“I don’t have a gun. Don’t treat me like I am a threat,” Levy Armstrong said as she opened her jacket to police officers on site for the press conference. Passionately addressing Frey, Huffman and the police and reporters assembled at City Hall, Levy Armstrong called out the city’s leadership for Locke’s death and the lack of transparency surrounding the raid that killed him. “This is unacceptable,” she said as Frey and Huffman stood by. “When I agreed to work with you on the work[ing] group, we talked about the importance of transparency and accountability. And here, what we are seeing is business as usual.”

Citing her inability to sleep at night after the shooting, Levy Armstrong said, “We cannot sit here and whitewash this and pretend it’s ok.” Speaking to The Grio about her decision to interrupt the mayor and police chief, Levy Armstrong said that she “just became outraged and deeply upset” during the conference, adding that she “felt this was a cover-up in the way [it] was being articulated.”

As Blavity previously reported, 22-year-old Amir Locke was shot and killed by police last Wednesday after cops executed an early morning no-knock warrant on the apartment of Locke’s cousin, where Locke was sleeping. Locke was shot as he got up from bed, holding a gun he was licensed to carry. His death has inspired days of protest in Minneapolis, with many people comparing the shooting to the death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police executing a no-knock search warrant.

Levy Armstrong has been involved with the public discourse about Locke’s shooting since shortly after it happened. It was Levy Armstrong who went to social media to provide the public with information she had received from the Locke family. Levy Armstrong publicly identified Locke as the man who had been killed and noted that he was legally armed and that his name had not appeared on the search warrant that police executed.

On social media, many people applauded Levy Armstrong for jumping in during the press conference. One Twitter user wrote, “Thank you Nekima Levy Armstrong for interrupting this ‘press conference’ and speaking up on behalf of #AmirLocke.”

Others were more skeptical. The group Documenting MN criticized Levy Armstrong for her past work with the police department, even posting the hashtag #NekimaWorksWithCops

On Monday, Levy Armstrong appeared with a group comprised mainly of Black mothers and members of Locke’s family. Speaking for the group, Levy Armstrong expressed their calls for justice, including their demands for the firing of Mark Hanneman, the officer who shot Locke. She also called for Frey to fire Huffman, arguing that the interim police chief had “failed, miserably” and “continued to distort the truth” surrounding the shooting. Frey has placed a moratorium on most no-knock warrants but has not met demands to permanently ban the practice; the mayor is facing calls to resign.

Although Levy Armstrong was critical of Frey during her takeover of his press conference, telling the mayor that this is not what he was reelected to do, she has since indicated that she will continue working with Frey and his safety commission “for now.” As protests continue, new details of Locke’s shooting emerge and community-police relations remain strained in Minneapolis, Levy Armstrong and others have much more work ahead of them.