Beating raises scrutiny on `elite' police squads

A car with dark tinted windows circles the block a few times before swerving onto the sidewalk. A handful of armed plainclothes police officers jump out and order everyone out of a double-parked car so they can search it, striking terror in the seconds before red and blue lights flash or an officer yells “police.”

A similar scene plays out in dozens of cities across the country every day.

The beating and death of Tyre Nichols by five former Memphis police officers who were members of an anti-crime task force has renewed scrutiny on such squads, which frequently wear street clothes and often are involved in a disproportionate number of violent incidents and civilian complaints.

Memphis police officials — after initially defending the Scorpion unit — permanently disbanded the team Saturday just hours after the release of video that showed immediate and prolonged aggression from its officers.

Police department leaders across the country bill the specialty squads as “elite” units of officers sent into neighborhoods as a direct response to an increase in specific crimes, often arguing they are a tool to dedicate additional resources.

But policing reform advocates and people who live in the Black and brown neighborhoods that these units usually patrol often say the officers employ aggressive tactics sometimes bordering on brutality, have little oversight and use pretextual stops of cars and pedestrians alike to search for larger crimes.

“Obviously it's a complicated issue, and they are responding to a tangible problem being whatever crime of the day they are formed to address — guns, gang violence, narcotics. But Memphis is not an outlier here,” said Hans Menos, vice president of the Triage Response Team at the Center for Policing Equity.

“I don't see any other option we have as a country but to say this is not working. This is leading to pain, injury and death,” he added.

Menos, who led Philadelphia's Police Advisory Commission, the former civilian oversight arm of the police department, said the units often are judged only on results without questions about how those were gained.

Police leaders in several departments have argued that the high number of complaints and violent incidents in these squads are due to the exact work they are asked to do — interrupt patterns of dangerous crime often involving guns or drugs.