Minneapolis High School Students Stage Sit-In Saying ‘We're Tired Of Being Hurt’
A group of Minneapolis high schoolers, fed up with the repeated police-involved killings of Black men in their city, are demanding real change.
CBS Minnesota reports that Minneapolis North Community High School students on Wednesday (Feb. 9) staged a sit-in at city hall in the aftermath of the botched police raid that ended in the fatal shooting of Amir Locke. They demanded an end to no-knock warrants and accountability for lives lost.
On Feb. 2, officers, using a key, entered the apartment where Locke, 22, was seen apparently sleeping on a couch in a graphic and brief body camera video. Locke was shot within 10 seconds of the encounter. Minneapolis Police Department Interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman later confirmed that Locke was not named in the warrant.
New revelations about the no-knock search warrant in Locke’s case reportedly show that the Minneapolis police insisted on using a pre-dawn unannounced raid in the joint operation with the St. Paul Police Department. Initially, St. Paul police requested a “knock and announce” warrant.
“We are the Blackest school in the state,” senior student Khadija Ba said. “Until they come down here, and they have a conversation with us as to why they won’t stop doing it, or why they won’t remove it, then it doesn’t really mean anything to me.”
Cashmere Grunau, a sophomore, said, “We’re tired of being hurt, we’re tired of being scared. We’re shaking inside because we’re scared. We shouldn’t be scared but it’s the reality you know,”
Minneapolis was ground zero for protests that spread worldwide after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered a handcuffed and faced-down Black man, George Floyd, during an arrest in May 2020. Videos of the now-convicted Chauvin show him pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck, igniting huge protests and a racial reckoning on police brutality targeting Black men.
While Chauvin was on trial, former suburban Minneapolis police officer Kim Potter fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop on April 11, 2021. In December, a jury convicted Potter on two counts of manslaughter for killing the 20-year-old Black man.
Locke’s death also sparked mass protests in the city. Demonstrators protested peacefully but sternly on Feb. 5 with thousands of them flooding downtown Minneapolis streets. On the next day, a car caravan went to what they believed was Huffman’s home near Lake of the Isles to bring their grievances directly to her doorstep.
The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, has imposed a moratorium on both requests for, and executions of, no-knock warrants following Locke’s death. Authorities planned to consult with experts involved in creating Breonna’s Law, which limits the use of surprise warrants in Kentucky. It’s named for Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT who was fatally shot in March 2020 by Louisville officers in a botched police raid on her home.
