Police Arrest Black Family for â€ëœloiteringã¢â‚¬â„¢ in Their Own Front Yard
Minneapolis Suspends No-Knock Warrants After Police Killing
Amir Locke, 22, was fatally shot as the police carried out a search warrant. He was lying nether a blanket until an officer kicked the couch, revealing a gun, trunk camera video shows.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis on Friday announced a moratorium on no-knock warrants ane day afterward the Constabulary Section released body camera footage of its SWAT team fatally shooting a man who was lying on a couch nether a blanket during an early on-morning raid.
The human who was killed, Amir Locke, 22, had a gun in his manus, but it is unclear whether he was enlightened that police officers had entered the apartment presently earlier 7 a.yard.
Keith Ellison, the chaser general of Minnesota, who led the prosecutions of former police officers in the killings of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, said his office would bring together a review of the police shooting. The mayor said no-knock warrants could non exist requested or conducted while the city evaluated its electric current policy.
The graphic and cursory video released by the Police Department on Th night shows the run across from Wed morning, when its SWAT team had been carrying out a warrant for the Saint Paul Police Department's homicide unit.
In the video, an officer is seen quietly turning a key in the apartment door before officers file in and begin to yell.
"Police! Search warrant!" several officers are heard shouting.
"Hands, hands!" ane officer says.
"Get on the footing!" some other yells.
One officer kicked the back of the couch, jarring Mr. Locke and making a gun visible. The police fired at least three times in response.
The unabridged encounter took less than 10 seconds.
In a news release published the day of the shooting, the Police Department said officers had performed emergency aid on Mr. Locke, who died at a nearby hospital.
"I'm under no illusion that processing this video will be like shooting fish in a barrel," Amelia Huffman, the metropolis's interim police master, said at a news conference on Thursday. "Information technology won't be. It shouldn't be. These are wrenching videos to spotter. They're painful, but it'south necessary."
Master Huffman said that officers had a warrant for iii locations in the flat complex, and that Mr. Locke was not named in the original warrant.
Mr. Ellison, the land attorney general, said on Friday that his office would partner with the Hennepin Canton attorney's role to review the shooting.
"Amir Locke's life mattered," Mr. Ellison said in a argument, promising the Locke family "a fair and thorough review."
Mr. Ellison led the prosecution of Derek Chauvin, a onetime Minneapolis police officeholder who pleaded guilty to federal crimes for the killing of Mr. Floyd, and Kimberly Potter, a former Minnesota police officer who was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Mr. Wright.
The Minneapolis Police Department said in a statement that one officer fired shots at Mr. Locke, and it released the personnel file of Officer Mark Hanneman.
Ben Crump, a lawyer representing Mr. Locke'southward family, compared the shooting of Mr. Locke, who was Blackness, to the killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker who was fatally shot by Louisville law officers in March 2020 during a botched raid on her apartment.
"If we learned anything from Breonna Taylor it is that no-knock warrants have mortiferous consequences for innocent, police force-abiding Black citizens," Mr. Crump said at a news briefing on Friday.
No-knock warrants let the police to enter property without first announcing their presence and are primarily used when there is business concern that testify will be destroyed or officers will exist put in danger.
Tony Romanucci, another lawyer representing Mr. Locke's family, said Mr. Locke had "no thought" who was in his apartment. "Had they appear who they were and why they were in that location, this tragedy could take been averted," Mr. Romanucci said.
Mayor Frey said in a statement on Friday that no-knock warrants would not be allowed while the city reviewed its policy with experts who helped create "Breonna's Law," an ordinance passed later on Ms. Taylor's death that bans no-knock warrants in Louisville.
During the moratorium, which the mayor said was "to ensure safety of both the public and officers," the constabulary must knock, announce their presence and wait a reasonable amount of fourth dimension before entering with a warrant.
Mr. Locke's father, Andre Locke, said at the news conference that his son was the tertiary oldest of eight siblings. He said his son had been working for the food delivery service DoorDash and was "a week away" from moving to Dallas, where his mother, Karen Wells, lives. Andre Locke said that several of his cousins worked in law enforcement and that i of them was a mentor to Amir.
"It was hurtful, it hurt deep to see my son executed, to come across our son executed," Mr. Locke said. "But the function that struck me the near was that he never got a run a risk to see or to know who killed him."
Ms. Wells said she and her son would oftentimes talk on the FaceTime app when they were apart.
"I am going to miss but being able to run into my son abound into a man, that'south what I am going to miss," Ms. Wells said. "I am going to miss the fact that he didn't, he won't even get the run a risk to become a father and requite us grandchildren."
The Minneapolis Police Department has been under scrutiny since Officer Chauvin held his knee on Mr. Floyd'due south neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest in May 2020.
Mr. Floyd's decease generated widespread outrage, and protests across the country that summer called for social justice and police reform. An endeavor to change policing in Minneapolis failed in November, when 56 percentage of voters rejected a ballot measure that would have replaced the city's Police Department with a public safe agency.
The release of the footage of Mr. Locke'south death came more quickly than in past cases, and after force per unit area from Representative Ilhan Omar and land officials.
Ten members of the Minneapolis delegation of the Land Firm of Representatives had called for the footage to be released immediately in a letter to Mayor Frey and Chief Huffman.
"Minneapolis has a long path before united states of america in establishing a trusting, effective and professional relationship between its Law Section and community," the representatives wrote.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/us/amir-locke-minneapolis-police-shooting.html
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