No-knock terror, again – Abolish the police! – Workers World

Nobody knocked on Amir Locke’s condo door earlier than Minneapolis police entered, utilizing a key, at 6:48 a.m. Feb. 2. They murdered the 22-year-old Black man, 9 seconds later.

Protesters demand justice for Amir Locke in Minneapolis, Feb. 5.

Locke, who police killed whereas finishing up a search warrant, was wrapped in a blanket and sleeping on a sofa. SWAT officers kicked the sofa over, waking up Locke who allegedly displayed a gun. Police officer Mark Hanneman instantly shot him.

Repeating the official police line, Minneapolis media labeled Locke a “suspect.” Solely later did police admit that Locke was not named of their warrants. Locke had a license for his gun however was given no likelihood to outlive his encounter with police.

Minneapolis protest automobile caravan, Feb. 5

Locke’s homicide has generated protests, together with a nighttime automobile caravan by way of the streets of Minneapolis Feb. 4 and a turnout of 1000’s of protesters over the weekend. Black Lives Matter activists disrupted and took over the press convention the place Mayor Jacob Frey and Interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman tried to justify the taking pictures.

At 5 a.m. Jan. 10, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, serving a search warrant for another person, forcibly entered the condo of 19-year-old Isaiah Tyree Williams, firing 23 pictures and killing the Black youth inside seconds. After the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Division realized Williams was not who the cops had been in search of, they instantly started demonizing him, itemizing fees he would have confronted had he used his weapon to guard himself in opposition to their armed break-in.

Each shootings are all too harking back to the homicide of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black girl, by Louisville, Kentucky, police on March 13, 2020. In all these instances, controversial “no-knock” search warrants, which had recognized different folks as goal suspects, offered cowl for white law enforcement officials to interrupt into residences of Black people, late at night time or early within the morning, and execute folks of coloration with out trial.

Taylor, an emergency room technician, was asleep when Louisville police used a battering ram to enter her condo shortly after midnight. After breaking down her door, police fired a number of pictures, placing Taylor 5 occasions. Louisville police delayed calling an ambulance and let Taylor die. Solely after the very fact did police acknowledge that Taylor was not the “suspect” listed on their warrant.

Brett Hankinson, one of many officers who shot Taylor, is at present on trial in Kentucky — not for killing Taylor however for 3 counts of wanton endangerment for firing pictures right into a neighboring condo.

Chauvin conviction – no deterrent to police brutality

In April 2021 Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on three fees stemming from his Might 2020 homicide of George Floyd and subsequently sentenced to over 22 years in jail. Three different Minneapolis law enforcement officials linked to the Floyd’s homicide are at present on trial.

The identical Minneapolis choose who presided over Chauvin’s trial signed off on the no-knock search warrants that resulted in Locke’s dying. The St. Paul, Minnesota, Police Division had requested a knock-and-announce warrant. But Minneapolis police, who’ve the choices of knock or no-knock warrants, selected the latter. 

In November 2020, Frey declared a moratorium in opposition to no-knock warrants, but the follow continued, averaging round 139 per 12 months. Since Jan. 1 Minneapolis police requested and had been granted 13 no-knock search warrants. In cities throughout the U.S., police are weaponizing no-knock warrants — utilizing them to brutally homicide Black and Brown folks.

That Frey and Huffman allowed no-knock warrants after promising the moratorium and different reforms following Floyd’s homicide exposes simply how corrupt the police system is and why reforms and convictions of some responsible cops should not sufficient.

Chauvin’s conviction was designed to pacify hundreds of thousands of BLM activists who stuffed the streets of cities around the globe within the months following Floyd’s homicide. Politicians like Frey made guarantees to reform and in some instances even “defund” police departments, solely to have these guarantees evaporate because the November 2020 elections.

Within the 12 months after George Floyd’s homicide, 1,068 folks had been killed by police — a mean of three per day. This sample didn’t cease with Chauvin’s conviction. The capitalist system provides white police carte blanche to shoot to kill Black and Brown folks. Whereas receiving appreciable media protection, convictions like Chauvin’s are the exception not the norm.

Showcase trials, even after they end in uncommon jail phrases for killer cops, do nothing to essentially change systemic racism and a capitalist state equipment depending on brutality and repression. The issue isn’t a couple of dangerous officers — the issue is systemic racism all through all the U.S. felony “justice” system — from the beat cops to racist U.S. Supreme Court docket judges. 

The demand to “abolish the police” is all of the extra related than when it was first raised in 2020.