Apartment,” Feb. 3).
The Minneapolis Police Department was never, and is never, going to “reform itself.” At least 44% of Minneapolis voters know that. Actually, this latest officer-involved killing comes at a time when:
• A report finally released this week suggests that more than a quarter of 911 calls could be addressed by non-police responders – despite mandated staffing in the 60-year-old charter provision (that was hammered out as a job-security scheme for police).
• Evidence – including a detailed Reuters report published last fall – continues to mount that, in light of heightened scrutiny and the legal consequences following George Floyd’s killing, MPD officers have essentially refused to do their jobs.
• Community members are rightly wondering whether restrictions on "no-knock warrants," announced with great fanfare by Mayor Jacob Frey and then-Chief Medaria Arradondo in 2020, really amounted to anything – or whether MPD is simply ignoring them, much like . . .
• . . . its officers were trained to ignore the city Civil Rights Department’s findings on ketamine and "excited delirium," per testimony this very week in the federal trial of former officers Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng ("MPD Use of Sedative Cited at Officers’ Trial," Feb. 1).
• We have learned that liability payouts from 2020 claims against MPD officers could cost our city more than $111 million.
• Which is on top of the $29 million in workers’ comp claims by MPD officers in 2020.
And it comes just months after Minneapolis voters wrestled with whether to maybe, at long last, try a different approach to public safety: to thoughtfully invest – after decades of racialized police violence and mass incarceration of Black boys and men – in strategies that address the root causes of crime.
We could have actually expanded our public safety efforts instead of defaulting to the same broken, police-only approach that has failed us for decades – an approach that’s been utterly lacking in transparency and accountability. So far, given this latest tragedy and the lack of information about what led to it, that hasn’t changed.
Maybe, hopefully, in the days to come we’ll see that it has. But if attempting structural, data-driven changes to how we do public safety seems naive, I’d argue that waiting for MPD to “reform itself” is even more so. This has got to stop.
– Susan Maas
Minneapolis
Minneapolis
“More Negligence and Suffering”
Related Off-site Links:
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).
Cover-Up in Minneapolis? Police “Executed” Amir Locke in “No-Knock” Raid, Say His Parents and Activists – Democracy Now! (February 8, 2022).
UPDATES: After Amir Locke Police Killing, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey Should Resign – Robin Wonsley Worlobah (Teen Vogue, February 10, 2022).
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).
Investigation Shows Minneapolis Police Show Pattern of Violating Rights, Attorney General Merrick Garland Says – Steve Karnowski and Jim Salter (PBS NewsHour, June 16, 2023).
Department of Justice Finds Minneapolis Police Had a Pattern of “Unconstitutional Policing” – Martin Kaste and Don Gonyea (NPR News, June 17, 2023).
8 Takeaways From the Justice Department Probe of Minneapolis Police – MPR News (June 17, 2023).
See also:
An Afro-Indigenous Perspective on Policing – Kyle T. Mays (Yes!, February 8, 2022).
How to Prevent Crime Without Relying on Police – Luis J. Rodriguez (Yes!, August 20, 2021).
Activists Working to Defund Baltimore’s Police Face Roadblocks – Jaisal Noor (Yes!, January 28, 2022).
There’s a Growing Call to Defund the Police. Here’s What It Means – Scottie Andrew (CNN, June 17, 2020).
Six Reasons Why It’s Time to Defund the Police – Mary Zerkel (AFSC.org, June 11, 2020).
Defunding the Police Will Actually Make Us Safer – Paige Fernandez (Cosmopolitan via ACLU.org, June 11, 2020).
It’s Perfectly Fine to Call It “Defunding” the Police – John H. McWhorter (Slate, July 18, 2020).
“Policing Is Fundamentally a Tool of Social Control to Facilitate Our Exploitation”: An Interview with Alex S. Vitale – Micah Uetricht (Jacobin, June 8, 2020).
Media Acknowledge Drive to Defund Police – But Seek to Blunt Its Radical Edge – Julie Hollar (FAIR, June 11, 2020).
What America Can Learn From Nordic Police – Ryan Cooper (The Week, June 5, 2020).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “An Abolitionist Demand”: Progressive Perspectives on Transforming Policing in the U.S.
• “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
• “New and Very Dangerous”: The Extreme Right-Wing Infiltration of the George Floyd Protests
• He Called Mama. He Has Called Up Great Power
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 2, 2020
• Emma Jordan-Simpson: “There Will Be No Peace Without Justice”
• 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
• Photo of the Day, 5/3/2015: “Black Is Sacred”
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part I)
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part II)
• Something to Think About – March 25, 2016
• Thoughts on Prayer in a “Summer of Strife”
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