Amir Locke was 22 years young when he was murdered by Mark Hanneman, a Minneapolis Police Officer executing a no-knock warrant on February 2, 2022. Locke was a musician with plans to move to Texas, whose family describes him as “loved by all, hated by none.” He didn’t even live in the apartment where the warrant was being served; he was sleeping on a friend’s couch, wrapped in a blanket, when MPD officers stormed in unannounced and stole his life.
In the days following Locke’s murder, Interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey incorrectly described Locke as a suspect multiple times, spreading confusion, stifling outrage, and distracting us from the fact that nobody’s life should ever be taken by the state. Police are not judges or juries – but again and again, the fear, racism, and entitlement baked into their role and training empowers them to decide who lives and who dies in a matter of seconds. Amir Locke was shot and killed 9 seconds after MPD entered the apartment where he slept.
When Jacob Frey said that Locke was a suspect, it was just the latest in a series of lies that demonstrate an obstinate loyalty to failed systems, and a complete indifference for Black lives. Frey ran for re-election last fall on false claims that he’d banned the very same no-knock warrants that killed Amir Locke. This article chronicles Frey’s history of disinformation, and is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand this moment in Minneapolis politics. The day after it was published, yet another lie was revealed: MPD still incorporates “excited delirium” in its trainings, even though the American Medical Association has denounced the condition, calling it a “manifestation of systemic racism” – and even though Frey told us that he had banned these trainings in 2021.
As a Minneapolis resident, I’m furious and heartbroken that Frey’s lies won him a second term in an office that he clearly lacks the responsibility or competency to hold. I feel sick watching a white man in power passively “owning” the mistakes and disinformation that killed my neighbors, while refusing to actually apologize. But I also know that problems in policing go much, much deeper than any one mayor, police chief, or policy.
Despite decades of evidence, Frey and his aligned political PACs, bankrolled by the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, have spent millions of dollars reinforcing dominant narratives that say our current systems of policing are flawed – but that they can be reformed with better training, officers, policies, and “culture.” This empty rhetoric disguises the goal of the corporate donor class behind Mayor Frey – maximizing profits, instead of investing in the residents of Minneapolis.
The reforms touted by Frey’s reelection campaign weren’t real, and his officers are still receiving the same training under a different name. Mark Hanneman, the officer who murdered Amir Locke was hired by MPD after being disciplined for drugging activists and unhoused community members in 2012 while working for the Hutchinson Police Department. After killing Locke, he is still an officer with the Minneapolis Police Department. He has been neither arrested nor fired.
We continue to learn and witness that reforms are toothless against a system of policing that was designed to systemically, violently maintain white supremacy and protect property instead of people. Our neighbors are being killed as elected officials like Mayor Frey advocate for meaningless action and call for more funding into the systems that took their lives.
It’s far past time to try something different. Some of us were raised to believe that police would keep us safe. Some of us have never equated police with safety. Wherever you are in your journey for liberation, it’s not too late to learn from our shared history, replace white supremacist myths with facts, and act to disrupt the status quo and build a better future.
A better future looks like fully funded healthcare, housing, education, and wages that let us not just live, but thrive. Our communities deserve investment – from libraries, schools, and youth services to municipal snow shoveling programs. But the resources that would make those investments possible are being funneled into police and prisons instead. In Minneapolis, we spend nearly $200 million on policing every year – 35% of our city’s budget.
Why do our lawmakers spend billions of dollars disappearing our neighbors into the prison industrial complex instead of ensuring that our communities are safe and life-affirming? Why are we told to treat Black lives as the unfortunate but necessary cost of an ineffective, reactive public safety system that doesn’t actually prevent violence? We have an obligation to do so, so much better than that.
Amir Locke, Jamar Clark, Thurman Blevins, Philando Castille, George Floyd, Dolal Idd, Daunte Wright, Winston Smith, and Kokou Fiafonou should all still be alive with their families, loved ones, and communities. They should be making music, sharing meals and jokes, and sleeping safely.
When we demand justice, we know that it can only be served by dismantling the systems that stole their lives, and by doing everything we can to protect our communities from more violence through care and investment.
This work takes love, trust, bravery, and patience, and I’m grateful and ready to continue it with you. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing information about the history of policing in Minneapolis and across the country, learnings from MPD150’s essential report ‘Enough is Enough’, and resources on how we can move individually and collectively into life-affirming alternatives and away from policing. In the meantime, take action today by calling on elected officials in your local, state, and federal governments to ban no-knock warrants once and for all, and ask your friends to act with you.
Reading List
There are so many incredible activists, thinkers, and community members who we can learn from as we dive into this work. These articles offer essential grounding in Minneapolis politics, the failures of police reform, and the origins and mythologies of policing:
- ‘Jacob Frey is a Liar’ by Eamon Whalen for Mother Jones
- ‘The George Floyd Act wouldn’t have saved George Floyd’s life. That says it all’ by Derecka Purnell for The Guardian
- ‘The Invention of the Police’ by Jill Lepore for The New Yorker
- ‘Copaganda: What It Is and how to Recognize It’ by Palika Makam for Teen Vogue
