Senseless

Horrific. Brutal. Senseless. Inhumane.

Those are just some of terms that apply to the savage and fatal police beating of amateur photographer and young father Tyre Nichols during an unjustified January traffic stop in Memphis, Tenn.

In a case that has drawn national attention, five police officers are facing murder charges for essentially beating Mr. Nichols so badly he succumbed to injuries, while others are being fired or relieved of duty.

What lessons can be learned from an awful situation in which officers who were supposed to serve and protect apparently turned into executioners?

One big lesson is that body cameras are essential because police officers lie. Before the circumstances were investigated, the Memphis department put out a phony statement blaming the victim.

It took the family paying for a private autopsy and the department’s internal review of the footage on the cameras that the officers wore to change the situation.

The same kind of official false narrative was issued in the George Floyd case in Minneapolis until a witness released her camera footage of the police killing on social media.

Police lies are all too common in Richmond, unfortunately, as defense attorneys can tell you.

Just this week, a case alleging that a man named Oliver Holley assaulted a police officer was dismissed when a prosecutor found that the body camera footage undermined city Police Officer Samuel Yoon’s sworn statement about the circumstances.

Another lesson is that elite units with free rein to go after criminals too often become a liability. Memphis, which will send officers to prison and wind up paying millions of dollars in compensation to the Nichols family, is just the latest example of the backfire that can happen.

The officers charged with murder in the Nichols case were members of the “elite” Scorpion Unit that new Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis created and unleashed in 2021 as homicides spiked in the city to 300.

She and other city officials turned a deaf ear to complaints about the unit’s harsh tactics while boasting of the felony and misdemeanor arrests the 40 hard-charging younger officers were generating. No one in authority cared who the unit tormented until Mr. Nichols died.

Memphis NAACP President Van D. Turner Jr. made an apt comment in the Nichols case: “We want crime addressed in our communities, but we don’t need to kill innocent people to do it.” Nor do we need police to create bogus charges to justify putting handcuffs on those who do not deserve it.

If police officers are serious about creating a trust bond with residents, then they need to be more involved in building relationships so people feel comfortable providing essential tips and information that ensure the right people are targeted.

Lessons in photo ops

The front page of the Free Press’ Jan. 26 edition shows Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his wife, First Lady Suzanne Youngkin, surrounded by adorable first-graders at Richmond’s Carver Elementary School.

For some Free Press readers, the image is striking compared to Gov. Youngkin’s words last October when national test scores revealed that Virginia’s fourth-grade students had fallen behind in reading. The Republican governor, who recently marked his first-year anniversary in office, largely dumped the blame for the dismal scores on former Virginia administrations led by Democrats. Gov. Youngkin also noted that lower proficiency standards brought on by Democratic leadership and virtual learning caused by COVID-19, further contributed to the “catastrophic” test results.

After reading the governor’s comments last fall, a Free Press editorial urged him to leave the Virginia Executive Mansion and visit classrooms to glean firsthand how bright many public schools students are and to see how hard their teachers work.

Yet, in seeing Gov. Youngkin’s photo in the Jan. 26 Free Press, a reader, also known as a state legislator, chastised us for giving the governor a platform for “photo ops” while ignoring his hardline stance on gun violence, public safety and equity measures, along with a litany of other issues facing the Commonwealth.

We do not agree, but we get it.

We also reminded the reader/legislator that the Free Press is fully aware and intentional in everything that we publish even though we sometimes fail to get everything correct and even though we sometimes miss salient issues in our reporting.

We further informed the legislator that our readers are astute and intelligent. We present the news and leave it to them to interpret it as they wish.

Or, to borrow a phrase from the late North Carolina A&T State University President Warmoth T. Gibbs, “We teach our students how to think, not what to think.”

In short, we strive to present Free Press opinions and perspectives in this space—our editorial pages. Readers are free to respond to any and all content published by the Free Press. We encourage our audiences to call or write us whether such communication is civil, polite or sprinkled with a few choice words.

February is Black History Month. At the end of the day, let us remember what volumes of discourse and research have taught us about Black-owned publications such as the Free Press.

“The Black press has always been a source of Black American political power, and even among the most commercial ventures, it is a defender of shared values and interests. The story of these institutions is one of ever-present challenges—to secure financial resources and to fend off public and private efforts to silence or control them.”

— Dr. Jane Rhodes, Black Studies scholar, University of Illinois, Chicago.

In remembrance

Happy Birthday

February 2, 1938 - June 3, 2014

Richmond Free Press

Founder - Publisher- Editor Your voice is silent, but the influence of your wisdom and pursuit of justice — with excellence — continues to challenge the Richmond Free Press and its readers to speak up and speak out for the voiceless, the powerless and the economically disenfranchised.

Richmond Free Press Team