Investigating the January 7 incident of Tyre Nichols in Memphis: A case study of a teen-turned-police officer
John Kennedy, the Republican from Louisiana, in one of the more unusual television advertisements of this year’s midterm election campaigns accuses Democrats of wanting to defund police departments.
That was not the unusual part. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states, Republicans have painted Democrats as hostile to the police and as cheerleaders for rioting and mayhem. And even though the data on crime is mixed, the tactic seems to be working for the G.O.P. in many races.
As protesters gathered across US cities over the weekend following the Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, officials have said the investigation into the incident will continue amid questions over whether there could be additional charges.
On January 7, officers pulled a 29-year-old African American man from his car during a traffic stop, and forced him to the ground, yelling threats, and spraying him with pepper spray. Memphis Police Chief, Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, has not been able to corroborate claims that he was driving recklessly when he was stopped.
As the investigation continues, Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump said he thinks there will be additional fallout, but “whether that’s going to lead to criminal charges, we have to see.”
Steve Mulroy, the district attorney in Tennessee, said he can’t say whether there will be additional charges brought, but he said “nothing we did last Thursday regarding indictments precludes us from bringing other charges later.”
The Memphis officer killed in the attack on a 17-year-old narcophobic man with a stolen epsilon
On Friday they released the footage of the incident, allowing local politicians, activists and the family of the officer to make pleas for calm.
It is difficult to watch the video. It starts with a traffic stop and shows officers repeatedly beating Nichols with batons and punching him while he is restrained behind his back.
An ambulance was called to the scene after Nichols complained of shortness of breath, according to police. He was taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation stated that the man died from injuries sustained in the use-of- force incident with officers.
“All of these officers failed their oath,” Crump told CNN on Sunday. “They failed their oath to protect and serve. Look at that video: Was anybody trying to protect and serve Tyre Nichols?”
Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video capturing the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.
The Memphis police department is working hard on the aftermath of the shooting of a teen, Nichols, in the 16th anniversary of his death
Nichols’ family, now at the center of unfamiliar media attention, remembered him as a good son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets. They remembered his smile and hugs and mourned the time they won’t have again.
The Memphis police department must be proactive in the healing process of all those who have been hurt by the actions of a few. The Memphis Police Department remains committed to serving our community and taking every measure possible to rebuild trust that has been negatively affected by the death of Mr.
“That reprehensible conduct we saw in that video, we think this was part of the culture of the SCORPION unit,” Crump said. “So we demanded that they disbanded immediately before we see anything like this happen again.”
The mayor is correct in shutting it down. These kinds of actions are not representative of the Memphis Police Department according to Colvett.
The city law enforcement officials were praised for their quick investigation and transparency, compared to other US cities, in the weeks after the brutalized man by Memphis police.
“We saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.
All of the officers were charged with murder and kidnapping on Thursday, despite mounting public pressure to release footage of the incident.
The attorney for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., put out a statement Friday night saying that he didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation. The attorney, Blake Ballin, told CNN Mills was a “victim” of the system he worked within.”
Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.
Ben Crump said on CNN that if the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act isn’t passed, then shame on us.
Congressional Black Caucus Resolution to the Tennessee Black Hole Obituary: The Memphis Chief of Police Reform and the Tennessee State Assembly
The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting a meeting with President Joe Biden this week to push for negotiations on police reform, caucus chair Steven Horsford wrote in a news release Sunday.
Gloria Sweet-Love, the Tennessee State Conference NAACP President applauded Memphis Police Chief Davis for “doing the right thing,” by not waiting six months to a year to fire the officers who beat up Tyre Nichols.
She said that Congress should write another Black mans obituary because they failed to pass bills to stop police brutality. The blood of Black America is on you. Stand up and do something.
On the state level, two Democratic state lawmakers in Tennessee said Saturday that they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the Tennessee general assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline. Rep. G.A. Hardaway said the bills would address mental health care for law enforcement officers and other topics.
Representative Joe Towns Jr. said that this legislation should be passed on both sides of the legislature because it is not partisan.
The Memphis Police Officers “Possible” for Oasis of Disobedience: The Case of Tyre Nichols
“You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something. If a dog was beaten like that in this county, what would happen? The people said Towns.
Experts say the actions of the Memphis police officers were an egregious example of a longstanding problem in policing in which officers physically punish civilians for perceived disrespect or disobedience — sometimes called “contempt of cop.” The practice was notoriously prevalent decades ago.
While it wasn’t as big as it was in the 90s and 2000s, it was more prevalent in the 1980s when Alpert was a police officer. The cops were getting more professional before the body cam era, and they wouldn’t make it personal. This is so far outside of the norm.
Police training requires a single officer at the scene to issue clear and specific commands to reduce the chance of confusion. Police officers have to respond proportionately to any perceived act of defiance.
The footage does not show a sign of the officers stopping the aggressive use of force. It shows that the opposite is true.
What Did the Justice in Policing Act Tell Us About Black People? The Case Against the Failure of the George Floyd Law Enforcement Reform Act and How It Will Fail in 2020
Editor’s Note: Sonia Pruitt is a retired Montgomery County, Maryland, police captain. She is the founder of The Black Police Experience, which promotes the education of the intersection of law enforcement and the Black community. She teaches at Montgomery College in Maryland, and at Howard University in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion.
I had 28 years of experience as a former police officer and captain, and it was clear to me that the officers lacked proper supervision, showed little professional maturity and caused a deathtrap by their gross disregard for human life.
The damage is even more traumatic for the Black community, given that the five officers who were charged with murder, are all Black. Black people believe that Black officers should be their main point of contact.
The current stance of the association is not normal. It was not defending the arrested officers or saying that they were doing a difficult job that required them to make split-second decisions, although we have come to expect responses from police unions that protect officers from accountability.
Efforts to push for police reform in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020 have been largely replaced with calls to address the fear of rising crime, partially through hiring more police officers. Last year, President Joe Biden proposed funding for 100,000 new police officers as part of his Safer America Plan and the 2023 omnibus appropriations bill includes $324 million in funding to hire more police officers.
However, I know from experience that crime prevention is achieved through trusting relationships between the police and the community it serves, rather than feeding a broken system more police officers. There can be no trust when there is over-policing of disadvantaged communities with suppression units such as the SCORPION unit, which were formed to protect communities – not terrorize them. (On Saturday, the Memphis Police Department announced it will permanently disband its SCORPION unit.)
Here’s what you need to know about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, why it failed, and what chances it stands in the current political climate.
States and local jurisdictions have tried to tackle police misconduct through new policies and legislation. Law enforcement has conducted training time and again and revised policy over and over, and yet we still have too many unnecessary deaths at the batons, feet, hands, fists, and guns of police.
The article was modified to reflect that the writer has 28 years of experience in law enforcement, not just as a captain.
Reconciling the failed laws that criminalize racial and religious profiling by law enforcement in the US and what they can do to protect them
President Joe Biden referenced the failed legislation in his statement about Nichols on Friday, and many leaders – from the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.
The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.
It would outlaw racial and religious profiling by law enforcement in the US and it would repeal qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields law enforcement from accountability.
The legislation would mandate that “deadly force be used only as a last resort” and save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, according to the fact sheet.
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina spent some six months trying to hash out a deal that could win 60 votes in the Senate, but talks were stymied by a number of complicated issues.
“It was clear at this negotiating table, in this moment, we were not making progress,” Booker told reporters in the spring of 2021. We were actually moving away from it after recent back-and-forth with paper. The negotiations we were in stopped. The work will continue.
On the second anniversary of Floyd’s death, Biden signed a limited executive order to change the way policing is done. It took several actions that can be applied to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.
The president cannot force the local law enforcement to adopt the measures in his order and the federal government can use grant and technical assistance to get them on board.
In the last year, Senate Democrats were able to pick up one more seat in order to pad their majority, but they are far shy of the 60 votes that would be needed for such an effort. The kind of measures that protests are calling for will likely be lost if the policing reform can find meaningful support in Congress.
State officials have been initiating investigations into local police departments, recognizing that the federal government can’t take on every case nationwide.
The five former officers were indicted on murder and kidnapping charges. One day later, officials released police body camera and street surveillance footage of the deadly encounter after a January 7 traffic stop.
Memphis, Alabama, is a New Era of Accountability: A New Example of the Law Enforcement after a Shooting by a Black Man
“They’ve learned from them and it shows in their response,” said Johnson, who helped restore order in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed Black man.
A year ago, the Memphis law enforcement would not have seen some of the things they are seeing today.
The swift filing of charges and the release of video contrasts with previous instances of deadly police violence, such as the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2015, and the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky, police in 2020.
Still, law enforcement and legal analysts are now pointing to Memphis’ actions as a new example of how to maintain trust in the community after fatal police encounters.
According to CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson, there is a new era of accountability because of police body cameras and cell phone video that capture violence by officers. “The more we have these instances that are caught on camera, the more public is outraged, the more there is demand for accountability.”
The preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for Nichols’ family said he suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” family attorney Benjamin Crump said this week.
Chief Davis promised action after noting the seriousness of the officers conduct during the stop. The department was “serving notice to the officers involved,” she said.
In a statement the department said that officers were terminated for failing in their excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid.
The police department learned something from other high-profile cases when the district attorneys did not act quickly, according to a legal affairs commentator.
“They did the right thing in this case by convening a grand jury, investigating the case quickly, and then charging these officers, bringing them into custody.”
In a news conference Friday, he compared Memphis to other cities that have waited a long time for a brutality case to be solved.
CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers said the swiftness of the charges reminded him of the case involving the April 2015 death of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot in the back after officers pulled him over for a broken brake light in South Carolina.
Two months after the shooting, a murder charge was filed against the former North Charleston police officer. The former officer’s 2016 state murder trial ended in a mistrial but Slager pleaded guilty to violation of civil rights by acting under the color of law in Scott’s killing. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/us/memphis-police-tyre-nichols-case/index.html
The Memphis Police Tyre Nichols Case: More than 100 Years of Law Enforcement, and the New York Police have Planned a Protest
It is important to not take a high tension event and add something that will increase tension on a Friday night. John Miller said that they have the whole weekend ahead of them.
The delay allowed authorities to show that the wheels of justice are turning quickly, Miller said. The additional time gave officials the ability to talk with the faith community and to call for calm from the family and their lawyers.
Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Nashville and New York are just three of the departments that say they have already planned for a protest.
“We’ve watched so many of these cases over the last several years,” Martin said. When law enforcement comes forward and provides information to the community, there is usually a peaceful response.
Protesters in Memphis took to I 55 on friday night after videos were uploaded online blocking the bridge that connects the western Tennessee city to Arkansas. There were no arrests.
Paramedics arrived minutes after the officers left, but Nichols looked like he was left multiple times on the pavement without assistance.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/us/memphis-police-tyre-nichols-case/index.html
What the Memphis Police Department Did to Immediately After the Biden’s Detection of a Black-Born-Black-Mixon Collision
The experts were shocked by the footage. President Joe Biden said that it was a reminder of the profound fear and trauma that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day.
The video of the fatal encounter has left many questions about what the Memphis Police Department did to prevent it, according to a retired sergeant.
“All of this was preventable,” she told CNN Saturday. You have officers who are young on the job who are not taught how to do things on their own. This was not anything that they aren’t accustomed to doing.”
The chairman of the Memphis City Council became emotional after watching the video, telling CNN that there is much more that needs to be done.