(CNN)A year after a 22-year-old Black man was shot dead by police serving a no-knock warrant, Amir Locke's parents on Friday sued the city of Minneapolis and the officer who fired the fatal shot in federal court.
"We all saw that horrific video where Amir Locke didn't even have a chance ... He was practically in slumber when the police did what they do so often with Black people -- they shoot first, and ask questions later," civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Friday in announcing the suit.
Court action over Locke's death comes on the heels of the deadly police beating in Memphis of a 29-year-old Black man, Tyre Nichols -- a case that swiftly yielded murder charges against five officers and renewed calls for policing reform nationwide. Prosecutors in Locke's case declined in April to file charges against any officers.
The Locke family lawsuit renews a spotlight on no-knock warrants, in which high-risk warrants are served at homes without giving occupants a chance to open the door. The practice -- also at issue in the botched 2020 police raid that left Breonna Taylor dead in Kentucky -- is inappropriate in almost all circumstances, leaders and advocates have said.
"This has got to stop," Locke's mom, Karen Wells, said Friday. "Amir will be the face of banning no-knock warrants. He will not die in vain."
The lawsuit asks the court to appoint a monitor to make sure that the city carries out a ban on no-knock warrants, as well as money damages for the Locke family.
Long before Locke's killing -- as the nation was reeling from another Minneapolis officer's murder of George Floyd -- the city in late 2020 announced it was changing its policy on no-knock warrants. But the option wasn't banned outright: Like most police department policies, the policy gives wide leeway to field supervisors to make decisions based on conditions and allows for no-knock warrants in certain situations.
