The Death of Tyre Nichols Prompts Renewed Discussions Around Police Brutality in the U.S.

Hope Evans

Content warning: The article contains descriptions of police brutality.

In early January, a 29-year-old father was pulled over at a traffic stop and assaulted by five police officers. He died of his injuries in the hospital three days later. His attack and subsequent public outcry have refocused the spotlight on police brutality in the United States, especially in regard to issues of race.

On the evening of January 7, Tyre Nichols, a Black man, was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving in Memphis, Tennessee. Then “a confrontation occurred,” according to the statement posted to the Memphis Police Department’s Twitter account the next morning. Nichols ran from the police towards his home and then “another confrontation occurred.” The report says that “afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath,” and, later, that “the suspect was transported to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition.” He died of his injuries while in that hospital three days later.

Van Turner, the President of the Memphis NAACP— the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—said that “If you read that report, you would not think that Tyre is dead because of excessive force. It’s written in a way to be positive towards those law enforcement agents. . . . The report is disingenuous. It’s fabricated.” suspicions.

The city’s fire department released a statement of their own, saying that they received a call from the police to respond to a report of a person who had been pepper-sprayed and arrived to find Nichols handcuffed and slumped against a police car. The emergency responders arrived 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived and were present on the scene for half an hour before the ambulance left with Nichols for the hospital.

Then, on Friday, January 27, video footage of the attack from body-worn and mounted cameras was released to the public, showing five cops beating Nichols as he called for his mother while helpless on the pavement. For an hour, they punched, kicked, and pepper sprayed him.

The footage also shows the officers attempting to manipulate the narrative in real time. They would yell at Nichols to get down while the video showed him already pinned to the ground, or say that he was high or reaching for their guns, neither of which was shown on video. Turner says that this manipulation is not unique: “You’re seeing this more and more. They’re almost acting like the cameras didn’t catch what happens. . . . For this guy to say Tyre reached for his gun, but we didn’t see that, it is dumbfounding.”

Initially, the five officers who attacked Nichols—all Black men—were fired and charged with second-degree murder, among other charges. However, once the video footage came to light, more people were implicated in the crime. Not only was Nichols attacked by the five officers, but there were other officers and emergency responders present who did not intervene. Memphis Councilor Martavius Jones said, “When everybody saw the video, we see that you have multiple officers just standing around, when Mr. Nichols is in distress, that just paints a totally different picture.”

On January 30, the police department announced that two other officers had also been relieved of duty shortly after the event. Only one, Preston Hemphill—a White officer—was named. The initial five officers and Hemphill had all been part of the Scorpion unit, which targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas. The unit has now been disbanded.

The city’s police chief, Cerelyn Davis, was suspicious of the report as well. She doubted that the events were described truthfully, since the report seemed “a strange summary of what occurred at a traffic stop” and because it was submitted hours after the assault. She began to investigate the event based on her

Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, had suspicions that there were more people culpable even before the footage was released. “Questions were raised before the video was released,” he said, “I just felt there was more than five officers out there. Now, five were charged with murder because they were the main participants, but there were five or six other officers out there that didn’t do anything to render any aid. They are just as culpable as the officers who threw the blows.”

On the same day, the city’s fire department announced the dismissal of two emergency medical technicians—Robert Long and JaMicheal Sandridge— because they “failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment of Mr. Nichols,” according to a statement from the department. They also dismissed Lieutenant Michelle Whitaker. The same statement said that, for all three, “their actions or inactions on the scene that night do not meet the expectations of the Memphis Fire Department.”

Nichols’ funeral was held Wednesday, February 1. He was honoured as “a good person, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being” by Reverend J. Lawrence Turner. One of his friends, Angelina Paxton, remembered him by saying, “This man walked into a room, and everyone loved him.”

However, the funeral was not just a celebration of life. Both Reverend Al Sharpton and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris gave passionate speeches, calling upon Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would enact broad police reforms such as creating a national registry for police officers who were disciplined for misconduct and banning no-knock warrants.