Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison will join the review of the fatal shooting of a black man by Minneapolis police, authorities said on Friday, shortly after body camera footage was released showing Swat team officers entering an apartment and shooting the 22-year-old man, who was wrapped in a blanket and had a gun in his hand.
Amir Locke was killed in the shooting just before 7am on Wednesday. Police said Locke pointed a loaded gun “in the direction of officers”. An incident report said he had two wounds in the chest and one in the right wrist.
Activists swiftly denounced the killing, noting that Locke was not named in a search warrant.
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said during a Friday morning news conference that Locke's family was “just flabbergasted at the fact that Amir was killed in this way” and disgusted over how the Swat team raid was conducted.
“They didn’t even give him a chance,” Mr Crump said. He said it was shocking that Minneapolis police had not learnt from the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
The body camera video released late on Thursday showed the footage in slow motion and at regular speed. It shows an officer using a key to unlock the door and enter, followed by at least four officers in uniform and protective vests, time-stamped at 6.48am local time.
As they enter, they repeatedly shout, “Police, search warrant!” They also shout “Hands!” and “Get on the ground!” The video shows an officer kick a sectional sofa, and Locke, who was wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, begins to move, holding a pistol. Three shots are heard and the video ends.
The city also released a still from the video showing Locke holding the gun, his trigger finger along the side of the barrel. The top of Locke’s head is barely visible.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said on Friday that he asked Mr Ellison to help review the case for possible charges.
Interim Minneapolis Police Chief Amelia Huffman said during a news conference after the video was released that Locke was not named in the warrants.
The search warrants that led the Swat team to enter the apartment early on Wednesday were still not public as of Friday morning. But a search warrant filed by state agents investigating the shooting was filed and it said that the initial search warrants “were being executed for a homicide suspect who was apparently located” at the building where the shooting took place.
Ms Huffman said the officer, Mark Hanneman, was in a difficult position.
“The still shot shows the image of the firearm in the subject’s hands, at the best possible moment when the lighting was fully on him,” she said.
“That’s the moment when the officer had to make a split-second decision to assess the circumstances and to determine whether he felt like there was an articulable threat, that the threat was of imminent harm, great bodily harm or death, and that he needed to take action right then to protect himself and his partners.”
Locke's mother, Karen Locke, declined to comment to The Associated Press on Thursday, referring questions to Mr Crump.
In a Thursday statement, Mr Crump compared Locke's shooting to the botched raid in which officers killed Taylor in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020, which led to calls for change nationwide.
“Like the case of Breonna Taylor, the tragic killing of Amir Locke shows a pattern of no-knock warrants having deadly consequences for black Americans,” Mr Crump said.
“This is yet another example of why we need to put an end to these kinds of search warrants so that one day, black Americans will be able to sleep safely in their beds at night,”
