No-Knock Warrants Called Into Question After Another Killing

The national debate over controversial no-knock police warrants has been reignited after police killed a 22-year-old last week. 

Amir Locke, a young Black man in Minneapolis, was shot and killed by police who were carrying out a no-knock raid. Locke appeared to be sleeping on the couch under a blanket at the time of the pre-dawn raid. Locke was not the subject of the search warrant that was used to enter the apartment, and he had no prior police record. 

Body camera footage from the SWAT agents’ uniforms shows the killing happened in a matter of mere seconds. Locke was shot and killed when the officers unlocked the apartment door with a key.

Locke was started from his sleep and reached for a legal weapon to defend himself from the appeared intrusion, and, in the words of his parents, he was “executed” by police. 

Minneapolis and St. Paul are reeling from the killing, only less than two years after the horrific murder of George Floyd in the same city. Floyd’s murder by a police officer sparked a reckoning in America with race and police. The warrant is the same kind that was used in the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor. 

Protests took place across the cities over the weekend, with protesters demanding to know how a heavily criticized tactic such as a no-search warrant can still be such a common practice. 

Who the warrant was for has not yet been released. The goal of a no-knock warrant is to surprise the person and to give no time for reaction. But there has been a proven high risk of these controversial warrants, for both property damage and for death. 

In the months following Floyd’s murder, Mayor Jacob Frey (D) issued new requirements for no-knock warrants, requiring officers to typically announce their presence and purpose before being able to enter. However, these policies have not stopped the police forces from using no-knock warrants in certain situations. 

The use of all no-knock warrants has not been suspended in Minneapolis. The Justice Department has taken some action since Taylor’s killing to limit the use of them, but Congress has failed to pass national police reform legislation. There are still an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 no-knock warrants every year, and some of them, like this one, turn deadly.