The more I learn about the no-knock warrant that resulted in the police shooting death of Amir Locke, the more incensed I become.
The 22-year-old Locke was asleep on the couch when a SWAT team stormed the residence and shot him dead within 10 seconds of their arrival. Locke was reportedly a legal gun owner with a carry permit and was gunned down as he roused from sleep—at the sound of the SWAT team’s riotous and undisciplined entrance—and grabbed his legally-owned and -permitted weapon, seemingly in groggy response to the chaotic SWAT invasion.
We are now learning not only that the warrant did not name Locke but that the person on the warrant, a juvenile cousin of Locke’s who has since been arrested in the underlying homicide investigation, didn’t even reside at that address.
Apparently, law enforcement was informed that the juvenile suspect in an ongoing homicide investigation “stayed” at the apartment in which Locke was gunned down by police. That gossip was somehow grounds for seeking, and for a judge signing, a no-knock warrant . . . on the dwelling of law-abiding citizens at which the suspect might be couch surfing.
A 17-year-old was arrested Monday in connection to a homicide investigation that led to the death of Amir Locke, who was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer last week during a predawn “no-knock” raid.The teenager was identified as Locke’s cousin in court documents. Prosecutors have charged him with second-degree murder in the Jan. 10 fatal shooting of 38-year-old Otis Rodney Elder.Charging documents provide some new details about the investigation that led to the fatal encounter with Locke, 22, who was not named in the search warrant. Officers from the Minneapolis Police Department were executing the warrant as part of the St. Paul homicide investigation, interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman said last week.Police tracked the teenage suspect and his associates to the Bolero Flats apartment building in Minneapolis, ultimately executing search warrants on three apartments: the one the teen lived in with his mother; another apartment two doors down connected to his associate; and an apartment belonging to the girlfriend of the teen’s brother seven floors down. Minneapolis police say the last apartment where Locke was killed was the only one with a “no-knock warrant.”. . . . St. Paul police had obtained search warrants as part of their investigation into Elder’s death, including a warrant for the downtown Minneapolis apartment where Locke’s family said he had been staying. Minneapolis Interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman has said her department had warrants that would have required authorities to knock and not knock. Huffman has said that Locke was not named in the search warrants. (emphasis mine)
How is this even possible? This no-knock warrant was issued on the residence of American citizens who have no apparent criminal record, yet not on the residence of the homicide suspect. The suspect was not even in the residence at the time of the raid. How does this happen? They didn’t surveil the apartment, at least ensure that the suspect was there before barging in like bit players in a bad leftie movie about American troops in Iraq?
No-knock warrants, I noted previously, “carry with them the assumption that everyone in the warranted dwelling/site is not only a potential and immediate lethal threat to the invading SWAT team but also is a criminal, has criminal intent, or is otherwise unworthy of basic legal rights. Due process, in other words, is thrown out the window with these no-knock warrants.” And in this case, it swept up an innocent occupant, Amir Locke, who was ambushed as he slept and shot to death within 10 seconds of a SWAT team swarming the apartment.
I have no words. This is disgusting, and there is no place for this sort of war-zone treatment of American citizens on American soil by American law enforcement.
I know that there are political angles to this, but frankly, I don’t care whether the left is racializing this tragic outcome or that the vile, race-baiting shyster Ben Crumb represents the Locke family. I don’t live in the racist “antiracist” upside-down dystopian fantasy world. I live in a world where right is right and wrong is wrong. And here, I think, a great wrong has been done.
Race hustlers are going to race hustle no matter what. And personally, I don’t believe this great injustice is about race; I think it’s about the mission creep that has infected law enforcement stateside. They have become so militarized that they have completely lost the plot and are running “missions” against American citizens on American soil with no regard for our God-given and Constitutional rights.
I cannot think of one solid instance where a no-knock warrant would make any sense at all. The offerings from supporters of this anti-American perversion of ‘public safety’ burble about imminent threats to human life, but that is nonsensical since law enforcement needs no warrant to enter any dwelling or building when human life is at imminent risk.
In this case, they were reportedly acting on a weeks-old single (i.e., not a rampaging shooter or serial killer about to pounce) homicide investigation; there was no imminent threat to innocents . . .unless you count that from the overly-aggressive and egregious SWAT invasion of a private home by law enforcement treating American cities like Fallujah and American citizens like jihadi combatants.
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