Amir Locke’s Death Sparks No-Knock Warrant Debate

The death of a 22-year-old man, Amir Locke, has reignited the national debate over law enforcement’s use of no-knock warrants. On Feb. 2, Locke was killed during a police raid in Minneapolis, Minnesota after being mistaken for his cousin, Mehki Camden Speed, who was a suspect in a homicide case. A Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team had obtained a no-knock search warrant for Speed’s apartment, but instead of finding him, they found Locke asleep. When the team entered the apartment, Locke defensively picked up a handgun that he legally owned, prompting the police to open fire (Cable News Network). Officer Mark Hanneman fatally shot Locke in his chest and right wrist, according to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). This incident has caused many people to question the efficacy of no-knock warrants, as Locke’s death is not an isolated incident. 

The origin of no-knock warrants dates back several decades ago to the 1970s: the era of the war on drugs. During this period, the U.S.’s attempts to reduce the illegal drug trade facilitated the creation of no-knock warrants. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from “unreasonable search”, meaning that police cannot barge into homes whenever they want; they would need a warrant granted by a judge. Even with a warrant, police are supposed to knock and announce themselves before entering one’s home. However, as the war on drugs intensified, police argued that criminals and drug dealers were too dangerous to be granted the typical courtesy of knocking first (Vox). As a result, in the early 1970s, the federal government granted police the right to conduct no-knock raids, but it was often misused, causing the law to be repealed a couple of years later. Since then, a series of court decisions and state laws have created a special set of circumstances in which it is legal for police to raid a house without announcing their presence beforehand–in order to now obtain one of these no-knock warrants, police have to appeal to a judge on one of two bases: either that the police are at danger of being harmed or that if they announced their presence, the suspect would have time to destroy evidence of a crime before the police could confiscate it (Vox). Many officers are in favor of no-knock warrants due to the element of surprise; it is meant to help law enforcement disrupt criminal activity without giving the perpetrator time to react. While some may consider no-knock warrants to be conceptually ideal, many people criticize them, claiming that they are frequently misused. A 2017 New York Times investigation found that at least 81 civilians and 13 law enforcement officers have died in no-knock and quick-knock raids between 2010 and 2016 in the U.S., with many more having been seriously wounded (American Broadcasting Company). 

“While the ‘perceived benefits’ of no-knock warrants are commonly touted as a justification for their use, massive bodies of peer-reviewed research demonstrate their ineffectiveness as a crime-fighting tactic,” junior Coralynn Yang said. “While there might be some possibility that no-knock warrants are a useful investigation tactic, those marginal benefits are definitely outweighed by the massive increases in violence that accompanied their utilization — the risk of violence or injury being done to the civilian is much larger than the chance that police will find something during the investigation.”

Inspired by Locke’s death, efforts are being taken by many legislators to ban no-knock warrants. Two days after Locke’s death, Minneapolis’s mayor Jacob Frey imposed a moratorium on both the request and execution of no-knock warrants in Minneapolis. Frey also stated that officials of the Minneapolis Police Department would work with national experts to review and suggest revisions to the department’s policy on no-knock warrants (CBS). There have also been previous measures implemented by officials to combat the abuse of no-knock warrants. In June of 2020, for instance, current Vice President Kamala Harris co-sponsored legislation aimed at banning police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants at a nationwide level. As of February of 2022, the bill, titled the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, has been passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and is on the Senate calendar (NewsNation). By January of 2021, state bills and local ordinances banning or restricting no-knock warrants were also introduced in 22 states and 20 cities, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. Additionally, following the death of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in March of 2020, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer suspended the use of no-knock warrants and required police to wear body cameras when carrying out search warrants (Public Broadcasting Service). Taylor was shot by police executing a no-knock drug search warrant meant for two men who were suspected to be receiving packages from Taylor’s apartment (The New York Times). The Minneapolis police are acting swiftly to make reforms following Locke’s because Minneapolis is the same city in which George Floyd lost his life at the hands of the police in May of 2020. Since Floyd’s death, the Minneapolis Police Department has been under intense scrutiny from citizens; many have even called to have the entire system disbanded. Freshman Neekta Baghoolizadeh believes that the Minneapolis Police Department contributed to the deaths of these two men.

“To [address] the elephant in the room, both [Floyd and Locke] were killed by active police officers on duty, which in itself is an astonishing problem,” Baghoolizadeh said. “While some people may argue that these police officers were only a ‘bad apple’ in the bunch, the repeated acts of violence and systemic prejudice ingrained in the police, as well as other ‘justice’ systems, tell a vastly different story. The [very] fact that these ‘bad apples’ are allowed to continue to work as police officers and are constantly defended by their colleagues further proves that these issues are not the work of singular officers but the systemic racism that is, more often than not, deep-rooted in the police system.” 

No-knock warrants have a reputation of being abused, particularly among minorities (The Columbus Dispatch). Two years before the city banned the warrants in June of 2020, Louisville Metro Police Department officers received court approval for at least 27 no-knock warrants. An analysis by the Louisville Courier-Journal showed that for 22 of those warrants, 82% of the listed suspects were Black. The issue surrounding no-knock warrants is only one aspect of an ongoing racial struggle in America, particularly in the criminal justice system. Police have a long history of targeting minorities; the origins of modern-day policing can be traced back to the “Slave Patrol”, which was created in the early 1700s to establish a system of terror and prevent slave uprisings (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The U.S. is also home to the world’s largest prison population and the highest per-capita incarceration rate, of which Black people make up 38.4% of those incarcerated, despite making up only 13.4% of the overall U.S. population (Federal Bureau of Prisons). Many have proposed a potential solution to this issue of internal bias within police officers: the implementation of an implicit bias training program to be used during their training. On average, U.S. officers are required to spend at least 21 weeks in general training before they are qualified to go on patrol (British Broadcasting Corporation), which is far less than most other developed countries according to the Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform. U.S. police training also heavily emphasizes the operation of firearms instead of how to de-escalate a situation — on average 71 hours against 21 (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics). Many see the benefits of an implicit bias training program in helping these officers become more aware and eradicate their bias, conscious or not, towards specific groups.

“These great kids get shot [due to] the officer’s mentality that [a person] is Black so [they are] bad,” Government and Advanced Placement Psychology teacher John Hangartner said. “The guy who was standing on Floyd’s throat did not have to do that. I see those cops beating Rodney King, they did not need to do that; it makes me sick to my stomach. [These cops] have enough training to know and to understand when their life is in danger [versus] when they are just using excessive force. [As for the use of no-knock warrants], it kind of makes sense [why cops would prefer it], but if it is going to create a loss of life, whether it is of the cop or the victim, I would say forgo it. Death is the ultimate; we do not need any more of that.”