At 6:48 a.m. on Wednesday, February 2, a Minneapolis police SWAT team stormed into a downtown apartment on a no-knock warrant. Nine seconds after they burst through the door, officer Mark Hanneman shot and killed 22-year-old Amir Locke, who was still wrapped in a blanket.
While growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I felt the impacts of police violence in my community firsthand, and saw how over-policing was ineffective at addressing crime. Last year, I was elected to the Minneapolis City Council as an independent Black Democratic Socialist on a platform of building something different than a police system that hurts working-class communities, especially Black and brown people. I ran to make Minneapolis a city that puts people over property and recognizes the full citizenship of every person who lives here. We can’t wait on the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) to begin that work.
After the release of the body camera footage of Locke’s killing, Mayor Jacob Frey committed to banning no-knock warrants, which allow law enforcement to enter a residence without notifying anyone who may be inside. This might sound like a victory, but it is a distraction; Frey campaigned on having banned no-knock warrants.
Now that Locke’s killing has exposed the massive loopholes in the existing policy, the mayor is championing this “new” moratorium in an attempt to recuperate his destroyed credibility. But no amount of glossy magazine profiles can insulate a mayor who has failed to keep his promises to the city time and time again.
No-knock warrants are just one example of the many ways the MPD has failed on its promise to change. An updated ban on no-knock warrants is reactive. It won’t bring back Amir Locke. And a ban on no-knock warrants would not have saved George Floyd, Jamar Clark, or Terrance Franklin from dying at the hands of MPD officers. It’s time for us to be proactive to prevent the next killing by Minneapolis police. We urgently need to invest in infrastructure that actually keeps working-class people safe while doing everything we can to demilitarize the police and curb their power.
Locke’s killing is the most recent horrific example of how the system of policing is broken, but the evidence is everywhere you look. In the past month, there have been multiple signs of the city’s dysfunction, and Minneapolis residents have lost confidence in our mayor and police department.
Prominent abolitionist and former candidate for Minneapolis mayor Sheila Nezhad quit Mayor Frey’s Community Safety Workgroup over the mayor’s refusal to engage in an open, public process. The same week, a group of residents in one of the city’s wealthiest and whitest neighborhoods successfully petitioned the city to allow them to pay extra for more police patrols. Just two weeks ago, the interim police chief put an officer who had previously been fired for misconduct, and named in a related lawsuit, in charge of training for the entire department.
Despite years of calls for transparency and accountability, multiple lawsuits litigated on taxpayers’ dime, a Department of Justice investigation, and a murder so egregious that it sparked a global uprising, the MPD has shown time and time again that it is unwilling or unable to follow protocols the city sets to keep residents safe.
In a democracy, voters elect policymakers, and the city apparatus carries out and fulfills policies. The MPD has shown us that it is not interested in being part of our democracy. The department sees itself as above the law, because the city has allowed officers to operate that way for more than 150 years. When Frey first ran for mayor five years ago, he promised to make changes to the MPD, but year after year, there's been no overhaul, no systemic reforms, and no policy changes have been presented to justify the increased budget.
We are past Mayor Frey’s crocodile tears, his false promises, and his failed leadership. We are past his toothless reforms to the MPD. We need to start building an institution that is designed from its inception to respond safely and professionally to the public safety needs of working-class people. With that in place, we can start moving resources away from the MPD and into a department that works and has earned people’s trust.
We need a new Department of Public Safety staffed with an unarmed workforce. Many public safety programs already exist in various city departments, and under a single department they can be fully funded, better coordinated, and more accessible to the public. The Department of Public Safety can also help address root causes of crime: economic instability, public health and mental health crises, and racial inequality.
As long as there is an MPD, we know that another Black person will lose their life at the hands of the police. We know that another family will lose a loved one to this violent, brutal system we have chosen to accept. We know another community will be torn apart by the grief and fear that comes from living in a city that does not care about you.
This is the terrible cycle our mayor has chosen to repeat. But we can make a different choice. We can build a system that addresses the root causes of crime. We can deploy our resources to make housing a human right, strengthen public education, and make sure everyone has what they need to thrive. We can do this while providing robust emergency services, and in the process create a city where everyone feels safe, because everyone is safe.
Amir Locke’s killing is the most recent reminder that we cannot build the future we deserve under the heel of the Minneapolis Police Department. It’s time that everyone who is committed to building a just and equitable Minneapolis comes together to build a Department of Public Safety. It’s clear the process of building the department we need cannot happen under Mayor Frey. It’s time for him to resign and let the real work begin. Our collective liberation will not wait.
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