Tyre Nichols: Memphis On Edge Ahead Of Video Release

Memphis authorities will release body camera footage Friday night of police beating Tire Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died three days after his January 7 arrest for an alleged traffic violation. City police chief warned Thursday that the footage will depict “heinous, wanton and inhumane” violence.

“I hope you will be outraged by the disregard for human rights, as police officers have sworn to do the opposite of what happened in the video,” Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said in a video statement.

He urged residents to remain calm following the video’s release, something Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy and activists have called for. On Thursday, President Joe Biden called for peaceful protests.

Davis and prominent civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump compared the video to the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police, which sparked mass protests and riots when the officers involved were acquitted.

In the Nichols case, five officers — Desmond Mills, Justin Smith, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Emmitt Martin — were identified for their involvement. They were fired from the department there.

On Thursday, the grand jury charged him with second-degree murder, two counts of official misconduct, one count of official oppression, one count of aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated kidnapping. The former cop was bound out of jail that day.

An independent autopsy commissioned by the family showed Nichols “suffered extensive bleeding caused by severe blows,” according to Crump and lawyer Antonio Romanucci, who represents the family. Nichols’ family and attorney viewed body camera footage of the beating earlier this week.

Davis said this morning that while police first said Nichols had been stopped for reckless driving, he now believes there is no evidence for the allegations.

The incident is a reminder that police in the city regularly use excessive force against Black residents, who make up 63% of the population. This isn’t the first traffic stop to turn violent or fatal in Memphis, and the study found that Black drivers stopped there at a disproportionate rate. Driving while Black in Memphis and the state of Tennessee has been costly, and at times deadly, for residents.

Moreover, emerging details suggest that the five officers were not random bad apples, but part of a controversial department. SCORPION unit. Nichols’ family and local activists have called for the unit to be broken up.

From 2017 to 2021, black drivers are twice as likely to receive multiple citations on a single ticket, according to a study conducted by criminal justice advocacy group Decarcerate Memphis.

Additionally, in a sample of 487 criminal court cases stemming from traffic stops in 2019 and 2021, about 90% of the defendants were found to be people of color, with the majority of them facing misdemeanor charges. Prosecutors later dropped two-thirds of the cases.

Decarcerate Memphis organizer Chelsea Glass said the group presented the information to the city council and public officials last year, but they were ignored.

Traffic jams have been fatal before. A city policeman pulled over Martavious Bank in 2018 for the alleged lack of car insurance. Police shot him 20 times; he survived and settle down lawsuit against the city in 2021.

Also in 2018, the police were pulled D’Mario Perkins because he said his vehicle’s license plate was not registered. Perkins told officers he was suicidal, but during the confrontation, he was shot 10 times. He died at the scene and the officers were never charged.

“In the case of Tire Nichols, it was the culmination of all the things that we’ve been warned about,” Glass told HuffPost.

Decarcerate Memphis analysis also found that the state suspended driver’s license mainly for unpaid traffic debts, and more than 93 percent of residents with non-reinstated licenses in the state were living in poverty. Revenue from traffic fines in Memphis increased from $10 million in 2009 to $13 million.

Last year, Tennessee passed a law on reckless driving that lawmakers claim will help prevent road rage incidents. The bill makes reckless driving a class A misdemeanor.

But Glass argues the law criminalizes Black drivers and gives police too much leeway to over-charge them for crimes while driving.

“There are a lot of scare tactics and fear campaigns going on around people who speed and drive recklessly,” Glass said.

The police launched it The SCORPION Unit in November 2021, uses an acronym that stands for Street Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood. It was designed to deal with violent crime, but developed into what critics saw as a rogue policing unit with a violent bias against Black Memphis residents.

When the unit was initially launched, it claimed to have taken 29 guns off the streets and arrested 30 people over a period of time. span three days. In three weeks from the beginning of the unit, it was created 338 arrestsincluding for 125 felony violations, and recovered 95 weapons.

On Thursday night, Crump and Romanucci wrote a letter comparing SCORPION to the widely criticized Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore and a similar roving unit in Chicago, where officers are involved in robberies and home invasions. He demanded that the city disband the unit.

In the case of SCORPION, officers operate unmarked cars that target specific areas, usually black neighborhoods.

The unit was seen targeting residents during traffic stops as recently as two months before Nichols’ arrest, according to court documents obtained by HuffPost.

In some cases, the unit is loaded up the cost which is then dropped. Back in October, all five officers were on the Nichols case when officers stopped a man named Jamarian Johnson because of the “bad smell” of marijuana coming from his car.

Officers said they found marijuana paraphernalia and a handgun in the vehicle and later accused Johnson of using the vehicle to transport drugs. Police charged Johnson with evading arrest; possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver; and unlawful possession of a weapon.

But on January 19, prosecutors dropped the case against Johnson. HuffPost reached out to MPD about the arrest but did not receive a response.

Others, Cornell McKinney, told local station WREG that unit was stopped on January 3, three days before Nichols pulled over.

Mckinney said he approached her in an unmarked car and that’s why she didn’t tell him to stop, although she later accused him of carrying drugs. He said his vest had “UNIT SCORPION MPD” written on the back.

When McKinney asked for a lawyer, he said an officer told him, “This is not a trial. This is not the time for a lawyer. The police eventually allowed McKinney to leave the scene without being charged, he said.