Amir Locke: Hopefully the Straw That Will Cause a Major Break in No-Knock Warrant Policies

Early Wednesday morning, February 2, 2022, police entered an apartment, where Amir Locke was on laying on the couch wrapped in a blanket. Locke, a legal gun owner, was awakened by multiple people coming through his door and immediately grabbed his weapon. Unfortunately, for Locke those people turned out to be police officers. Within 8 seconds of their entrance of the apartment, the officers began to shoot Locke multiple times. The cops did not announce themselves before entering the apartment because they had been issued a no-knock warrant. However, it was later found out that Locke was not named in the warrant used to enter the apartment. With his tragic death, the discussion on no-knock warrants has come back under scrutiny. These are my reflections on the no-knock warrant and their desperate need for reform.

The No-Knock Warrant

A no-knock warrant is a warrant that allows officers to enter a premise without first announcing themselves. They are used when police knocking and announcing themselves would lead to the destruction of evidence (i.e. drugs) or would compromise the safety of the police or someone else. I understand the rationale of the latter, which will have consequences on someone's life. However, the rationale of the former, which usually pertains to drugs and money, troubles me, because there is no potential drug bust that justifies the possibility of taking of someone's life as far as I'm concerned. However, the ability of police departments to collect the money and property seized through civil asset forfeiture might be reason enough for many departments to continue with such a dangerous practice.

According to a report by the ACLU, 80% of the SWAT teams are simply used to deploy a search warrant, as opposed to a hostage type of situation. That shows that the vast majority of things like no-knock raids are more concerned with preserving evidence than they are with preserving the human lives they are about to interact with. Add this to the fact that forced entry drugs raids tend to only have a 25% "success rate" at producing contraband and in some jurisdictions like New York, 10% of the raids were at the wrong door. Such knowledge leaves lots of questions of why we are still using this tactic on a war on drugs that many have already deemed as being an abysmal failure.

Significant Recent No-Knock Cases

Over the last several years, no-knock cases have gotten increasing attention. Among all the recent cases, the Breonna Taylor case is probably the most notable one. Taylor was a 26-year-old black medical worker in Kentucky who was killed by police who broke into her apartment when she and her boyfriend were lying in bed. Their justification for the no-knock raid was they believed that an ex-boyfriend of Taylor's, who according to her family she had already severed ties with, had used her apartment to receive packages. When the police broke the door off the hinges at Taylor's residence, her then boyfriend shot one of the officers who entered the apartment, and in return, officers fired numerous shots, several of which struck Taylor. Taylor died shortly after being struck and received no medical attention for more than 20 minutes. Taylor's boyfriend was initially charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, but those charges were subsequently dropped a couple of months later. One of the officers involved has since been charged for his actions in the raid, but not for Taylor's death. Instead he's been charged with "wanton endangerment," for the shots that ended up in the unit next door to Taylor's. In other words, he was charged for the shots that missed Taylor, instead of the ones that took her life.

Another case that was of particular note took place here in Houston. Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle, a husband, and wife were both after a no-knock warrant was executed on their home based on what would later be found to be a string of lies by both officers and informants. The case not only led to the unnecessary deaths of Nicholas and Tuttle, who police discovered later had no history of dealing drugs, but also led to five officers being injured after Nicholas and Tuttle returned fire after officers had killed their dog upon entry of their home. Additionally, following the raid an audit of the narcotics department was conducted and led to the discovery of over 400 errors in more than 200 investigations, which involved 2 of the officers tied to the raid.

It is also worth noting that when an officer has ended up killed as a result of a no-knock raid gone wrong, the results have had stark differences, depending on the color of the homeowner. As noted above, the Nicholas and Tuttle cases resulted in major changes to occur in the Houston Police department as a result, but probably the most significant differences of outcomes in cases can be seen when looking at the cases of Henry Magee and Marvin Guy. Magee and Guy, who live about 100 miles from one another in Texas, both killed an officer who broke into their home during a no-knock raid. Guy killed an officer as he attempted to come through his window and Magree killed an officers as he came through his front door. Although the capital murder charges against Magee have since been dropped, those against Guy have had him awaiting trial for nearly 8 years since the incident in May 2014. It should be noted that both men had criminal records. Guy had robbery and weapons charges, while Magee had possession and DUI charge. Additionally, Magee was found to be in possession of a small amount drugs, while Guy was not. Guy is expected to finally go to trial sometime this year, but sitting on trial for nearly 8 years and possibly facing the death penalty for shooting someone climbing through his own window seems ridiculous to say the least.

The Need for Reform

Thankfully, there has been a number of reforms as the result of some of the shootings. As of January 2021, 22 states and 20 cities introduced bills and ordinances to restrict no-knock warrants. As a result of the Locke shooting, the mayor of Minneapolis has ordered a halt to no-knock warrants. Houston's mayor also signed an executive order in 2020, after the deaths of Nicholas and Tuttle. However, seeing that it is still a practice in almost every state in the country, we should not have to wait until tragedy strikes every city in the country before the practice is reformed in a major way.

Thankfully there is some action taking place at the state and federal level. In Texas, lawmakers sought to ban the practice with a bill in response to the case involving Nicholas and Tuttle. However, while this bill appears to have gotten enough support to make it out of committee, it never made it to the governor's desk to become law. On the federal level, there is a bill that has already been passed by the House of Representatives and is on the Senate calendar as of February 2022. Hopefully, the Locke case will give it the weight it needs to cause the Senate to act on it sooner rather than later, because as we've seen further use of the practice can cost even more lives unnecessarily.

Conclusion

In conclusion, seeing that Amir Locke's death has once again put the spotlight on no-knock warrants, we should take particular interest in seeing that this practice is reformed immediately. There are countless cases of people who have unnecessarily lost their lives as a result of these warrants and the longer we wait to address it, the more people are likely to continue to die as a result. Ideally, Congress will address it on a federal level, but until they get the political will to do so, it will likely fall on the states and local municipalities.