For Amir Locke
Amir Locke was shot to death by police early Wednesday morning. He was sleeping on a couch in his cousin’s small apartment in St. Paul when the SWAT team came in shouting. They were looking for someone else. Amir Locke was 22. He is another young black man who will be buried by his parents.
The SWAT team entered the apartment with a “no knock” warrant. It appears Mr. Locke had a gun with him, but there is no evidence he intended to use it. In the graphic video of his death, he appears to be waking up and trying to grasp what is happening. The officer who fired the fatal shots, Mark Hannerman, has been in the department since 2015. He has had three complaints filed against him. All were closed without discipline.
None of this is surprising. But it is outrageous. Another young black man has been murdered by white police officers. Another life gone. Another family left to live with loss. Another community devastated by police violence.
This killing happened as three former Minneapolis police officers are on trial in Federal Court because they stood by as Derek Chauvin squeezed the life out of George Floyd. During the course of the Chauvin trial more than three people a day died at the hands of the police. Among them was 13 year old Adam Toledo shot in an alley in Chicago, and 20 year old Daunte Wright, pulled over for an expired registration in Brooklyn Center, MInn. Over the course of the trial, 64 people were killed, the majority Black and Latino.
Since at least 2013, about 1,100 people have been killed each year by police, according to databases compiled by Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group that examines all such killings, including non-gun-related deaths such as Mr. Floyd’s. The Washington Post, whose numbers are limited to police shootings, reflect a similarly flat trend line.
Nearly all of the victims have been Black or Latino men. And most were under 30. Four were teenagers.
Since the beginning of 2005, 140 local law enforcement officers —police officers, deputy sheriffs and state troopers — have been arrested on charges of murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting. Of those, 44 have been convicted of a crime resulting from the incident, in most cases for a lesser offense.
In the spring of 2021, the International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence Against People of African Descent in the United States issued a report on the U.S.’s police-perpetrated racist violence. The Commissioners concluded that the systematic police killings of Black people in the U.S. constitutes a prima facie case of crimes against humanity and they asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to initiate an investigation of responsible police officials.
Human rights experts from 11 countries who developed the report concluded that the US must be held accountable for a long history of violations of international law that rise to the level of crimes against humanity.
The commissioners make a number of demands on the US government and Congress. They want to see demilitarization of local police forces, and prohibition of no-knock warrants that allow officers to raid the homes of Breonna Taylor and now Amir Locke without warning and often without cause.
They also wanted an end to qualified immunity through which police officers avoid civil lawsuits. The commissioners say the loophole “amounts to condoning brutal police violence”.
As people gather in Minneapolis and other places around the country to acknowledge yet another life lost, we have the responsibility to create new forms of safety in our communities. Police are a clear and present danger.