The tragedy in Memphis should never have happened. There is ZERO reason for five cops to go after a man and beat him senseless. ZERO.
The story is horrific. Tyre Nichols didn’t have to die. He really didn’t. Those cops threw all their training and law enforcement protocols out the window that night. And, in doing so, they killed a man and cast a blight upon law enforcement agencies around the country and the world.
The videos are incredibly tough to watch. The NY Post has details of all 66 minutes of this tragedy.
The detailing of the events is a tough read, as horrific as watching the video.
In the footage Nichols — who had no known police record — claims he “didn’t do anything,” but as the five black officers attempt to detain him, they fail to cuff him and he escapes, leading to a second altercation where they beat and taser him.
During the second altercation, which took place just 100 yards from his home, he yells “Mom!” as officers continue to shout commands and attempt to handcuff him.
As they beat him, Nichols, moaning in pain, says “alright” and appears to gives up as the police pin him on his stomach and cuff him.
Folks, it’s not that he was just beaten on a little bit, nor tased once. Tyre Nichols was beaten with fists, kicked more than once, beaten with a police baton multiple times, pepper sprayed, and tased by some or all of the five police officers involved.
What these Memphis police officers did was so beyond the pale, it’s unreal. It makes the George Floyd incident or the Rodney King beating look like chump change.
The Memphis police chief tried to prepare everyone for how bad it really was.
And she failed. All five cops, who thankfully have been fired, were members of the Scorpion unit.
Scorpion, with 40 officers, was designed to reduce violent crime as the city saw 346 homicides in 2021. In its first months, the group, its members often driving unmarked police cars, made hundreds of arrests, seized over 250 weapons and $100,000 in cash, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland reported at the time. Davis said that in total, the unit has arrested more than 2,000 violent felons and recovered 800 illegal guns as homicides and violent crime decreased in the city for the first time in four years.
In Strickland’s State of the City address in January 2022, the mayor touted the new program as a “crime suppression unit” that would focus on carjackings, homicides and robberies.
Given how these five members of the Scorpion unit behaved, every single encounter and arrest made prior to this incident needs to be reviewed with a fine tooth comb, and then reviewed again. I cannot help but think that this behavior by these five cops wasn’t something that happened out of the blue. Furthermore, if that unit was supposed to focus on things like carjackings and robberies, having five cops converge on a car for reckless driving?? Something doesn’t pass the smell test here regarding the Memphis police protocols.
No one tried to help him. No one. He was dying. He was literally dying. And no one tried to help him. No one.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) January 28, 2023
Yes, that is a true statement. Not one single office, nor even a MEDIC tried to help Tyre Nichols. Yes, you read that correctly, the medics did NOTHING.
Three minutes later, at 8:41 p.m., two medics arrived with gear and purple gloves. Nichols repeatedly slipped onto his side and officers and paramedics sat him back upright. After examining him, the two medics stood back and watched as Nichols fell over again, rolling on the ground and groaning for an extended period of time. An officer remarked that it will take an ambulance “a while” to arrive.
An ambulance came into view of a pole camera at 9:01 p.m. It’s unclear what time the ambulance departed the scene. Nichols was eventually taken to St. Francis Hospital, about six miles away, or a 15-minute drive, from where he was detained.
Do you know how long it took for the ambulance to arrive while the medics stood around with their thumbs up their ass?? TWENTY TWO minutes.
I don’t blame Tyre’s brother for this sentiment.
“You want my truth? … I hope they die,” Jamal Dupree told Fox 40 in Sacramento, California.
~Snip
Dupree said his family wants to see the five officers convicted.
“It doesn’t really mean nothing at this time until they’re actually found guilty for the actual charges. There’s a good chance they can walk free from this,” Dupree lamented.
Can you blame him? I cannot.
Five police officers attached to a task force that is supposed to stop crime. They are black. The victim is black. CNN says this is a racist thing because they’ve supposedly been driven to BE racist because of white people. What utter horseshit.
These are bad cops who did really bad shit, and a person died. Tyre Nichols didn’t deserve what happened to him. The Memphis Police Department needs to be fired and put under a microscope. Cretins stepped miles over the line and a young man’s life was cut short.
Tyre Nichols had a bright future and his photography shows the man he was.
His hopes, his dreams, his photography, and his words. “I hope to one day let people see what I see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work.”#TyreNichols photography through his eyes. #BlueBridge pic.twitter.com/NH4nZ8mmr3
— Derrick Jackson (@Derrick4Sheriff) January 27, 2023
#TyreNichols took this image and shared it as a masterpiece. #TyreeNichols photography through his eyes. #VolunteerBridge pic.twitter.com/4QWDBs6jt8
— Derrick Jackson (@Derrick4Sheriff) January 27, 2023
The city of Memphis is lessened because of the actions of rogue police officers. All the riots in the world won’t change that fact, nor will mea culpas bring back a man whose life was cut short.
Feature Photo Credit: Police officer and vehicle with lights via iStock, cropped and modified
Kevin says: I’m not going to watch the video. After having spent years working in child abuse, child welfare and the horrors inflicted on children, I don’t need to see this video. I won’t even watch the Paul Pelosi video of him being attacked. I greatly appreciated the blog posted the other day by Toni Williams. Any time someone is brutally attacked whether it be Steve Scalise being shot or Paul Pelosi being beaten … everyone should condemn that violence unequivocally without hesitation. No jokes, no “what ifs”, no “they deserved it” … NADA.
With that said, there’s a hundred things that need to change about policing in the USA, and one of the most important is the “protection” police officers receive primarily through union contracts. If I were involved in a crime (whether as a criminal or victim), I don’t get the luxury of having seven days, ten days or thirty days before I am interviewed by law enforcement to “give a statement.” I can say a million times over, “I want an attorney” but law enforcement isn’t going to give me a week to put together a statement. If there was anything “good” about this case and worked out well, the police did not have the luxury of falling back on a union contract that gave them immunity from disciplinary action until such time they “were ready” to give a statement. It was immediate.
I love the police. I wish the police would open up a “satellite office” on my street. I feel safer with a law enforcement presence. I truly believe 95% of police officers are good people; I’ve worked with hundreds of them and about 10 police chiefs over 20 years. Police unions need to figure out how to weed out the bad apples and do it quickly, judicially, fairly because the police suffer immensely from that old adage … One rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.
Nina Bookout says: Very interesting point about the unions. Something to be looked at for sure.
Also, training. I go back to training. I know in some instances, new hires didn’t get the training they should have because of Covid protocols.
Also, if these hires came from other agencies, did the Memphis PD waive off training on protocols and response because ‘they already know what to do?’ That’s a question the PD needs to answer.
Scott says: Good post Nina, you are spot on that this was totally uncalled for, and the cops should face the justice system. I do question why he ran from them, and running from police after being pulled over is something that never ends well, but that should mean getting tackled, or tazed, not beaten to death. He also does seem to be uncooperative from the beginning, and I’d like to see footage from the vehicles, to see if he did try to ram a police cruiser prior to the initial stop. .Again, I don’t for a second believe that Mr. Nichols deserved to die, and beating someone who is restrained and no longer poses a threat is NEVER acceptable. But it is disingenuous to say that his actions had no impact on the situation. It does seem that these cops, at the least, don’t have the temperament to be police officers, But I do hope that they get a fair trail, and a fair punishment for the crimes they’re convicted on. Just like all the other cases we’ve seen in the news, weather they involved police or not, these individuals deserve to be tried in a court of law, not the court of public opinion.
On the behavior of the medics, their care certainly appears to be substandard, though most of the bodycam footage has them out of frame, so you can’t see what they are or aren’t doing, but when it comes back around, they have not taken any steps to immobilize him in case of spinal injury, or any of the other things that you would expect given his medical presentation. A little research shows that Memphis Fire department is one that requires all firefighters to become paramedics. While this works great for numbers, it often results in a quantity over quality situation. Given this, I tend to believe that the medics acted incompetently, not maliciously. As to the time frame of 22 minutes for an ambulance, according to MFD website, they currently respond to just under 80% of ALS calls in under 9 minutes (we don’t yet know if this was coded as ALS (advanced life support) or BLS (basic life support), and the website doesn’t show stats for BLS calls, but most systems have lower goals for these). The department has 35 ambulances, which respond to, as of 2014, 110,000 EMS calls a year based on trends across the country, it’s fair to assume these numbers have increased significantly since then. given all this, it seems that while 22 min should be viewed as unacceptable for an ALS call, it’s likely that it’s not all that unusual in the city, especially for a call coded as BLS.
NTSoG says: ” I cannot help but think that this behavior by these five cops wasn’t something that happened out of the blue.”
it does raise a question in my mind: When 5 experienced officers resort to such violence ‘in company’ is it because it’s customary behaviour by them and they feel that they are comfortably inviolate knowing that they will support each other? Of course the cameras they carried showed the truth which demonstrates both their own stupidity and arrogance. A picture is worth a thousand words as was the case when the blind man was arrested for carrying his cane in Florida.
NTSOG says: Sorry I posted my response to Nina in the wrong spot – under Sott’s post. [I need to drink more coffee in the early mornings!]
NTSOG says: “He also does seem to be uncooperative from the beginning,… ”
The 61 year old blind man arrested in a few months ago Florida was also ‘uncooperative’ in that his assertive behaviour and statement of his Rights and knowledge of correct Police procedure clearly upset the two very petty police officers, but at least they didn’t beat him up. Being ‘uncooperative’ is not a crime. Physically resisting arrest might be. As for running away was Nichols literally [and reasonably scared for his life?
Scott says: All possibilities NTSOG, that’s why i said “I question why” there are numerous possibilities as to why he might of, and the ones you suggest are top among them. If we’re serious about preventing outcomes like this, we need to ensure that all possibilities are explored, and that the truth comes in all aspects of the incident. We can see on the videos what the cops believe / claim to have happened, the autopsy including tox screen will tell us more.
As for being uncooperative / resisting arrest, I agree completely that the first is not a crime, but the second likely is, though neither should lead to the kind of beating this guy received. I only meant to suggest that being cooperative tends to result in better outcomes, no matter the situation. As my mother used to say ( sadly it may be applicable in this situation, but when she said it to me, it was in relation to having the “right of way” as a pedestrian when I was a kid ).. she’d say “you may be right.. DEAD right”.. Far better to walk away from a situation where your rights were violated, then get a lawyer and win in court than an outcome like this.
Nash says: I can’t bring myself to watch the video. What a tragedy. It’s hard to imagine officers having received proper training in detainment and knowing that body cameras and citizen videos document their action, that at least one (if not all) of these officers didn’t de-escalate the situation….inexcusable. I don’t know the life history of these officers but on this night they were bad police officers abusing their power, breaking the law and killing someone. In an ideal world, every detainee would be polite and cooperative but in the real world, detainees are often disrespectful and resist. Properly trained police should be able to subdue a person without abusing/killing them. I don’t agree with CNN that this is rooted in racism. Data proves that bad officers will abuse detainees regardless of race. These events are about abuse of power, anger, impulse control and maturity. The actions of these officers tarnish the reputations of countless honorable officers trying to uphold the laws and protect communities, daily.
Scott says: Well said
Bob says: I watched the video and yes the victim says he’s cooperating but doesn’t actually cooperate as far as putting his hands behind his back. The officers are inept in that they taze him and punch him and yet he still gets up and runs away. And the media makes it sound like you’ll witness a murder on these videos. He died three days later. After complaining of shortness of breath and after being taken to the hospital. So it’s not clear what he actually died from yet. Not that it seems to matter anymore.
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