No charges will be filed against the Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot 22-year-old Amir Locke during a no-knock raid in February, prosecutors announced.
A review of the case by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman concluded the state could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer broke the law despite Locke not being a subject of the raid.
“Amir Locke’s life mattered. He was a young man with plans to move to Dallas, where he would be closer to his mom and — he hoped — build a career as a hip-hop artist, following in the musical footsteps of his father,” Ellison and Freeman said in a joint statement. “He should be alive today, and his death is a tragedy.”
Minnesota law permits officers to use deadly force if an “objectively reasonable officer” would conclude it was necessary. Both Ellison and Freeman strongly condemned the shooting of Locke while acknowledging the state “would be unable to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt any of the elements of Minnesota’s use-of-deadly-force statute that authorizes the use of force by Officer [Mark] Hanneman” or any other officer involved in the decision-making that led to Locke’s death.
OFFICER WHO KILLED AMIR LOCKE ACCUSED OF ‘CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS’ VIOLATIONS IN PRIOR RAID
Locke was killed during a raid on Feb. 2. A SWAT team arrived at the apartment he was staying in during the early hours of the morning to execute a no-knock raid while pursuing Mekhi Speed, a 17-year-old cousin of Locke. He had a gun out that he legally owned and pointed it at members of the team who entered the room, at which point an officer opened fire, body camera footage revealed.
Locke was black, and his death sparked protests in Minneapolis, with demonstrators calling for racial justice and the government to reevaluate the use of no-knock raids.
Police were pursuing Speed because he was a suspect in a Jan. 10 shooting of Otis Elder, 38. Witnesses at the scene suspected the shooting was connected to a drug deal, per court documents.
The apartment where Locke was shot was registered to the girlfriend of Speed’s brother, and although Speed had reportedly been there in January, he was not at the apartment during the dawn raid. About a week after the fatal police raid took place, Speed was arrested by authorities and charged with two counts of second-degree murder. A second alleged co-conspirator, a 16-year-old boy, was also arrested and charged with murdering Elder.
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While state and local prosecutors have announced they will not pursue charges against the officer, he could still face a legal challenge from Locke’s family lawyers. In February, the lawyers confirmed they were conducting an investigation of the officer. They found a prior instance in which a judge concluded the office “illegally searched” a person who was not the target of an investigation, a violation of constitutional rights.
Last month, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced a policy banning police from executing no-knock raids except for “exigent circumstances.”
