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Why No - Knock Warrants Should Be Illegal
-- By TarynWilkins - 18 Apr 2022 | |
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< | Time and time again, innocent Black people are being unreasonably executed through loopholes in the way we are policed. The only way to end such tragedy is to get rid of the very mechanisms that allow police officers to think the violence they participate in is warranted. | >
> | Time and time again, innocent Black people are being unreasonably executed through loopholes in the way we are policed. Is the only way to end such tragedy to get rid of the very mechanisms that allow police officers to think the violence they participate in is warranted, or do we something else? | | |
History Repeats Itself | |
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< | On February 2, 2022, 22 year old Amir Locke was awoken by Minneapolis police officers storming into his house. About ten seconds later, with the very blanket he went to sleep with still wrapped around him, he was murdered.
This is not the first time such a tragedy has occurred at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. Just a few years ago, the Minneapolis police department’s brutal murder of George Floyd rocked the town. While it may still be argued George Floyd did not get the justice he deserved, at least his killer was charged. Unfortunately for Amir Locke however, on Wednesday, April 6th, it was announced that the police would not be charged for his murder. | >
> | On February 2, 2022, 22 year old Amir Locke was awoken by Minneapolis police officers storming into his house. About ten seconds later, with the very blanket he went to sleep with still wrapped around him, he was murdered. This is not the first time such a tragedy has occurred at the hands of Minneapolis police officers as just a few years ago, the Minneapolis police department’s murdered George Floyd. While it may still be argued George Floyd did not get justice, at least his killer was charged. Unfortunately for Amir Locke however, the same can not be said. | | | No - Knock Warrants
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< | The Minneapolis Police Department was using a search warrant signed by a judge who authorized the use of a 'no knock' warrant when they killed Amir Locke. This is not the first time we have seen someone die as a result of a no-knock warrant, as Breonna Taylor was killed in the same manner. The only difference was she did not have a gun. No knock warrants were first used as a tool through the courts in order to preserve evidence, primarily crack cocaine. However, that was during the war of drugs, an unfortunate reality of the 80s, but not today, decades later. Thor Eells, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association has stated “(We)'ve been strongly teaching, advocating, for other alternatives." https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/12/us/no-knock-warrants-policy-bans-states/index.html | >
> | The Minneapolis Police Department was using a search warrant signed by a judge who authorized the use of a 'no knock' warrant when they killed Amir Locke, the same way in which Breonna Taylor was killed. No knock warrants were first used as a tool through the courts in order to preserve evidence, primarily crack cocaine. However, that was during the war of drugs, an unfortunate reality of the 80s, but not today, decades later. Thor Eells, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association has stated “(We)'ve been strongly teaching, advocating, for other alternatives." https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/12/us/no-knock-warrants-policy-bans-states/index.html | | | In the process of obtaining the warrant, “a sergeant detailed why police believed a no-knock warrant would be the best option: It ‘enables officers to execute the warrant more safely by allowing officers to make entry into the apartment without alerting the suspects inside. This will not only increase officer safety, but it will also decrease the risk for injuries to the suspects and other residents nearby.’
| | | “In response to Mr. Locke’s killing, the mayor issued a new policy this week, which prohibits no-knock warrants and requires officers to knock and announce their presence, and then wait, before entering a building.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/us/amir-locke-shooting-no-charges.html Perhaps if the policy was already in place, Amir Locke would still be alive. We do not want, nor do we need reactive policies. We need preventive policies. Now, an innocent Black man is no longer alive while a police officer can go back to his everyday life. | |
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> | While engaging in this conversation however, it is important to note that the no-knock warrants tool is just a small spoke in the wheel of the never-ending cycle of how Black people are treated in this country. We must be honest with ourselves in realizing that even if no-knock warrants are no longer, who is to say that the police force, the far right, and those who think it is their job to control what anyone who is not white will not find some other horrible way to target Black people like Amir Locke. Racism is taught. Prejudice is taught. The bigger question here is perhaps how do we teach people that no race is beneath the next? How do we teach people how the horrible effects of the police badge is merely a transformation of the effects that came out of the master and the slave dynamic from years ago? | | | | |
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If this essay is indeed intended to be an argument for statutory prohibition of no-knock warrants, then its job is to persuade the skeptical reader in the vicarious position of legislator that such warrants are never necessary. You would want first to point out that you are talking about search warrants. (You are less likely to convince a legislative majority that, e.g., the service of an arrest warrant on a fugitive (armed r otherwise) can never occur without notice.) And you would want to concentrate attention on why magistrates should not, regardless of the showing made to them, be allowed the exercise of that judgment. You are arguing, in effect, that the risk of harm to civilians, including those wrongfully targeted, always outweighs all other considerations, so you should at least deal with the likeliest counter-claims. | | | | |
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< | But perhaps that isn't really the subject of the essay. Maybe the point lies more in the inevitably, fatally, disparate impact of police discretion in the exercise of coercive violence, whether accompanied by judicial warrant or occurring without one, in the course of supposedly "normal" policing. From that point of view, how warrants are served is one illustration of the larger category of abnormally dangerous "normal" policing to which Black Americans are subjected. In that case, how legislatures respond is (for the reasons adumbrated by writers of what is now being pejoratively called "critical race theory") unlikely to matter to the realities we experience around us all the time. It seems to me that the draft will much improve when its focus is a trifle clearer. | | |
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