Skip to content
Breaking News Alert Report: The Military's Obsession With DEI Politics Is Hampering Its Readiness

Black Prosecutor Brings No Charges Against Cop Who Killed Amir Locke, Doesn’t Get Called White Supremacist

‘Another innocent black victim’ killed by police but nothing from the media? Maybe it’s because the prosecutor who let the cop off is black.

Share

The name Amir Locke probably sounds only vaguely familiar at the moment, but rest assured that it is now one more piece of the Black Lives Matter movement’s great white supremacy myth. With, of course, a helpful assist from the ready-to-lie national media.

Recall Locke as the 22-year-old black man shot dead earlier this year by police during a no-knock warrant raid in Minneapolis. The incident naturally sparked city-wide riots and outrage from leftist journalists eager to pour more kerosine on our race bonfires.

The illiterate Ben Crump was quick to say at the time that Locke’s death was another example of black Americans unable to “sleep safely in their beds at night” because of a racist police force.

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote with feverish melodrama, “How many times have we rolled this damn rock up the hill? And how many times has it rolled right back down, snuffing out the life of yet another innocent Black victim?”

Locke had been asleep on the couch of an apartment he was visiting that early morning when police came in through the front door yelling, “Police search warrant!” “Get on the ground!” and, “Get on the f-cking ground!” Body camera footage showed that Locke had been underneath a blanket and began to emerge with his hand in possession of a gun. One officer, identified as Mark Hanneman, fired three shots that ultimately killed Locke.

Locke wasn’t the subject of the search warrant and wasn’t wanted for any crime. Police were searching for his cousin, Mehki Speed, who was suspected of killing a man just a few days prior. Speed lived with his mother in the same apartment building but also had key access to the apartment where Locke was staying. (Speed this week pleaded guilty to the murder.)

Authorities opened an investigation of the incident to determine whether Hanneman was justified in firing on Locke. That probe wrapped up a month ago. Despite the initial extensive media coverage of Locke, I would bet our next multi-billion-dollar “aid” package to Ukraine that not a single person reading this has a clue as to what the conclusion of the investigation was.

That’s because, other than a couple obligatory mentions from the New York Times and the Washington Post, the national media showed virtually no interest in the decision by the Minneapolis attorney general not to bring any charges against Hanneman or the police force.

That’s right. The officer who shot Locke dead is no legal jeopardy. He is under no threat of time in prison.

Really? Yet “another innocent black victim” killed by police but nothing from the media? Why might that be? I know! Maybe because the prosecutor who made that decision, Keith Ellison, is black!

Ellison released his decision on April 6, stating that his office would be unable to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal charge against any … officer involved in the decision-making that led to the death of Amir Locke.”

With specific regard to Hanneman, Ellison said, “Under current law – and as awful as the circumstances of this tragedy are – there is not sufficient admissible evidence to support a criminal charge.”

The law in Minnesota provides that a police officer is justified in using deadly force against a target should he reasonably perceive in the moment, without the benefit of hindsight, that “such force was necessary to protect the peace officer or another from death or great bodily harm.”

A statement by Hanneman about the shooting during the raid said he did believe Locke posed a threat, given the circumstances related to the high-risk search order, and that Locke was non-compliant with police orders to drop his weapon and place himself on the floor.

“The individual was crouched and beginning to rise from behind the ottoman,” Hanneman said. “As that individual did so, I noticed that the individual had a handgun in their hand and was brandishing it, and pointed it at me. In this moment, I feared for my life and the lives of my teammates. I was convinced that the individual was going to fire their handgun and that I would suffer great bodily harm or death.”

It’s certainly a tragedy. For that very reason, the use of no-knock warrants is facing legal restrictions in Minnesota and elsewhere. But you know what it’s not? Racism.

It’s not a blind leap of faith to know that’s exactly what it would have been called had Ellison been anything other than black. Thank God we were spared.

None of this is about to matter, though. Locke’s name is already one more piece of BLM’s great white supremacy myth.