Thread by @samswey

Here are some facts about no-knock raids from the data that’s available. A thread. (1/x)

First, data on police raids is extremely limited. Nobody knows how many raids there are, no-knock or otherwise. Like other forms of police violence, there’s no national database. Surveys of police suggest 20,000-60,000 raids/year. But the data isn’t public and over a decade old.

From the data on *fatal* police raids we’ve gathered at mappingpoliceviolence.us, at least 106 civilians have been killed in police raids executing search warrants from 2013-22. At least 31 were no-knock raids. That’s an undercount - police don’t always disclose details publicly.

Who do police kill in these raids? Black people are 3-5x more likely than white people to be killed by police raids per population.

Black people are:
13% of Americans
28% of people killed by police
34% of people killed in police raids
42% of people killed in no-knock raids

There’s also data suggesting police can completely stop using no-knock warrants in a short amount of time. Milwaukee PD cut no-knock warrants by 98% since 2019. St Paul PD hasn’t obtained a no-knock warrant since 2016. No-knock warrants can and should be abolished, no exceptions.

But the data also shows that ending no-knock warrants isn’t enough. As many (or more) people are killed by police in raids that are *not* using no-knock warrants. Situations where police claim they knocked, announced, and then *still* killed someone.

The biggest reason police cite for doing these raids (no-knock or otherwise) is *drugs.* Drug raids were 71% of no-knock warrant killings and 47% of killings from other warrant executions. And prior research suggests most drug raids don’t even find any drugs.

So stopping drug raids is one idea. The Justice in Policing Act (tries to) limit no-knock warrants for drugs. But police can still get regular warrants for drugs, knock, announce and *then* do the raid. Police kill more people in drug raids with other warrants than no-knocks.

Drug decriminalization would more effectively stop all kinds of drug warrants and raids, which could make a difference. Drug possession has already been mostly decriminalized in Oregon, which is a start. But the solutions have to be bigger than just addressing drug raids…

Last year, Minnesota passed a law banning no-knock warrants for drug possession. But police murdered #AmirLocke claiming they were “investigating a homicide.” Minneapolis even had a policy saying there had to be an “imminent threat.” There was none. And police killed him anyway.

As long as these loopholes exist police will exploit them to keep raiding homes. They *might* knock, announce, and then break in and shoot. Either way, the system will continue to reproduce the same or similar outcomes until more fundamental changes are enacted.

The system of policing in Minneapolis kills Black people at 22x higher rate than white people. If not in a raid, then in another situation. It’s not a coincidence we keep seeing these murders in a city with the 3rd largest anti-Black disparity in fatal police violence in America.

If legislators don’t think more expansively and fundamentally uproot this system, the outcomes aren’t going to change and we’ll be right back here again. Proposed “bans” don’t even stop all raids, which are 1% of all police killings. Solutions must be at the scale of the problem.