Cops who don’t condemn excessive force shouldn’t be cops
The brutal beating a gang of Memphis police officers gave Tyre Nichols was revolting to watch, but it should be required viewing for every law enforcement officer.
I use the word gang because that’s what I saw in the video. Not a group of professional, conscientious, well-supervised police officers, but a gang of bullies wearing the Memphis Police Department uniform.
They may have been dressed as police, but to anyone with even a day of training on law enforcement tactics, the ruthless attack on Nichols was unrecognizable as a police use of force.
That’s probably the only good news to come out of this tragedy. The actions caught on camera were so egregious and so vile, virtually all of America has agreed the utter lack of humanity shown in that video is unacceptable. Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis and authorities in Shelby County should be commended for the swift actions they took in firing and indicting the officers who beat Nichols to death.
But the sad reality is that we’ve seen this gang mentality before. The March 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police was a vicious assault that was just as indefensible, although not fatal. The May 2020 murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer was heinous, shocking and, again, unrecognizable to those of us who know what appropriate use of force looks like.
I have no doubt all of these officers went through extensive use-of-force training. The brutality we saw in Memphis is not in any training manual. It’s not learned in a classroom. It’s absorbed through a rogue culture, which can fester in even the smallest units of an organization.
That’s why I believe these videos should be required viewing: To establish and reaffirm a culture at every level of every law-enforcement organization that says excessive force is unacceptable, and brutality will not be tolerated.
At VSO, we have seen use of force drop more than 60 percent, from 123 incidents in 2016 to 48 in 2022. Injuries to deputies and to offenders are down, and our rates of solving crimes and closing cases are up. It all ties together.
The day after the Memphis video was released, we had a Saturday morning career fair scheduled at the Volusia Sheriff ’s Office. On a screen at the front of the room, we played three videos: The Rodney King beating, the George Floyd murder, and the Tyre Nichols attack.
We put these words on the screen: If this is what you think law enforcement is about, you don’t belong here.
That’s the message that has to be driven home again and again, before an “elite” group like the Scorpion Unit in Memphis is allowed to create its own culture, where police adopt a pack mentality under which they can brutalize citizens with impunity.
Over the past several days, at shift briefings all across the Volusia Sheriff ’s Office, deputies and their sergeants have been watching that Memphis video and reaffirming their commitment to our use of force policy. It’s the very first policy in our manual, and it states unequivocally that excessive force will not be tolerated, and the sanctity of human life comes first.
This is one more reason I believe our VSO Training Academy, launched in 2021, is so important. When we bring new recruits into our academy, we shape them from day one. They are not just trained in tactics and the law, they are immersed in our culture. A culture where you arrest a person with the minimum force necessary to do the job, and every offender’s safety becomes your responsibility once in custody.
When we build that culture, the rogue actors will cease to exist. No one is perfect, nor is any organization. I can’t see into the hearts and minds of every person who puts on a badge. But at VSO, we have seen use of force drop more than 60 percent, from 123 incidents in 2016 to 48 in 2022. Injuries to deputies and to offenders are down, and our rates of solving crimes and closing cases are up. It all ties together.
As we recruit, hire and train the next generation of law enforcement officers, we have the opportunity to induct them into a culture that will never tolerate brutality toward a fellow human being. Because if that’s what you think law enforcement is about, you don’t belong here.
Mike Chitwood has been Volusia County sheriff since 2017. In 2015, as Daytona Beach police chief, he was one of the first U.S. law enforcement leaders to visit Glasgow, Scotland, and learn about pioneering de-escalation methods taught there. More than 100 U.S. law enforcement agencies have now adopted the techniques Chitwood brought back. This column was adapted from a social media post by Chitwood after the release of the Nichols video.