Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Nichols case: Intervention was duty
If officers hesitate, it might be a matter of policy versus culture
As five Memphis police officers attacked Tyre Nichols with their feet, fists and a baton, others milled around at the scene, even as the 29-year-old cried out in pain and then slumped limply against the side of a car.
Just like the attack on George Floyd in Minneapolis nearly three years ago, a simple intervention could have saved a life. Instead, Nichols is dead and the five officers are charged with second-degree murder and other crimes.
The Memphis and Minneapolis police departments are among many U.S. law enforcement agencies with “duty to intervene” policies. The Memphis protocol is clear: “Any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene.”
It’s not just a policy, it’s the law. The three Minneapolis officers who failed to step in and stop former officer Derek Chauvin from kneeling on Floyd’s neck as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe were all convicted of federal civil rights violations.
Experts agree peer pressure, and in some cases fear of retribution, is on the minds of officers who fail to stop colleagues from bad actions.
“They’re afraid of being ostracized,” said George Kirkham, a criminology professor emeritus at Florida State University and former police officer. “You’ve got to depend on those guys. It’s the thin blue line. When you get out there and get in a jam, you’ve got nobody else to help you but other cops.”
Nichols’ family, the Rev. Al Sharpton and attorney Ben Crump planned to gather Tuesday night at the historic Mason Temple in Memphis — where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated — to speak about the latest developments in the case.
Sharpton will also deliver the eulogy Wednesday at Nichols’ funeral.
On Tuesday, the White House said Vice President Kamala Harris received an invitation from Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, and plans to attend the service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis.
The Wellses have also accepted an invitation to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address next Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol.
More disciplinary action in the case may be coming now that the harrowing video of Nichols’ treatment has been released. Memphis police suspended two other officers Monday and say the department is still investigating what happened. The Memphis Fire Department also fired three emergency response workers who arrived on the scene for failing to assess Nichols’ condition.
Nichols was pulled over in a traffic stop the night of Jan. 7. Body camera video shows he was beaten as officers screamed profanities, even as Nichols seemed confused about what he supposedly did wrong. Amid the chaos, he ran and was eventually caught at another intersection, a short distance from his mother’s house.
Security camera images from that scene show two officers holding Nichols to the ground as a third appears to kick him in the head. Later, another officer strikes Nichols repeatedly with a baton as another officer holds him.
When it ends, Nichols is slumped against a car. It would be more than 20 minutes before medical attention was rendered, though three members of the fire department arrived on the scene with medical equipment within 10 minutes. Those workers, two medics and a lieutenant who was with them, were the personnel fired late Monday.
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a
Washington-based think tank, said duty-to-intervene policies became common after officers attacked and badly injured Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992.
“But having a policy and overcoming what many would argue is the culture in policing are two different things,” Wexler said. “It’s not enough to simply have a policy. You need to practice. You need to talk through it.”
Experts were also perplexed that no police department supervisors were present during the Memphis incident. Had there been, they said, the outcome might have been different.
“I was a supervisor for a long time, and you showing up on the scene even unannounced keeps people from doing, for lack of a better adjective, stupid things,” said former New York City Police Sgt. Joseph Giacalone, who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said the department has a supervisor shortage and called the lack of a supervisor at the incident “a major problem.”
University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist David Klinger said decisions on whether to intervene in a police colleague’s actions are not always cut and dried. He said one officer may see a weapon that is blocked from the view of another, for example, and stepping in at the wrong time could jeopardize the lives of officers at the scene.
“Training has to be precise about the sorts of circumstances that would warrant an intervention,” Klinger said.