Protesters protest a fatal police attack on Tire Nichols, outside the Coleman A. Young Civic Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023. – The US city of Memphis released graphic video footage on January 27, 2023 depicting a fatal police attack. of the 29-year-old Black man, as cities across the country braced for a night of protest against police brutality. Five Memphis officers, also all Black, were charged with second-degree murder in the beating of Tyrus Nichols, who died in a hospital on January 10, three days after being stopped on suspicion of reckless driving. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP) (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
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After officials in Memphis released graphic footage Friday depicting the death of Tire Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, at the hands of police, members of Congress said Sunday they must revive efforts to pass sweeping police reforms.
Five officers involved in the deadly encounter were charged with murder, kidnapping, assault and other charges on Thursday. All five officers were fired from the police department, and the special police unit they were part of was disbanded on Saturday.
Talks of police reform collapsed in Congress in 2021 after lawmakers failed to reach a bipartisan deal. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Sunday that while passing the reforms would be “the right starting point,” the end “is not enough.”
Durbin said that while he understands that law enforcement officers put their lives at risk for Americans every day, many of those same officers commit “horrible actions” that need to be changed for the better.
“What we’re seeing on the streets of Memphis is just inhumane, horrific,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “I do not know what made this anger in this police officer who would congratulate himself for beating the dead. But that is literally what happened.”
Durbin added that he would not rule out a federal investigation into the entire Memphis Police Department following Nichols’ death.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he thinks that while there are reforms that can happen, no amount of legislation can account for the “evil” and “lack of respect for human life” that he saw in the long run. He said he doesn’t believe the five officers constitute the majority of law enforcement.
“We’ll see what we can think of to help with this, to make sure they have the proper training, but no amount of training is going to change what we saw in the video,” Jordan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. .
Several policing reforms were already in place in Memphis at the time of Nichols’ death, including requirements for officers to deescalate situations when they see others using excessive force. Ben Crump, an attorney representing the Nichols family, said Sunday he thinks the culture of policing is to blame, because it has normalized the use of extreme force.
“Like the officer responsible for the death of Tire Nichols, so is the culture of implicit bias policing that exists in America,” Crump said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Crump said he thinks this culture will only change if federal police reform is implemented. Without them, he said, “We’ll continue to see these hashtags evolve.”
While reform and training can have an impact, other effective deterrents for this behavior when officers around the country see what will happen to them if they participate in this type of violence, said Jason Armstrong, former Ferguson, Missouri, police chief. Armstrong led the Ferguson police force after it was overhauled following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.
Armstrong said when the five officers were fired and charged, the officers saw that this behavior would not be tolerated. He said for some officers, it doesn’t matter if they wear body cameras or if there are witnesses, they will still carry out violence and a culture that needs to be eradicated.
“Unfortunately, violence is natural for these people in this case,” Armstrong told ABC’s “This Week”. “And that’s where we need to do a better job as law enforcement leaders, which is to identify these individuals that are within our organizations and our police departments and remove them from the profession before something like this happens.”