Police won’t be charged in shooting of Amir Locke during no-knock raid

The prosecutors also said they could find no criminal wrongdoing in the decision-making that led to Locke’s fatal shooting but strongly criticized the use of a no-knock warrant.

“Amir Locke’s life mattered,” Ellison and Freeman said in the statement. “He should be alive today, and his death is a tragedy.”

Locke, a 22-year-old Black man, was shot and killed Feb. 2 as members of the Minneapolis Police SWAT team executed a warrant related to a homicide investigation in neighboring St. Paul.

Body-camera video released by Minneapolis police in February shows Locke apparently waking up as SWAT officers burst into the apartment, his body wrapped in a comforter and a bright light in his face. As Locke shifts his body to sit up, a gun is seen in his hand.

Three gunshots are heard — all fired by Hanneman — before the video stops. According to prosecutors, Locke was shot in the face, chest and shoulder and suffered a graze wound to the wrist. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital. It was not clear from that initial video if his gun was pointed at officers or whether anyone ordered him to drop it before he was shot. The incident lasted less than 10 seconds.

Broken Doors: A six-part investigative podcast about how no-knock warrants are deployed in the American justice system

A 44-page investigative report released by Ellison and Freeman on Wednesday offered new details about the incident, including written statements by Hanneman and other officers at the scene that appear to contradict the publicly released body-camera footage of the fatal shooting.

Sgt. John Sysaath, a Minneapolis SWAT officer who was first to enter the apartment, claimed in a written statement to investigators that Locke was engaged in “evasive movements” and did not comply with “verbal commands” as the team executed its warrant. Sysaath said he saw Locke raise the barrel of his gun toward Hanneman and “believed that Mr. Locke intended to use the firearm to harm Officer Hanneman or the SWAT team.”

Sgt. Troy Carlson, another SWAT officer who was providing cover at the scene, said he told Locke to “show his hands” but the man retreated under the blanket and began “vigorously moving around.” Carlson initially thought there was a “physical struggle” before shots were fired, according to the report, but said the body-camera footage made public in the case had “altered his perception of how the events had occurred” and thought the sounds he heard were the “overall commotion” at the scene.

In his first public statement about the shooting, Hanneman said Locke fell onto the floor when another officer kicked the couch where the man was sleeping. In a written statement, Hanneman said he saw “the end of the blanket rise” with Locke crouching beneath it and holding a gun “pointed at me.”

“In this moment, I feared for my life and the lives of my teammates. I was convinced that the individual was going to fire their handgun, and that I would suffer great bodily harm or death,” Hanneman told investigators in a statement, according to the report. “I felt in this moment that if I did not use deadly force myself, I would likely be killed. There was no opportunity for me to reposition myself or retreat. There was no way for me to de-escalate this situation. The threat to my life and the lives of my teammates was imminent and terrifying.”

Hanneman’s statements contradict the scene recorded in the body-camera footage made public by Minneapolis police in February, but Ellison and Freeman said additional footage from the cameras worn by Hanneman and the other officers at the scene would be made public soon showing different perspectives.

A spokeswoman for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which investigates officer-involved shootings in the state and provided its findings to prosecutors in the Locke case, said the agency planned to release the entire case file in the Locke shooting — including the additional body-camera video. But it was not clear when the information would be made public.

At a news conference, Ellison and Freeman were pressed on whether the unreleased body-camera footage confirms Hanneman’s claims that Locke’s gun was pointed at him before he fired the fatal shots.

Their report, which cites footage from different body-worn cameras at the scene, said Locke’s gun initially appeared “parallel to the ground, then … appeared…