Parents of man killed in no-knock raid suing
City of Minneapolis, police officer are cited
The parents of Amir Locke, who was shot to death by a Minneapolis police officer when a SWAT team executed a no-knock search warrant one year ago, sued the city and the officer Friday, alleging he was “gunned down in cold blood” in violation of his constitutional rights.
Locke, 22, who was Black and had hoped to build a career as a hip-hop artist, was sleeping on a couch in his cousin’s downtown apartment when authorities entered without knocking on Feb. 2, 2022, as part of an investigation into a homicide in neighboring St. Paul, in which Locke was not a suspect. Body camera video showed that Locke was holding a gun before he was shot seconds after the officers burst in.
“This has got to stop,” Locke’s mother, Karen Wells, said at a news conference. “Amir will be the face of banning no-knock warrants. He will not die in vain.”
Prosecutors declined last April to charge any of the officers involved, saying the video showed that Locke pointed a gun at Officer Mark Hanneman, justifying his use of deadly force.
But the lawsuit, filed in federal court by attorneys Ben Crump and Jeff Storms, alleges that Hanneman acted too hastily when he fired three times. And it disputes the official assertions that Locke pointed his gun at officers. It seeks unspecified damages and the appointment of an official to ensure that the city properly trains and supervises its officers.
“Amir, like many Americans, had a handgun within his reach while he slept. Even half-asleep, while Amir reached for the handgun, he demonstrated proper and responsible handling by keeping the handgun pointed away from the officers and keeping his finger off the trigger.
Amir never raised the weapon in the direction of any officer or placed his finger on the trigger,” the complaint said.
“Any reasonable officer would have understood that Amir needed an opportunity to realize who and what was surrounding him, and then provide Amir with an opportunity to disarm himself. Hanneman failed to give Amir any such opportunity even though Amir never pointed the handgun at Hanneman or put his finger on the trigger,” the complaint continued.
Crump, who has been dubbed “Black America’s attorney general,” has won multimillion-dollar settlements in numerous police brutality cases, including $27 million for the family of George Floyd, whose killing by a Minneapolis officer sparked a nationwide reckoning on race.
“The City will review the Complaint when it receives it,” city spokesman Casper Hill said in an email.
Wells compared the video showing her son’s death to the video that she forced herself to watch of the beating death of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis, Tennessee, “another person dying by the hands of those that said they’re here to protect and serve. … This can’t happen again.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and then-hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman said when they declined charges that Locke might not have been shot if not for the no-knock warrant. But they said there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hanneman violated state law on when police can use deadly force.
Locke was killed during the trial of three former Minneapolis police officers in federal court in St. Paul on civil rights charges in the murder of Floyd. Locke’s death rekindled distrust of police and sparked fresh protests over policing and racism.
And it led Mayor Jacob Frey to sharply restrict no-knock warrants, requiring officers to knock and wait before entering, with limited exceptions.