7 more MPD employees are under investigation

Davis grilled by council on Nichols’ beating case

A total of 13 Memphis police employees are or have been investigated in relation to the death of Tyre Nichols, city attorney Jennifer Sink said Tuesday.

The names of six of those officers, all of whom have been fired, have already been made public. The rest have ongoing internal investigations.

Information about administrative charges and personnel actions regarding the others will likely be available at the end of next week, Sink said, after they have received documentation of the charges and gone through a required hearing.

Sink’s comments came as members of the Memphis City Council grilled Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis on the brutal beating of Nichols by police officers and whether the department plans to make changes going forward.

The committee meeting held at City Hall came exactly one month after Nichols was beaten, Tased and pepper sprayed by officers after being pulled over for an alleged traffic violation. He died three days later, on Jan. 10.

In the meeting, council members questioned why the names of all officers present on the scene of Nichols’ beating had not been made public, why the Memphis Fire Department did not see video of the beating until two days before it was made public and how the police department plans to address “what went wrong on January 7.”

Regarding the ongoing internal investigation, Davis said they continue to conduct interviews to determine whether there were administrative violations in addition to violations by officers on the scene.

“The number has grown and it continues,” she said. “Everyone that made

the scene, even individuals who did not make the scene but also had some level of responsibility are also being evaluated.”

Five officers have now been fired and charged with second-degree murder. Their identities were not released until they were fired. A sixth officer had his identity released in late January, while on leave but before he was fired earlier this month.

Davis on Tuesday stressed the need to hire more supervisors for the police department, saying they have proposed the creation of 125 first-line supervisor positions, which would bring the ratio of supervisors to frontline officers from one-to-ten to one-to-eight or nine officers. The recommendation is one to-sixor one-to-seven, she said.

Asked whether the incident with Nichols was a failure of psychological evaluations or a failure of training, Davis said the officers had “exceptional training.”

“This is an issue of a lack of supervision. There should be a supervisor embedded in various numbers of officers. We realize we have a supervisor shortage,” she said. “This is a classic example of officers with a wolf pack mentality, ego and other issues that mushroomed into a very tragic situation that, as it’s been said, could have been avoided.”

Not only did the SCORPION Unit, in which the five officers charged with Nichols death worked, not have enough supervisors, but no MPD unit has an appropriate amount of supervisors, she said.

SCORPION, which stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, has since been disbanded. Its officers have been moved into other organized crime units such as the auto theft task force, Davis said.

“These are individuals who were not involved in this incident,” Davis said. “We have at least 30.”

Council Member Martavius Jones criticized Davis for not holding a news conference after Nichols’ death. Instead, she released a pre-filmed video late at night on Youtube. Choosing to release a video rather than a news conference allowing for questions “in a highly charged situation like this” showed a lack of transparency and did not help build public trust in MPD, Jones said.

Davis said changes have already been made in MPD under her watch, including that they stopped hiring people with “problematic backgrounds” under a waiver system and have implemented a “disciplinary matrix” that can elevate disciplinary action based on the number of violations.

Davis said she did not know how many disciplinary actions Memphis Police had issued in the past with regard to body camera usage or duty to intervene, although the data is tracked.

Two emergency medical technicians and a Memphis firefighter were also fired after the Memphis Fire Department concluded they failed to render aid to Nichols. Sink said the investigation is nearly complete and she doesn’t expect other officers to be charged.