Statement on Amir Locke killing

Written By Vinh Hua

Sông2Sea mourns the life cut far too short of Amir Locke, a 22-year-old young Black man who was murdered by Minneapolis police while he was sleeping on February 2, 2022. We are infuriated that no-knock warrants — one of which was used to kill Breonna Taylor less than two years ago in March 2020 — continue to be a tool for police departments across the U.S. to murder and inflict violence. 

No-knock warrants allow police to enter a home without notification. They are a product of the so-called “War on Drugs” — started in the 1970s under Nixon, and expanded by Reagan in the 1980s with the militarization of the police by giving surplus military equipment to police departments across the U.S. (This later became known as the 1033 program and officially authorized by Congress in 1997.)

No-knock warrants were used about 1,500 times in the early 1980s. In 2010, it’s estimated that  60,000 to 70,000 no-knock or quick-knock raids were conducted annually, most of them for charges related to marijuana. 

In 2008, police killed Tarika Wilson, a 26-year-old woman holding her 14-month-old child inside her house in Ohio. In Georgia, the police tossed a flash bang grenade in the playpen of a 19 month-old child, Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, in 2014.

That same year, the ACLU analyzed more than 800 SWAT deployments involving no-knock and quick-knock warrants, finding that: 62% were drug-related, of which they only found something 35% of the time. These raids affect Black people the most. An ACLU study of SWAT’s Deployments by Race (2011-2012) found that 39% of people impacted were Black, 20% white, 11% Latino, and 30% as “unknown.”

It is well documented that the “War on Drugs” is racist and anti-Black. Nixon’s advisor openly said that it was an intentional campaign to criminalize Black people and “the anti-war left.” 

“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? 

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. 

We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” – John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Richard Nixon

As a diaspora deeply impacted by the Nixon administration’s war policies in our homeland, we are in solidarity with the family, friends, and loved ones of Amir Locke. We are in solidarity with our Black community members and Black people in the U.S. at large who continue to suffer from racist militarized policing.

This is not the time to call for deescalation training, unconscious-bias training, or racial-sensitivity training, which individualizes a problem that is systemic in nature. This is the time to confront the root causes of these violent killings and suffering, which have gone on for way too long. 

To begin, we call on every state in the U.S. to immediately ban no-knock warrants, which have clearly demonstrated that these militarized raids lead to injuries, deaths, and trauma. We call on our friends, partners, and community members to learn more about the interlocking policing and military systems, starting with End All No Knocks, End the 1033 Program, and race, mass incarceration, and the disastrous results of the war on drugs. 

If you are able, we encourage you to make a contribution to the Amir Locke Memorial Fund. For our community members residing in the Puget Sound area, we have compiled a mental health resource list here which we invite you to access and tend to intense emotions as they arise, which you can access at bit.ly/PugetSoundBIPOCMentalHealthResources. This page has tips on addressing and mitigating mild mental health concerns at home.

We send prayers and deep condolences to Amir Locke’s family during this time of grief and mourning. In Vietnamese culture, thắp nhang (lighting incense) is a way to pray to the souls of the departed. In that spirit, we offer an incense — chúng tôi xin thắp nhang— for you, Amir. 

Sources:

Vinh Hua
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