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It’s very clear that all the protests, trials, and convictions regarding police brutality and the killings of Black people have done nothing to change the practices of violent and trigger-happy cops. Because a new deadly police story has come out of the same city George Floyd was murdered in and it’s one that sounds eerily similar to that of Breonna Taylor—the two cases that caused arguably the largest uproar over systemic racism in policing the nation has seen in several decades.
According to Newsweek, 22-year-old Amir Locke was shot and killed by police officers with a Minneapolis SWAT team Wednesday morning.
From Newsweek:
The statement said police recovered a handgun from Locke, which was pointed towards the officers.
Amelia Huffman, the interim Minneapolis police chief, said on Wednesday in a news conference that officers “loudly and repeatedly announced ‘police search warrant’ before crossing the threshold into the apartment.”
But Officers wore body worn cameras and footage was released of the incident by the police force on Thursday. The footage tells a slightly different story.
In other words: Somebody’s lying.
The body camera footage of the raid, which was related to a homicide investigation, according to Fox 9, shows officers did not announce themselves until after opening the apartment door. The officer wearing the body camera can be seen opening the door and backing up to let three officers in tactical gear enter the apartment.
Officers can be heard shouting “police, search warrant” as they approach Locke, who is wrapped underneath in a blanket on the couch. One officer kicked the couch, and Locke is seen coming out from under the blanket while holding a gun.
Officers are heard simultaneously yelling “hands, hands, show me your hands” and “get on the ground, get on the f***ing ground” before an officer identified as Mark Hanneman fired three shots at Locke, who was still wrapped in the blanket.
This entire sequence of events lasted all of around 10 seconds.
It’s clear that a lot of cops performing raids think shouting frantically while entering a home and then firing shots right after is the same as giving fair warning before entering, or as Huffman erroneously put it, “loudly and repeatedly announced ‘police search warrant’ before crossing the threshold into the apartment.”
But it gets even more nefarious than that.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and community activist, told the Associated Press that Locke was a licensed gun owner with a concealed carry permit and that he didn’t live in the apartment. She also said Locke’s name was not among the three suspects named in the search warrant.
“My son was executed on 2/2 of 22,” Karen Wells, Locke’s mother, said during a news conference organized by civil attorney Ben Crump, AP reported. “And now his dreams have been destroyed.”
Wells said she and Locke’s father, Andre Locke, coached their son on how to act and do “what they needed to do whenever they encountered police officers” because of the danger to “unarmed Black males.” But all the coaching in the world won’t stop an officer who is quick on the trigger from snuffing out a Black life.
“They didn’t even give him a chance,” Crump said, adding that it was shocking that Minneapolis police didn’t learn anything from Taylor’s case (not to mention the high-profile case that involved officers from their own police department).
But it’s not shocking—it’s quite typical, really.
Anyway, according to Newsweek, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said it is conducting an independent investigation into the shooting.