MINNEAPOLIS — Amir Locke, a Black man who was fatally shot by Minneapolis police during a search warrant operation early Wednesday, was not a target of the investigation that led to the predawn raid, according to multiple sources.
Locke, 22, was killed when members of the Minneapolis SWAT team stormed into a seventh-floor unit at the Bolero Flats Apartment Homes shortly before 7 a.m. Wednesday. Authorities say that one of the officers, Mark Hanneman, fired when Locke brandished a gun during the raid, which was tied to an ongoing St. Paul homicide case.
But, Locke was not a target of that investigation at the time of the shooting, according to three sources from separate law enforcement agencies. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case remains under investigation by the state Bureau of Investigation.
The revelation was corroborated by civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, who said in a public Facebook post that she had met with Locke's family, who said that he was asleep at the time of the raid and may have been startled. Levy-Armstrong said that his relatives were doubly victimized — first by his death and then by suggestions, fanned on social media and in some news accounts, that Locke was a homicide suspect.
Police officials said that a loaded handgun was recovered at the scene.
But in an interview with The Minneapolis Star Tribune Thursday, Levy-Armstrong said she was told by the family that Locke had a permit to carry his firearm. Such records are not public information, but Locke would not have required a permit to possess the weapon in a private residence.
Amir Locke's parents, Andre and Karen Locke, declined to comment about the shooting, other than his mother saying, "We want justice for our son."
Andre Locke said the legal team of civil rights attorney Ben Crump was preparing to speak soon on the family's behalf. Crump has won significant financial settlements for several families across the country that have lost loved ones to police and community violence in recent years, including a record $27 million settlement with the city of Minneapolis for the family of George Floyd.
One of Amir Locke's cousins said Thursday that there was nothing violent and hot-tempered about him.
"He was totally the opposite," said 21-year-old Ervin Locke Jr., who recalled the two of them catching up on the phone just last week. "All he did was crack jokes."
He said the man he's affectionately known all their lives by the nickname C-Mo "was no street person. All he was into was music and playing basketball. He stayed to himself."
Ervin Locke Jr., who moved from the Twin Cities to Maryland about 10 years ago, regularly saw his cousin at family cookouts, and also ran into him at their grandmother's funeral about a year ago. The news of Amir's death left him devastated, he said.
"I couldn't even drive yesterday," he said.
Locke was not named in the application for the search warrant, but is related to one of the people thought to be involved in the St. Paul homicide. A police spokesman declined to comment Thursday, saying all further questions would be answered by the BCA.
Hanneman has been identified as the officer who shot Locke, and he has been placed on administrative leave, in keeping with department policy. His personnel file had not been released as of Thursday afternoon.
According to a dispatch report, police informed a dispatcher around 6:19 a.m. that they would be going into Apt. 701 at Bolero Flats, a high end apartment complex across the street from Orchestra Hall. A comment added to the report showed that police would "AIR WHEN ABOUT TO EXECUTE THIS RISK – NO NOISE EXPECTED" — suggesting that they were carrying out a no-knock warrant. By 6:48 a.m., police called medics from Floor 7, indicating that someone was shot, the report showed. CPR was started three minutes later as officers brought the man, later identified as Locke, down to medics on the first floor. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
About 7:04 a.m., an officer said on the radio that police were "transporting" a woman to Room 801, an office at police headquarters that is used for interviews. It's unclear whether the woman in question was in the apartment with Locke.
Hanneman was the only officer who fired their weapon, striking Locke three times: twice in the chest and once in the wrist, according to a separate report.
A search of Hennepin and Ramsey county court records showed that the warrant to support the raid hadn't been made public as of Thursday afternoon.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, interim police Chief Amelia Huffman said that the officers "loudly and repeatedly announced 'police search warrant,'" before breaching the apartment. Within nine seconds of entry, they encountered Locke, who Huffman says was holding a gun. Moments later, Hanneman fired his service weapon, officials said.
Huffman confirmed that there was body-camera footage of the incident and that she had seen it. In the past, authorities have taken weeks, sometimes months, to release video from police shootings, but local officials have promised to do so more quickly in future cases.
Pressure to release the video mounted Thursday on the city, as leaders from U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar to Minneapolis councilmembers Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley Worlobah called for all footage. That demand was echoed in a letter to Huffman and Mayor Jacob Frey from members of the Minneapolis delegation of the Minnesota House.
Huffman and Frey declined to take questions at Wednesday's news conference, but Frey released a brief statement Thursday saying that he was "committed to ensuring the family has had an opportunity to review the body camera footage prior to the public release of it." He added that he was working with the MPD and the BCA to "ensure that the footage is released as quickly as possible without compromising" the BCA's investigation. Community organizer Lisa Clemons posted on Facebook Thursday that Huffman met with North Side leaders, and later updated her post saying the family had reviewed the footage.
Wednesday's shooting has revived a simmering debate over the use of so-called "no-knock" search warrants.
The use of these unannounced raids, which allow police to enter a property without announcing their presence beforehand, have been banned in cities across the country after they resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. Minneapolis restricted the practice in 2020, but it is still occasionally used in certain cases.
While police have defended the the use of no-knock raids as necessary for keeping officers safe while apprehending violent suspects, critics say it puts lives at risk.
Paul Applebaum, a private defense attorney, said that no-knock warrants are often used in drug and violent crime cases, but that with the expansion of surveillance technology police should be able to apprehend a suspect without such a show of force.
"It seems like the risk is greater than the reward of preserving evidence or not having a shootout or all that," said Applebaum, who has sued officers for alleged misconduct. "It's like, just go sit in the lobby behind a newspaper and wait until he comes out."
Another problem, he says, is that judges tend to be deferential to law enforcement, signing off on no-knock warrants "without thinking about the potential repercussions if something goes wrong."
"And this is what happens," he said.
Under the current Minneapolis policy, officers must identify themselves as "police" and announce their purpose as "search warrant" before entering any domicile — regardless of whether a judge signed off on an "unannounced" or "no-knock" entry. Once inside a residence, officers are supposed to periodically repeat those announcements in case occupants didn't hear them. The same rules, which mirror those already in place across the river in St. Paul, also apply for arrest warrants.
The practice, most often used by SWAT officers, should help maintain the element of surprise and preservation of evidence while eliminating confusion about who's entering the building, a police spokesman said at the time.
Policy dictates that no-knock warrants would be acceptable only in high-risk circumstances such as a hostage situation, when "giving an announcement would create an imminent threat of physical harm to victims, officers or the public." Some exceptions apply, but investigators need to obtain permission from the the chief of police or his or her designee.
In the past, MPD executed an average of 139 no-knock warrants a year.
(Staff writers Liz Sawyer, Alex Chhith and Abby Simons contributed to this report.)
