5 Memphis cops fired for death during traffic stop

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ASPartOfMe
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20 Jan 2023, 10:05 pm

5 Memphis police officers fired after traffic stop leads to hospitalization, death of Tyre Nichols

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Five Memphis police officers were fired Friday after the chief said they violated department policies during a traffic stop in Tennessee this month that ended with the hospitalization and death of a 29-year-old man.

An administrative investigation by the Memphis police found that the officers allegedly violated multiple policies, including use of excessive force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid in the Jan. 7 traffic stop of Tyre Nichols, police chief C.J. Davis said in a statement.

The officers were identified as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith. They were hired between 2017 and 2020.

Authorities have said officers stopped Nichols for reckless driving on Jan. 7. A "confrontation" followed, the department said at the time, and officers pursued Nichols when he fled on foot.

While trying to take Nichols into custody, there was another confrontation and Nichols complained of having shortness of breath, the department said.

Nichols died three days later.

Authorities have not provided details about the confrontation.

A photo provided by his stepfather showed a hospitalized Nichols with blood on his face and what appeared to be a swollen eye.

The case is also being reviewed by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, which announced earlier this week that it had opened a civil rights inquir


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21 Jan 2023, 1:52 am

Good. More of this needs to happen.


Just read an article about a guy that 7-8 VPD officers beat to death several years ago that’s still being investigated.

The guy was delivering flowers for a florist when he saw a woman watering her lawn when she wasn’t supposed to be (water conservation in summer) and called her out for it, she called the cops, cops came and beat him to death - so severely that the coroner couldn’t pinpoint cause of death, and w/o cause of death, so far no charges for the cops.

All 7 or 8 of those cops belong in jail for what they did. VPD have beaten and killed a lot of people w/o justification. They killed a guy a few months ago with beanbag rounds to the chest because he didn’t comply with their orders.. he couldn’t comply - he was the victim of being bear maced and was flailing about requiring assistance. He Couldn’t stop flailing on the ground and witnesses told police that. They blasted him anyways - being an Indigenous man in a rough part of town likely played a part, too.

All of our cops should be wearing body cams to keep them in line doing their jobs, not playing Judge Dredd.


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26 Jan 2023, 1:06 pm

Five fired Memphis police officers charged with murder in death of Tyre Nichols: "This was wrong. This was criminal"

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Five fired Memphis police officers were charged with second-degree murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, Tennessee authorities announced Thursday. Nichols died three days after a violent arrest by police earlier this month.

"This was wrong. This was criminal," Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said during a press conference announcing the charges.

A grand jury handed up indictments against Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith on charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said.

Mulroy said although the fired officers each played different roles in the death of Nichols, "they are all responsible."

Video footage of the arrest would be released Friday sometime after 6 p.m., Mulroy said. The footage has been shown to Nichols' family, but has not yet been made public.

Ben Crump, the attorney representing Nichols' family, said police video the family viewed showed that Nichols — a 29-year-old FedEx worker and father — was shocked, pepper-sprayed and restrained when he was pulled over for a traffic stop near his home.

Rausch said he saw the video and found it "absolutely appalling."

"Let me be clear: What happened here does not at all reflect proper policing," he said.

Memphis Police Director Cerelyn "CJ" Davis made a plea to residents of the city to protest peacefully when video of the arrest is released. She has called the fired officers' actions that night "heinous, reckless and inhumane."

"This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual," Davis said in a video statement that was released late Wednesday on social media.

The five officers found to be "directly responsible for the physical abuse of Mr. Nichols" were fired last week, but Davis said other officers are still being investigated for violating department policy. Nichols was Black, as are the five officers involved in the arrest.

Second-degree murder is a class A felony punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison under Tennessee law.

Nichols' stepfather, Rodney Wells, told the AP by phone that he and his wife RowVaughn Wells, who is Nichols' mother, discussed the second-degree murder charges and are "fine with it." They had pushed for first-degree murder charges.

"There's other charges, so I'm all right with that," he said.


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27 Jan 2023, 9:09 pm

What the Tyre Nichols beating video shows

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Bodycam footage of 29-year-old father Tyre Nichols calling for his mother after being beaten by police in Memphis has been released, and the city is braced for protests.

Mr Nichols died in hospital three days after being pulled over for alleged reckless driving, and struggling with five officers who have since lost their jobs and been charged with his murder.
Video of the arrest, taken from body cameras and a surveillance camera mounted to a pole, was released in four instalments made public on Friday evening.

The BBC is updating this article as we review the footage, which is graphically violent and full of expletives.

Only a small number of people had seen it before Friday evening, including Mr Nichols' family, their legal team and several officials.

Part one: Police bodycam footage shows traffic stop
The first video released shows the initial traffic stop that led to Mr Nichols' fatal encounter with police.

Within a minute of being pulled over, officers can be heard yelling profanities and threats, and ordering him out of his car.

"I didn't do anything!" he says.

The officers then force him to the ground as the 29-year-old protests his innocence. An officer can be heard threatening to break his arms as they instruct him to get on his stomach and lie flat.

A scuffle appears to ensue in which Mr Nichols breaks free of the officers and flees on foot.
The officers deploy pepper spray and at least one taser in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him.
He is not seen again in this first portion of the video. The rest of the footage shows officers using water to spray their eyes after being hit with pepper spray.

The officer wearing the body cam - who is white and does not appear to be one of the five facing charges - can be heard saying that he hopes his fellow officers "stomp" Nichols when they find him.


Part two: Footage from pole camera shows brutal beating
The officers catch up with Mr Nichols, who is quickly taken to the ground.

As two officers are working to restrain him, a third can be seen walking up to him and kicking him in the head twice.

Moments later, a fourth officer - it is unclear who - pulls out an expandable baton and strikes Mr Nichols several times. Officers also punch him several times.

He appears to be stumbling by this time and is offering no resistance.

At the five-minute mark, Mr Nichols is on the ground and appears to be writhing. By this point, officers are no longer striking him.

He is then taken to one of the unmarked police vehicles, where he is leaned against the door. Officers are shining their torches at him and it is unclear if he is still responsive.

Part three: Bodycam footage shows Mr Nichols cry out 'Mom'
This video, taken from a police-worn body camera, captured the same brutal encounter, but from a different angle, and contained audio.

About a minute into the video, two officers can be seen wrestling with Mr Nichols. The officer wearing the body cam threatens to spray him.

"Mom!" Mr Nichols calls out in distress.

Soon after, another scuffle ensues as the police call for Mr Nichols to "give them your hands".
The officer wearing the body cam walks away, apparently having been hit with pepper spray during the confrontation.

In the background, officers can still be heard yelling at Mr Nichols to give them his hands and lie flat.

The officer wearing the body cam returns and pulls out his expandable baton - which we also saw clearly in the second video from the pole cam. Using an expletive, he yells at Mr Nichols and makes clear he plans to strike him with the baton.

He strikes him several times, and another officer can be seen punching Mr Nichols in the face while his hands are restrained behind him.

The officer wearing the body cam calls in their location, and officers can be seen struggling with Mr Nichols as more police arrive. The officer can be heard telling another that Mr Nichols made him spray himself.

The other officer replies that he tazed him, using an expletive.

The video ends with the officer wearing the bodycam walking away and panting from exhaustion.

Part four: Bodycam footage shows Tyre Nichols bleeding
The fourth and final video is from the bodycam of another unnamed officer. It shows the same incident as the third video.

The footage begins with a brief chase that ends with the officers tackling Mr Nichols.
It appears that the bodycam becomes detached from the officer, as for the first few minutes nothing can be seen and we can only hear what sounds like a scuffle and conversation.

We again hear Mr Nichols calling out for his mother, and officers using expletives while ordering him to give them his hands.

At one point, the officers can be heard telling one another that they thought Mr Nichols was "on something" - seeming to indicate that they believed he had been using drugs. There is no known evidence that this was the case.

Once the officer's bodycam is back on, we get a clearer view of Mr Nichols as he is slumped against the unmarked police car.

He appears to be injured and blood is visible on his head. He does not speak. One officer pulls him up after he slumps to the side. He is variously seen sitting up, leaning on the car or slumped on the ground.

A significant portion of the video shows officers speaking to one another and recounting details of the incident. Some of the officers claim that Mr Nichols "swung" at them or reached for their guns. Neither allegation is supported by the released video.

Another officer later claims Mr Nichols swerved and almost struck his police vehicle. Officers can also be heard discussing the fact that nothing was found in in his car.

In total, we see about 10 people stand by, with no one offering to help Mr Nichols, who is in visible distress.


NBC News Live Updates
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Peaceful Memphis protesters close interstate
Hundreds of protesters have closed off the Interstate 55 bridge in both directions Friday night after the police body camera footage was released.

The protest was peaceful with demonstrators asking for the police to be held accountable and chanting: “Say his name, Tyre Nichols,” and “No justice, no peace.”

A protester named ST Court said he was pushing to defund the Memphis Police Department and to give officers more training.

“If there was more training, maybe Tyre wouldn’t have died,” Court said.

Others said the only way to bring about change was to make city leaders pay attention.

“I’m just supporting the movement of the people against corruption,” said Brian Iraheta, 29, of Memphis.

A demonstration organizer, Bezal Jupiter, came to Memphis from Atlanta as part of the Party of Socialism and Liberation.

“I’m tired of the oppression that we’ve seen against Black men in the South”, he said. “What we need right now is money in the community. What we need right now is the disbandment of murderous units like Scorpion. What we need right now is comprehensive overhaul of the system of policing in this country.”

Police make multiple arrests at NYC protest
Police in New York City have made at least three arrests at a protest near Times Square, a police captain told NBC News.

One arrest was for damage to a police car, a second was for punching a police officer, while the third was for an undisclosed reason, according to the official.

Police are also documenting any damage to other vehicles as protesters weave through cars. They also confiscated bikes from protesters who were trying to prevent arrests from being made.

Biden ‘outraged’ after watching ‘horrific’ video of Nichols beating
President Joe Biden on Friday night said he was “outraged and deeply pained” after watching videos of the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police.

In a statement shortly after the videos were released, Biden called the images “horrific.”

“It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day,” he said.

“The footage that was released this evening will leave people justifiably outraged,” Biden added, while urging those who seek justice “not to resort to violence or destruction.”


5 Black ex-officers beat Tyre Nichols. Black Memphis residents say it's heartbreaking and familiar.
Quote:
William Jones recalls that as a teenager in Memphis, Tennessee, Black police officers would break up pickup football games with friends when a white neighbor called to complain, often inflicting physical punishment in the process.

“And a lot of times, it was the Black officers who beat us worse than white officers,” Jones, 48, said.

So, when the images of five Black officers flashed on his television screen as the ones who allegedly beat Black motorist Tyre Nichols during a traffic stop on Jan. 7, Jones did not flinch.

“I was not surprised at all,” Jones, a high-security government worker, told NBC News. “Some of these officers get behind their badge, and they forget who they came from. They really believe in blue lives matter. Some of these Black officers are good guys that came from rough neighborhoods, too. But I have seen some of them take that power — lots of them — and misuse it. They didn’t come to my neighborhood and pull no cats out of trees. They came over when we were little boys, 13, 14 years old, and roughed us up. And for no reason.”

Jones and other Black Memphis residents have shared a range of reactions to seeing five Black faces as the alleged perpetrators of Nichols’ fatal beating with NBC News. Nichols, 29, died three days after the beating. Their reactions align with data about the city’s rate of police force used against Black people. According to a 2021 report on city data by TV station WREG, Black men were seven times more likely to experience police brutality than their white male peers.

“I can’t be surprised because it’s a predominantly Black part of town with Black officers patrolling,” said Barbara Johnson, 75, and a grandmother. “The relationship with Black people and the police is not very good. Black or white officers, it’s us against them. There’s this mistrust. Period.”

Brian Harris, 44, who is running for city council in the district where Nichols was killed, said the relationship between Memphis’ Black community and law enforcement is deteriorating, with this case a touchstone for even more discord.

“I’ve seen it shift over the years,” Harris said. “And that shift has come in part because policies have been relaxed as far as the officers we onboard. A couple of years ago, they dropped the 60 hours of college credit requirement down to just having a high school diploma, which changed the dynamics of those coming in. That was due to recruiting purposes.


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27 Jan 2023, 11:49 pm

I watched this at my cousin's place, on loop for probably four hours (they had a news channel on).

Terrible story, terrible loss, lovely parents, the whole thing raises a ton of questions about the training these men received (or extreme lack of it), whether they had other complaints against them, the availability of the Memphis PD to be able to get qualified officers, and this whole things gets stranger by the nature of this being some sort of elite crime squad when even two well trained police officers would have had him on his stomach, cuffed, and in the back of the car in a few minutes without broken bones let alone dying in the hospital. These guys either didn't know how to subdue someone with minimal force or didn't care, and there's a big open question too as to why they ripped him out of the car immediately rather than pulling him over, shining a really bright light on him, asking for license and registration, running it like a routine stop, asking him to get out of the car and walk a straight line if he seemed chemically impaired.... the normal things you'd do with disorderly driving.


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28 Jan 2023, 1:32 am

many police departments have a hard UPPER limit to the IQ of potential applicants, within one standard deviation on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) for adults, IOW <106. this must change NOW, it should be they only hire people smarter than this. my impression is, to paraphrase henry kissenger, "90% of (cops) give the other 10% a bad rep."



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28 Jan 2023, 10:49 am

Training won't help.

We live in a violent society with guns everywhere. We have a lot of bad people in our society. To face down those people, you need a bigger lion.

The job naturally attracts people who want to bully others, and to be honest if you were a pushover you would not do well as a cop in a city like Memphis, a city with a lot of violent crime.

I watched the video, and it was bad. Here is my quick summary:

1. Guy got pulled over for dubious reasons, and it wasn't a single cop car they sent like a team after him and pulled him out of his car.

2. Guy reacted all wrong from the beginning. Not blaming him, but he kept getting up, which made them think he was going to run... and he did and ran away.

3. They chased him down a street and thought no one was watching. The guy simply would not submit or comply. He kept fighting them - again not blaming him the cops should have handled it correctly.

4. When they finally get him, one cop kicks his face hard. Another cop shows up and pulls out a baton, they hold him up and he hits him in the head with the baton. Then they start punching him, but its not a lot of punches. They took their anger out on him, and thought no one was watching.

They didn't become aware that a neighbor had a camera, and was at the controls because initially the camera was pointed away but it turned towards. So, that neighbor is the reason this got them revealed. They seemed to see the camera was there later on.

There were multiple videos taken, and you have to watch them all to piece together what happened. Initially I missed where he got hit a lot and my first impression was, "how did he die?" but then I watched again.



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28 Jan 2023, 12:00 pm

The media seemed disappointed there was not a repeat of the nationwide conflagration that occurred after the George Floyd video.

There were a few skirmishes, some words and tension, some civil disobedience, nothing resembling the nationwide riots of 2020.

This is pretty much as I expected. The commonality between the two events was a release of a video of police murdering a black man, that was it.

In this case the government is both acting quickly and controlling the narrative. This video was released by authorities with advanced notice, the Floyd video was released by a civilian. These cops were fired and indicted quickly. It is now late January in the middle of winter, a mild winter but winter just the same, the Floyd video went viral at the end of May. I am not sure about this but the incendiary Trump is not President.

IMHO the two biggest factors are all the cops involved are also black and unlike Floyd this not happening after months of people locked down at home.

I suspect tonight will be somewhat more violent just on momentum but it will still be nothing like 2020. In 2020 a lot of the public especially the influential ones were outright agreeing with rioting or not condoning the riots but sympathetic to the rioters. Outside of hardcore leftists I don’t expect much sympathy for anybody rioting this go round. Even strong progressives who believe America has been systematically racist from the get go understand the damage done to their cause by the backlash to the riots and related things like “defund the police”.


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28 Jan 2023, 12:55 pm

stratozyck wrote:
Training won't help.

We live in a violent society with guns everywhere. We have a lot of bad people in our society. To face down those people, you need a bigger lion.


My only problem with this logic:

1) If someone is *actually* proficiently trained in submission, anything from ChinNa to BJJ, the better trained they are the more 'microtools' they have - ie. the more gradients before life or death struggle that they can manage and the lower the harm threshold that they can actually put a submission on someone and get them handcuffed, ankle-cuffed, etc.. The obvious caveat - if an assailant is waving a gun that's an escalation to bullets flying, there were no bullets flying in this case and it doesn't even appear that Tyre Nichols was armed thus 'guns on the streets' aren't directly relevant to this instance.

2) Having that level of training gives their supervising command even more pressure to say that punching / kicking an arrestee whose already down is inappropriate and penalties for doing so can be applied at a lower level of aggression.

What's most likely to go wrong with that is dirty supervising / command that rules by enforcement (overlooking outright violence committed by officers who are pulling an inside political line and penalizing those who aren't corrupt for the slightest infraction).

Now it's possible that these guys may have been quite well trained and just did whatever they did anyway, but you'd think that such training would show up in places where said training would tell them how to stay out of harms way and they'd just drop the part that tells them to put limits on how much they harm the assailant / arrestee. They seemed to neither show restraint on the arrestee nor pay much attention to their own safety.

The other part - about society being brutal and Hobbesian - this is why we make lethal force illegal for citizens and then appoint that to a body whose held to strict standards in implementing violence. It's really important for us to make sure that this part of civilization is working correctly much like it's a really big problem if education gets thoroughly corrupted, these are institutions we depend on for our society's going concern.


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28 Jan 2023, 1:18 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
IMHO the two biggest factors are all the cops involved are also black and unlike Floyd this not happening after months of people locked down at home.

The parents of Tyre Nichols also explicitly asked the protestors to stay peaceful and went as far as saying that it's what Tyre would have wanted. I'm not saying that they have much control of what happens after that but it's really hard for memetic fervor to break against the family's wishes without exposing itself a something quite separate.


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29 Jan 2023, 3:45 am

Clearly there is a systemic cultural problem in the police when you find black officers behaving like white officers dealing with black citizens.



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29 Jan 2023, 4:11 am

Memphis disbands police unit after fatal beating as protesters take to streets

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The specialized police unit that included the five Memphis officers charged with the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols was disbanded on Saturday as more protests took place in U.S. cities a day after harrowing video of the attack was released.

The police department said in a statement it was permanently deactivating the SCORPION unit after the police chief spoke with members of Nichols' family, community leaders and other officers. A police spokesperson confirmed all five officers were members of the unit.

Cities across the United States saw renewed nonviolent demonstrations on Saturday. In Memphis, protesters chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" angrily catcalled a police car that was monitoring the march, with several making obscene gestures. Some cheered loudly when they learned of the disbandment of SCORPION.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in New York's Washington Square Park before marching through Manhattan, as columns of police officers walked alongside them.

The SCORPION unit, short for the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in our Neighborhoods, was formed in October 2021 to concentrate on crime hot spots. Critics say such specialized teams can be prone to abusive tactics.

Friends and family say Nichols was an affable, talented skateboarder who grew up in Sacramento, California, and moved to Memphis before the coronavirus pandemic. The father of a 4-year-old child, Nichols worked at FedEx and had recently enrolled in a photography class.

Nate Spates Jr., 42, was part of a circle of friends, including Nichols, who met up at a Starbucks in the area.

"He liked what he liked, and he marched to the beat of his own drum," Spates said, remembering that Nichols would go to a park called Shelby Farms to watch the sunset when he wasn't working a late shift


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30 Jan 2023, 12:24 pm

Sixth Memphis Police officer involved in Tyre Nichols death relieved of duty

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A sixth Memphis Police officer involved in the arrest which led to the death of Tyre Nichols on Jan. 7 has been relieved of duty, a spokesperson for the department confirmed with ABC24 Monday.

According to Memphis Police, Officer Preston Hemphill has been relieved of duty during an ongoing investigation. Memphis Police told ABC24 Hemphill was relieved at the beginning of their internal investigation Jan. 8 into the circumstances which eventually led to Nichols' death.

Memphis Police said additional information would be available on their social media platforms once it became available.

Protesters had been calling for MPD and city officials to take additional action after the video of the 29-year-old's beating by five now-former Memphis Police officers was released on Friday.

Attorney Lee Gerald, representing Hemphill, released the following statement:

"I can confirm that I represent Memphis Police Officer Preston Hemphill who was the third officer at the initial stop of Mr. Nichols. Video One is his bodycam footage. As per departmental regulations Officer Hemphill activated his bodycam. He was never present at the second scene. He is cooperating with officials in this investigation."

Hemphill was shown on video during MPD's initial confrontation with Nichols, pulling him from his car forcefully while hitting him on the ground with a Taser, later stating, "I hope they stomp his a**" after Nichols escaped.

Memphis police said two confrontations occurred between Nichols and officers. After he was arrested, Nichols complained of shortness of breath and was taken to a hospital in critical condition. He died three days later.


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30 Jan 2023, 12:45 pm

Maybe we should disband all law enforcement, especially in the red states.


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30 Jan 2023, 1:55 pm

Something tells me that about as much is going to change in law enforcement after another in custody death as changes in American gun culture after another mass shooting of school children: Zero.

But never know, maybe over a long enough time horizon there will be positive change. Just def not expecting anything concrete any time soon.. history has taught me not to.


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30 Jan 2023, 3:46 pm

I can't watch things like this anymore. It hurts my mental health. I've never seen the whole the George Floyd video. I can't watch what is happening in Ukraine. I get too upset after I see suffering and injustice. I mute the TV whenever Donald Trump or his allies are talking.

I always vote for progressive policies but I know I can't do anything else about the U.S. craziness going on right now. I don't see any hope of a solution or even an improvement. Somebody must be making money off the suffering of innocent people. It makes me sick.

I think my autism makes me overly sensitive to violence and suffering. I'm trying to protect myself. I think it I'm better off for it.