Footage raises questions about encounter, other officers at scene
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The nation and the city of Memphis struggled to come to grips Saturday with video showing police pummeling Tyre Nichols — footage that left many unanswered questions about the traffic stop involving the Black motorist and about other law enforcement officers who stood by as he lay motionless on the pavement.
The five disgraced Memphis Police Department officers, who are also Black, have been fired and charged with second-degree murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death three days after the arrest. The video released Friday renewed questions about how fatal encounters with law enforcement continue even after repeated calls for change.
The recording shows police savagely beating Nichols, a 29year-old FedEx worker, for three minutes while screaming profanities at him in an assault that the Nichols family legal team has likened to the infamous 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King. Nichols calls out for his mother before his limp body is propped against a squad car and the officers exchange fistbumps.
Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis has said that other officers are under investigation, and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said two deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated.
Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, said the family would “continue to seek justice,” noting that several other officers failed to render aid, making them “just as culpable as the officers who threw the blows.”
Cities nationwide had braced for demonstrations, with some downtown Memphis businesses boarding up windows and schools canceling after-school activities. But the protests were scattered and nonviolent.
Several dozen demonstrators in Memphis blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that carries traffic over the Mississippi River toward Arkansas. Semi-trucks were backed up for a distance.
“I cried,” said protester Christopher Taylor, a Memphis native who said the officers appeared to be laughing as they stood around after the beating.
Demonstrators at times blocked traffic while chanting slogans and marching through the streets of New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. In Washington, protesters gathered across the street from the White House and near Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Blake Ballin, the lawyer for fired officer Desmond Mills, said in a statement Saturday that while the videos “have produced as many questions as they have answers,” the question of whether the city would stay peaceful
“has been answered.”
The arrest was made by the socalled Scorpion unit, which has three teams of about 30 street officers who target violent offenders in areas beset by high crime, Davis said.
The Memphis police chief on Saturday disbanded the unit, saying she listened to Nichols’ relatives, community leaders and uninvolved officers in making the decision.
“It is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the Scorpion unit,” she said in a statement. She said the officers currently assigned to the unit “agree unreservedly” with the step.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the unit has been inactive since the Jan. 7 arrest and that the city was “initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units.”
Questions swirled around what led to the traffic stop in the first place. One officer can be heard saying that Nichols wouldn’t stop and then swerved as though he intended to hit the officer’s car.
“We tried to get him to stop,” the officer sad. “He didn’t stop.”
But Davis said the department cannot substantiate the reason for the stop.
“We don’t know what happened,” she said, adding, “All we know is the amount of force that was applied in this situation was over the top.”
After the first officer roughly pulls Nichols out of a car, Nichols can be heard saying, “I didn’t do anything,” as a group of officers begins to wrestle him to the ground.
One officer is heard yelling, “Tase him! Tase him!”
Nichols calmly says, “OK, I’m on the ground.”
“You guys are really doing a lot right now,” Nichols says. “I’m just trying to go home.”
“Stop, I’m not doing anything!” he yells moments later.
Nichols then can be seen running as an officer fires a Taser at him. His mother’s home, where he lived, was only a few houses away from the scene of the beating, and his family said he was trying to get there. The officers then start chasing Nichols.
Other officers are called, and a search ensues before Nichols is caught at another intersection. The officers beat him with a baton,
and kick and punch him.
“I’m going to baton the f- - - out you,” one officer can be heard saying. His body camera shows him raise his baton while at least one other officer holds Nichols. The officer strikes Nichols on the back with the baton three times in a row.
The other officers then appear to hoist Nichols to his feet.
An officer then punches him in the face, as the officer with the baton continues to menace him. Nichols stumbles and turns, still held up by two officers. The officer who punched him then walks around to Nichols’ front and punches him four more times. Then Nichols collapses.
Two officers then can be seen atop Nichols on the ground, with a third nearby, for about 40 seconds. Three more officers then run up, and one can be seen kicking Nichols on the ground.
As Nichols is slumped against a car, not one officer renders aid.
It takes more than 20 minutes after Nichols is beaten and on the pavement before any sort of medical attention is provided, even though two fire department officers arrived on the scene with medical equipment within 10 minutes.
During the wait for an ambulance, officers joked.
During a speech Saturday in Harlem, the Rev. Al Sharpton said the beating was particularly egregious because the officers were Black, too.
“Your Blackness will not stop us from fighting you. These five cops not only disgraced their names, they disgraced our race,” Sharpton said.
Court records showed that all five former officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — were taken into custody.
Second-degree murder is punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison under Tennessee law.