To the binary mind, it can’t be possible. If a cop shoots and kills someone, it’s either a good shoot or a crime, whereupon the cop is either prosecuted or it proves the system is corrupt and evil cops can get away with anything. Minnesota police officer Mark Hanneman shot and killed Amir Locke. It was a bad shoot. But it was no crime.
“Amir Locke’s life mattered,” Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Michael Freeman, the Hennepin County attorney, said in a joint statement. “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 steps of his father.”
Whether Locke was a good guy or not, a budding hip-hop artist or the sort of guy who passes counterfeit twenties, has nothing to do with whether he should have survived the night he slept on the couch of a friend’s apartment, unaware that police would raid the apartment at night without knocking. What happened then could have happened with anyone.
In a graphic, and short, video clip from a police body-worn camera that was released in the aftermath of the killing, Mr. Locke is seen under a blanket on the couch where he was sleeping, clearly groggy and startled as he raises a gun that he held in his hand.
It was Locke’s gun, a legal gun for which he had a license. He didn’t point it at the police, but he had it in his hand, which means that it was a split second away from being pointed, being used. But it wasn’t pointed. And it wasn’t used, even though there was a break-in at night, a man asleep who had no idea the people who just burst into the apartment were police, and no reason to believe that his life wasn’t in imminent danger at the hands of the burglars.
In announcing they would not file charges, the prosecutors were critical of the raid that the police carried out with a no-knock warrant, but said they would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer had committed a crime in violation of Minnesota law that allows officers to use deadly force in certain situations.
The prosecution was in the hands of Keith Ellison, who had already demonstrated that he would prosecute cops when he took down Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd. And Ellison, if anything, was too inclined to go after cops, particularly when public pressure to do so ran hot.
The shooting drew thousands of protesters to the streets and renewed calls for police accountability in the city where George Floyd was murdered.
To the public, any shooting by a cop of a black person was suspect by default, which was only fair in the sense that cops had long been given the benefit of the doubt for far too long in far too many scenarios where the shoot was bad, very bad, even flagrantly criminal, and yet the cop walked away from the needlessly dead body without scrutiny.
In this atmosphere, the assumption leaped over the nuance that a shoot might have been wrong, but still not a crime, And indeed, even shoots that were clearly proper were publicly condemned as crimes based on no more information than the fact that a cop pulled the trigger and the bullet ended in a black body. Absurd rationalizations abounded to pretend these were bad shoots, because the only thing that mattered was finding a way to blame the cop and beatify the “victim.”
Here, the Reasonably Scared Cop Rule came into play, as Officer Hanneman saw a man with a gun who could, in a split second, turn it at him and kill him. The scenario raises many flaws with how a theoretically rational system goes wrong, from no-knock nighttime warrants being handed out like candy to the constitutional right to possess a weapon to the expectation that someone on the Good Guy Curve is expected, as he’s awakened from sleep, to process that the burglars are cops who will kill him if he tries to defend himself. Of course, if they were burglars and he defended himself, he would be a hero. If not, he’s dead. Amir Locke did nothing wrong, but he’s dead.
Locke’s mother, understandably, struggled with the decision not to prosecute her son’s killer.
At a news conference in New York on Wednesday, Karen Wells, Mr. Locke’s mother, stood next to Mr. Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton and addressed the officer who killed her son: “The spirit of my baby is going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”
She also delivered pointed remarks directed at Mayor Jacob Frey, over his management of the department and over the city’s surge in violent crime, which, she said, led Mr. Locke to obtain a gun for protection.
“My son was protecting himself, thinking he had to protect himself from all the crime that is out of control, Mayor Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, that you can’t control,” she said. “So my son decided that if he’s going to go back and forth and do Instacart and DoorDash, he needed to bear arms, the legal way.”
No doubt Hanneman will be haunted by his killing Amir Locke. No one, no cop, should take a life without being haunted by it, good shoot or bad. And for the reasons Wells expressed, it was a bad shoot. Amir Locke did nothing wrong. He was the good guy here, a man exercising his right to protect himself, a man awoken from sleep by unknown men breaking into an apartment at night. When a person does nothing wrong, they aren’t supposed to die for it.
But Officer Hanneman was not unreasonable in believing that the sleeping guy in an apartment being raided under a judicially authorized no-knock warrant presented an imminent risk of death, and so he shot first and killed him. This is what the law permits, making a choice favoring police over the non-cop when the decision is made whether to pull the trigger. This situation is untenable. The outcome is bad. What it was not is criminal.
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Aside from union influence, tell me again why the “reasonably scared cop” rule is different from the general reasonably scared person rule? I thought the rationales were the same.
Also, if the law were to draw distinctions, shouldn’t the people/legislators, not judges, be the only ones with the right to make that call?
“Tell you again”?
So…The only thing that can stop a (sleeping) good guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun…I guess?
Don’t guess. Think.
Fair. Through the lens of aggregate data, I think this extremely tragic story is another ‘2nd amendment victory.’ Bad humor was a selfish, stupid choice to communicate my point.
It is tragic. Worse, it will continue to play out in many scenarios without any acceptable way to prevent it. It’s a nightmare.
What’s an acceptable way to prevent it?
I have yet to hear a solution proposed that doesn’t put even more cops and innocents at risk.
There is a police author who goes by the nom de plum “Graham Factor” on Substack.
He recently wrote an equally sober and circumspect analysis with a lot of relevant detail, like a breakdown of the search warrant in this case.The post is entitled “The Range of Reasonableness.”
Worth a Google for the seriously interested. I shall not provide a link out of respect for SHG and his rules.
[Ed. Note: I added the link because I make the rules.]
Well, I think we all know there could be more reasoned processes for issuance of no-knock warrants. Indeed, Frey had made some representations about restrictions on no-knock warrants that were shown by this incident to be less than accurate. A properly limited use of these warrants might not prevent all clashes between 2nd Amendment rights and the reasonably scared cop rule, but would reduce the number of scenarios most likely to give rise to such clashes.
No knocks are a facet of the problem, but only a facet. And there are times when no knocks are appropriate, provided cops aren’t too lazy, lying or full of shit to make sure they don’t hit the wrong address, the wrong house or take it down when innocents are inside.
No knock warrants raise the stakes.
How is a person who was asleep and is now groggy supposed to respond to someone breaking into a house, and not cause a problem if there is a reasonably scared cop, especially if he has a gun nearby, whether that person is a good or bad guy?
The cops are the ones who raised the stakes, and I do think they need to be held to task in some form or another, if it goes bad. At the very least, it should be manslaughter.
Manslaughter is a crime and, like any crime, has elements and defenses. If it meets the elements and overcomes its defenses, then it’s a crime. If not, then it shouldn’t be any crime no matter how you feel. We don’t prosecute people when no crime can be proven, even when there’s tragic outcomes.
SHG– We don’t prosecute people when no crime can be proven, even when there’s tragic outcomes.
But isn’t that what is happening lately? 🙂
I 100% get what you are saying. I am sure you are over joyed.
Scott, I found this post via referral traffic on my post about Locke.
If you agree no-knock warrants are sometimes appropriate and are not just calling for a total ban, I’d really be interested in why you think this one wasn’t. This was a homicide case with at least two (maybe three) suspects who had rifles and other handguns, had been on an armed robbery spree, and had already eluded police in a vehicle chase and destroyed evidence once. It was not the wrong apartment, the murderers had been seen entering it on video after the murder and ditched their getaway car nearby.
Assuming the affidavit is accurate, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, then if this is not a case where no-knocks are appropriate, when is?
Whether it was an appropriate instance for a no-knock is only one factor. Could it have been accomplished without a nighttime raid at all? Did they have it under surveillance and know who was inside before execution? Killing innocents inside is a big deal and even when a no-knock is appropriate, it’s something you work very hard to avoid.
I can’t answer those questions because I don’t know what MPD knew. But when you have an unsolved homicide and multiple armed criminals robbing and killing people (remember, this was part of a spree) then sitting back and doing more surveillance also comes with the potential for risks to innocents.
Of course, every police department should do as much work as possible to avoid killing innocent people, but anytime we are talking about confronting two or three heavily armed murderers in an urban environment there are risks to innocent people no matter what police do or don’t do. The debate is about how to best minimize them, but there will always be bad outcomes. It’s important to be honest about this because as one of my police readers pointed out, what we have now is “tragedy free policing – or else!” where all police actions are judged by the outcome rather than the reasonableness of the decision-making.
I think if this warrant doesn’t meet your standard, then what you really want is a defacto ban on no knock warrants. As I pointed out on my own blog that is fine and a reasonable option, and many police agencies do ban no-knock warrants completely, but we should be honest about what it is and what the tradeoffs are.
They were rhetorical questions. Tragedies will happen, but that doesn’t make them any less tragic. When cops shrug off tragedies as an ordinary cost of doing business, then it’s time for them to find a different job.
Person H: If it was a bad shoot, it must be a crime.
Person C: If it’s not a crime, it can’t be a bad shoot.
Do you see the problem Graham?
This is deliberately misstating my point. There are always tragedies in policing. Some are preventable and criminal. Some are not criminal but still preventable. Some are neither criminal nor preventable. This one is definitely not criminal and arguably preventable, but it’s probably not preventable as long as no-knock warrants are still allowed.
Libertarians and cop-haters (but I repeat myself) judge policing based solely on outcomes. If someone died who shouldn’t have, it’s always the cops’ fault. Full stop. The idea that police could have made the best possible choices under the circumstances and still get a tragic outcome is never considered.
We can prevent all no-knock warrant-related tragedies by banning all no-knock warrants. It’s fine with me, and probably with many if not most cops. Of course, that decision is entirely up to politicians like Jacob Frey and local judges, who are happy to let the cops make hard decisions and then feign outrage from atop the high horse when everything goes to shit.
Libertarians are not necessarily cop-haters. We only look like cop-haters through your rose-colored cop-lover glasses.
I disagree with those who believe there isn’t a solution for
incidents that take innocent lives like Locke’s. The solution
is to stop authorizing no-knock raids, especially at night,
unless there is an extreme emergency to justify it.
If someone is suspected of dealing drugs, the no-knock raid is
favored because it reduces the opportunity for them to destroy
the evidence or flush it down the toilet. In my opionion that
is not enough to justify doing a no-knock, middle of the night
raid.
If cops are unable to bust someone immediately because they are
denied permission to do a no-knock, so be it. There will most
likely be other opportunities to get the bad guys, but fewer
innocent people will have their homes torn apart, their dogs
shot, and their lives taken away due to cops who get a rush from
busting into people’s homes guns in hand.
As for the idea that no crime was committed in the Locke case,
that may be true but only because the legislature hasn’t passed
a law criminalizing the reckless use of home invasions by cops.
No-knock and nighttime (each is a separate factor, requiring separate justification) was only intended to be used in emergencies that justified a variation from the norm of daytime execution and knock-and-announce. In other words, that’s how it’s supposed to work now if cops, prosecutors and judges adhered to the “rules” that justified these exceptions in the first place. See how that’s worked out?
But be careful about buying into the overly-simplistic negative hype of evil reckless cops. Most just want to do their job and make it home for dinner.
I agree of course that most cops are not evil and just want to do their jobs. But as
Radley Balko’s great book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop” points out, the police in many
cities have adopted a warrior mentality and often use S.W.A.T. raids for situations
that don’t call for so much force.
You point out that in theory night-time no-knock raids are already supposed to be
reserved for true emergencies even though in practice that’s not the case. That
suggests that the problem is political and I don’t have an answer for that!
Casey: Can you describe a method of capturing a murder suspect on a violent crime spree that doesn’t have risk?
No I can’t describe a totally risk free method of capturing a murder suspect.
I also can’t describe a totally risk free method of crossing the street.
But I minimize the risk by looking both ways, not looking at my cellphone and
not stopping halfway across to admire the view.
The point being, some risks are blatantly obvious and should be avoided at all costs.
The police get to choose how much risk they take on when they do a no-knock raid
in the middle of the night. The private citizen, such as Locke don’t get a say in the matter.
You might want to try the “reply” button.
You’re right: The private citizen doesn’t get a say if the police do a day light knock & announce that ends with Mehki Speed shooting up their neighborhood.
The private citizen doesn’t get a say if the cops do a knock & call-out and Mekhi Speed takes them hostage because they slept on his couch the previous night.
The private citizen doesn’t get a say if the cops do a street take down and Mehki Speed pulls the murder weapon & starts spraying bullets on the public street they’re walking down.
The private citizen doesn’t get a say if the cops opt for a traffic stop take-down, but Mekhi Speed takes off at 90MPH on city streets and kills them in an intersection.
Actually, you’re quite wrong. You, a citizen and voter, can tell your local elwcted officials how you want cops to remove violent criminals from your neighborhood. So which of these “blatantly obvious” risks are you going to avoid, and at what cost are you willing to avoid them?
The problem isn’t cops failing to do risk analysis, so much as citizens who are unwilling to compare risks and own the ones they’ll accept.
Because there is no risk-free way of taking down murderers. Because (this point seems completely lost in all this): they’re murderers.
Frankly this was a good shoot, with unfortunate consequences. Watching the video, only a person with enormous fortitude would have held fire in this situation. I agree with those who say that hyperbole in cases like this is tending to prevent sensible police reform.
A more complete set of videos was released this week. It shows that Locke wasn’t under the blanket as described. In fact, as the officers entered, Locke looked up over the back of the couch on the officers’ right side. As the officer who fired came around that side, Locke slid over (almost a dive), under the blanket, to the left side (now the shooting officer’s right (because the officer was now facing the entrance to the apartment)), and then came up with the gun.
Scott’s larger point that no-knocks create risk to law-abiding citizens is not moot. But, in this case, I think the evidence indicates Locke knew exactly what was going on, and knew exactly what he was doing. We may one day find he knew why it was going on as well.
Enjoyed the needless racial elements and you harping on regular people demanding that cops be treated as they treat the public. You’ve spent so long wrapped up in your own little lawyer world you have lost the ability to consider many things outside it. You’re right, this was not criminal. But you presented your case quite insufferably and I was immediately reminded why I stopped reading this blog. Wish Tim Cushing wouldn’t use your blog as one of his main sources since that’s how I ended up here again.
You were missed, Bob. Your approval is deeply valued.
Bob, sometimes it’s hard to tell if someone is an asshole from the left or an asshole from right. The only thing certain is that he’s an asshole.
SHG needs to add emojis so I can react to things like this.