No charges will be filed in the killing of Amir Locke, a 22-year-old Black man who was shot by a SWAT team officer during a “no-knock” warrant raid in Minneapolis in February.
Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison released a statement that said a “thorough review” provided “insufficient admissible evidence” to file criminal charges in Locke’s death.
Locke’s mother, Karen Wells said that she was not disappointed, she was disgusted with the city of Minneapolis.
Freeman and Ellison said that the state would be unable to disprove beyond reasonable doubt elements of the use of deadly-force statute that would have authorized the use of force by the officer who shot Locke.
On February 2, officers stormed into an apartment building, where Locke was on a couch covered in a blanket sleeping. The police officer, Mark Henneman, opened fire after he saw the barrel of a gun come into view from under the blanket, for which Locke had a proper license for. Locke was shot three times.
Freeman and Ellison said that Minnesota law states that peace officers can use deadly force in the line of duty in order to protect other officers or other people from bodily harm or death.
Two years ago, police officers used a no-knock raid that resulted in the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor.
Since Taylor’s killing, the Justice Department has taken some action to limit the use of no-knock warrants. But so far, Congress has failed to pass national police reform legislation. Earlier this week, Minneapolis’s mayor announced a new policy that prohibits police from no-knock search warrants in the majority of cases. But only four states so far have outright banned no-knock warrants.
It’s also been almost two years since the death of George Floyd, and then the death of Breonna Taylor sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. But still, in 2021, Black people accounted for 27 percent of those killed by police, and that is twice the rate of white people.
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