Cover-Up in Minneapolis? Police “Executed” Amir Locke in “No-Knock” Raid, Say His Parents, Activists

Protests are continuing in Minneapolis after police fatally shot 22-year-old Amir Locke during an early-morning “no-knock” raid on February 2. Bodycam video shows that Locke appeared to be asleep on the couch and wrapped in a blanket when a SWAT team entered the apartment. Locke held a gun he was legally licensed to carry and was not named in the warrant. Minneapolis interim city Police Chief Amelia Huffman claimed Locke pointed his weapon in the direction of the officers and suggested he could have been connected to the crime, despite not being a suspect in their investigation.

“It was very jarring for many people in our community to see Amir painted almost like a criminal,” says attorney and police accountability activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. No-knock warrants, which Mayor Jacob Frey promised to eliminate but never did, “have deadly consequences for innocent Black people like Amir Locke and Breonna Taylor and so many others,” says civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, part of the legal team for Amir Locke’s family. This week the Biden administration responded to the raid saying it may consider a federal policy that limits the use of no-knock warrants.

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