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Nine seconds. That’s all it took for Minneapolis police to enter, shoot, and kill 22-year-old Amir Locke on February 2, 2022. Locke, a week away from moving to Texas to jumpstart his music career, was asleep on his cousin’s couch when it happened. But why him?
Police were looking for someone who didn’t even live there!
Bodycam footage shows that they startled Locke awake, who grabbed his legally registered gun. He didn’t point it at the intruders, contrary to their account of the story – but they executed him anyway! But how did MPD even get a no-knock warrant to break into the apartment?
Minneapolis, home to the recent killings of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, had just introduced no-knock reform in November 2020.
But when MPD insisted on the warrant, Judge Peter Cahill signed off – the same judge who presided over the Derek Chauvin trial.
When killings still happen after reforms are made, how can we believe that authorities’ interest in change isn’t a lie? Or that reforms will ever be enough?
Politicians, media outlets, and police will use his death as a talking point to convince us we still need policing, discarding the human life that they stole. A life that could have been any of us.
But from adults taking the freezing streets nationwide to young students walking out of school, we are done with the lies!