What Does Accountability Look Like for Tyre Nichols and Other Police Brutality Victims?
Charging the killer cops and disbanding the street crime unit is a start, but it’s far from enough
On the night of January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols, 29, was driving home in Memphis, Tennessee. After being reported for driving “erratically,” he was stopped by two police cars at an intersection and forcibly removed from the car by police officers amidst verbal reprimands and abusive commands. Nichols, who is tall but thin, was confused by the violent actions of the officers throughout the process, and repeatedly said he was not sure what he had done wrong. In the process, several officers repeatedly tried to pin him face down to the road while trying to tie Nichols up; and when he refused to comply, the officers fired their tasers and pepper sprayed on him with little or no effort of Nichols fighting back.
Nichols struggled for a minute before breaking free of several officers and fled the scene, only to be stopped by several other police vehicles that arrived for reinforcement. Video from surveillance footage released by the Memphis city government and from the officers’ body cameras clearly showed that when Nichols was stopped a second time, five officers held the unarmed, already-beaten Black man down on the pavement nonstop, attacking and even kicking him with batons, pepper spray and tasers for a full three minutes, and constantly giving him conflicting orders such as to “get on the ground” and “sit up”. As Nichols continued to call for help, calling out his mother, and even began to show signs of unconsciousness, the five officers remained unmoved and continued to verbally and physically abuse him for disobeying their orders.
Eventually, Nichols had almost fully lost consciousness and the ability to resist, and the five officers succeeded in handcuffing him and forcing him to sit on the side of the police car, who at this time was already difficult to move on his own. At this point, the cameras recorded the five officers sharing the experience of their arrest, praising and bragging to each other about the violent actions, as if they were watching a UFC match. By this time a sixth police officer and two EMTs had also arrived on the scene, but they did not begin to check his physical condition until the 16th minute of their arrival. After complaining that he was having trouble breathing, Nichols was taken to the hospital, but it was too late; he quickly fell into a coma and passed away three days later. A preliminary autopsy revealed that Nichols died of excessive blood loss due to severe beatings.
Remembering Tyre Nichols and punishing killer cops
When friends and family recall Tyre Nichols, they refer to him as the loving father of a four-year-old; a fine amateur photographer; a young man who loved his work and his life; and a free-spirit who enjoyed skateboarding. No one would have expected his life to end so abruptly, amidst the celebrations of five murderous, callous police officers bragging about their brutality. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights movement activist leader who has presided over the funerals of Black men murdered by police on numerous occasions, said publicly before planning to participate in Nichols’ funeral that people would continue to travel to the mountaintop of Dr. Martin Luther King’s hoped-for dream in the name of Tyre Nichols, and that this public execution against him was “a disgrace to the whole nation.”
It is still painful to remember how often local officials and police departments would use bureaucracy and deception when it comes to releasing the true details of civilian killings, and this is especially true when the people they kill are non-white. More than 30 years after the brutal police beating of Rodney King and the ensuing riots in Los Angeles where the beating occurred, American society and its people still have not learned the hard lessons.
If the official statement released by the Minneapolis Police Department is to be believed, the true nature of the homicide of George Floyd in 2020, was never revealed. Since 2013, and culminating in 2020, the protest movement against the institutionalized, racially biased intentional murder of civilians by police has been raging, causing many police departments to reevaluate the unequal power they wield.
Perhaps because of this precedent, Memphis police and city politicians knew in their hearts that a cover-up would be counterproductive. Five days after Nichols’ death, the Memphis Police Department announced that the five officers involved in the arrest would face “administrative sanctions”. On January 20, they were fired. On January 24, all five former officers were taken into custody and charged with “second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, dereliction of duty, and official oppression.” In addition, the EMTs who arrived at the scene but refused to examine Nichols in a timely manner and another officer were relieved of their duties.
On Jan. 27, the city of Memphis, at the request of Nichols’ family and attorney, released uncensored footage from several police officers’ executive recorders and traffic cameras that clearly captured the violent police beating of Nichols. Before releasing the footage, city officials, including the district attorney general, police chief, mayor and state Bureau of Investigation director, all called the behavior in the video “appalling” and said they knew residents would be outraged and vocal in their displeasure after viewing it.
The potential blueprint forward
Government officials ranging from the officials of Memphis to President Joe Biden used every possible means to try to ease the anxious situation. While claiming that the perpetrators would be severely punished by the rule of law, they also discouraged protesters from rioting, saying it was the plea of the victim’s mother. Concerns about violent protests may be the reason the Memphis city government released these videos on Friday night, when most people don’t work.
Not just limited to Memphis, Nichols’ killing has sent shockwaves throughout America. Many people took to the streets with anger after the release of the video, chanting slogans like “jail killer cops” and “Black lives matter” and calling on society to remember Nichols’ name and what happened to him. The tactics of the Memphis city government and Biden’s appeal ultimately had the effect they wanted; with a few exceptions, the protests, which lasted all day and were held across the country, did not turn into violent confrontations like the Floyd protests.
As prosecutors continue to pursue responsibility for the killer, and as his family prepares to bury Nichols, we must continue to ponder the real and painful question: What measures can be considered truly effective and accountable in preventing similar tragedies from continuing in the future?
As we look back at how the entire incident has unfolded to date, we can see that the public’s dissatisfaction with the role the police system still plays in perpetuating violence in the United States has begun to deter them from acting with impunity. The five police officers involved in the violent arrests and beatings were promptly dismissed and charged with murder under the scrutiny of the public and the victims’ families, and the city did not delay or avoid releasing the videos of the killings. Nichols’ attorney Ben Crump, who also represented George Floyd, noted that the the speed and attitude with which the Memphis city government and police department chose to address this problem, could be considered a “blueprint going forward.”
Accountability means much deeper reckoning
The five officers involved in the assault were all Black males and members of the Memphis Police Department’s controversial SCORPION Unit. The SCORPION Unit, short for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods, serves as a battalion dedicated to violent crime and auto theft. Their members typically drive unmarked cars and wear plain clothes. The SCORPION Unit was formed in October 2021, at a time when the city of Memphis had experienced a record 346 homicides.
After the Democrats was negatively impacted by the election due to the Republican Party’s “anti-police, pro-violence” labeling, the call for police reform that had been sparked by Floyd’s death quickly faded from the government porches of major cities controlled by the Democratic Party, and Memphis was no exception. In his 2022 New Year’s speech, Memphis’ Democratic mayor, Jim Strickland, instead of pointing out that the rise in murders could come from other potential causes such as economic inequality and lack of equitable opportunity, claimed that a better way to address violent crime would be to provide more funding for police departments by providing them with record budget increases, which would include creating the SCORPION Unit.
Police budgets that have been significantly increased because of the increase in murders, have not made Memphis residents feel safer. 2021 had seen many experienced officers under pressure from protests against police brutality chose to leave and be replaced by relatively inexperienced new officers who have not received proper and adequate training. None of the five officers charged in Nichols’ killing had served on the force for more than five years, and four of them had faced disciplinary issues, including using violence to knock a woman to the ground during a traffic stop, driving a police car carrying a detainee with a loaded handgun stored in the back seat, using violence in the performance of police duties and refusing to be truthful in their reports, and speeding and crashing into The police have also been accused of dangerous behavior such as speeding and hitting two other vehicles, causing injuries to others.
Many major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, have police detachments like the Scorpion Unit, and justice reform activists say these units actually use fighting street crime as a legitimate name to harass, intimidate and even harm ordinary lives by stopping traffic, with victims who are disproportionately non-white.
The predominantly middle- and working-class Black neighborhood of Hickory Hill, where Nichols lives and was violently beaten by police on Jan. 7, has long had a low crime rate, yet has consistently been a priority patrol target for the Scorpion unit. Over the years, in line with national trends, Memphis’ overall crime rate has declined by about 25 percent. The spread and outbreak of the New Crown epidemic, on the other hand, has caused an increase in crime in 2020 and 2021, making Memphis one of the highest-crime metropolitan areas; this includes a high number of break-ins and auto thefts, in addition to murders. Despite this, in news interviews, Walnut Hill residents invariably said that the police have not taken any real and effective measures against these crimes, but have increased the harassment of ordinary residents such as stop-and-frisk.
In response to the public outcry, the city of Memphis announced on January 28 that the SCORPION Unit would be permanently disbanded. The repeated failures and violence of the use of plainclothes police officers, random pull overs and non-stop community patrols to punish street crime will become a core flaw of the U.S. police system more common questioning voice.
Federal police accountability legislations need to ensue as well
The disbanding of the Scorpion unit is an important part of the blueprint Crump has mentioned, but that alone will not quell public anger, much less prevent future tragedies. The U.S. government — both locally and federally — needs to take stronger measures to further reposition the duties and powers of police departments, and to ensure that they are not exempt from the law because of their positions.
At this time, Congress was again under pressure from the public and the media to pass a proposed federal law known as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The bill would limit “qualified immunity” policies, establish a national registry of ongoing disciplinary actions against police officers, prohibit on-duty chokeholds similar to those used in the killing of George Floyd, and restrict the execution of no-knock search warrants. The bill passed the House in the last Congress, when Democrats controlled both chambers, but failed to pass the Senate for fear of being blocked by a lengthy bill. After Nichols’ death sparked renewed discussion of the bill, Republican members of Congress once again began expressing their displeasure with the proposed reforms, claiming they would make little difference and would not have prevented the Nichols tragedy.
However, it is clear to anyone that the current established federal government policy of acquiescing to and condoning a variety of police actions in the enforcement of the law has perpetuated their impunity and continues to intimidate the members of the administration proposing the reforms. Many police officers in major cities have chosen to resign en masse in recent years, either as a threat or as a demonstration of their discontent with protests against police brutality. When crime rose in some major cities for a variety of complex social reasons, members of the conservative media, used the hype to claim that the Democratic Party’s so-called “anti-police attitude” was responsible for the rise in crime, forcing members of the Democratic Party to clear their names by increasing police budgets.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who both expressed a range of proposals for institutional police reform during the 2020 election, did not introduce any bills to limit police powers in the first two years after their election after being linked by the Republican Party to labels such as “pro-violence,” and Biden even made a point of emphasizing “funding the police” in his 2022 State of the Union address and received a full house of applause from members of Congress from both parties. But if this political attempt to find a comfort zone only continues with the promise of police and conservative members, these ameliorative measures will no longer be institutional reforms akin to the Civil Rights Act, but will instead be nailed to the pillar of history as a shameful chapter of history in the future, just like the Kansas-Nebraska Act that compromised on enslavement.
