The documents show that the Memphis officer took photos of the bloodied Nichols
A Mississippi man killed in the act of robbery in Memphis, Alabama: The Memphis Police Association apologizes to the families of Mr. Nichols
The investigation into the incident that led to the death of a man in Memphis will continue as protests took place across the US over the weekend.
The Memphis Police Association issued a condolence statement for the family of Mr. Nichols after his death. The Memphis Police Association is committed to the administration of justice and NEVER condones the mistreatment of ANY citizen nor ANY abuse of power.”
As the investigation continues, Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump said he thinks there will be additional fallout, but “whether that’s going to lead to criminal charges, we have to see.”
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said he can’t comment on whether there might be additional charges brought, but “nothing we did last Thursday regarding indictments precludes us from bringing other charges later.”
Officials knew releasing the video without charges for the officers could be “incendiary,” Mulroy said. He said the best solution was to take the time to investigate and consider charges so that charges could be brought before the video was released.
Video of the encounter is difficult to watch. A video that began with a traffic stop shows the officers beating the driver with batons and punching him, while his hands are restrained behind his back.
Memphis police stopped and questioned Nichols for’reckless driving’ and then he died three days later. After two confrontations with officers the 29-year-old fled the scene and was taken into custody.
The Memphis Police Department said that Haley and the other officers were not fit to work and asked that they be decertified.
Memphis Police Disbanded During a Demonstration in May, 2013: The City of Memphis Will Not Forget to Shut It Down
The demonstrators walked through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, among other cities to raise awareness of abuses of authority.
Nichols’ family, now at the center of unfamiliar media attention, remembered him as a good son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets. They recalled his smile and hugs and mourned the moments they’ll never have again.
Memphis police said that all five officers were in the SCORPION unit. On Saturday, Karen Rudolph told CNN. The unit put officers into areas where the police were looking for increased violent crime.
“That reprehensible conduct we saw in that video, we think this was part of the culture of the SCORPION unit,” Crump said. “So we demanded that they disbanded immediately before we see anything like this happen again.”
The mayor is correct in shutting it down. These kinds of actions are not representative of the Memphis Police Department,” Colvett said.
Memphis City Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas also commended the move and said the case should give the city a chance to “dig deeper” into community and police relations.
Easter-Thomas thinks that a sense of protest in the city of Memphis might be due to hope that the system will be right this time.
How Did Nichols Succeed in Traffic Stops? A Black Caucus Calls for Congress to Pass a Measure to Stop Police Inhumanity
Two people were killed and five others were indicted for felony charges of kidnapping, official oppression and second-degree murder.
Mills Jr.’s attorney, Blake Ballin, told CNN the videos “produced as many questions as they have answers,” specifically regarding his client’s involvement during the fatal encounter, adding that Mills arrived later than other officers and that his vision was impaired by the pepper spray used during the traffic stop.
Other first responders have been fired or suspended in the weeks since Nichols’ death. The police department announced that a sixth officer had been fired and a seventh relieved of duty, while the fire department fired two EMTs and a lieutenant after an internal review. A number of police officers could end up being disciplined.
He urged congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which had been twice approved in the House but was not passed in the Senate.
The Congressional Black Caucus is asking the president to meet with them this week to push for negotiations on police reform, caucus chairman Steven Horsford wrote in a news release.
Gloria Sweet-Love was the Tennessee State Conference NAACP President and applauded Memphis Police Chief Davis for doing the right thing in not waiting a year to fire the officer who beat up the teen.
She had no response for Congress, who she called to action for failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality. Black America’s blood is on your hands. Stand up and do something.
The Memphis Dog Shooting: What Happens When a Dog is Bounded by a Memphis Police Officer and What Will They Do About It?
A pair of Democratic state lawmakers said Saturday that they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.
The legislation should be passed on both sides of the legislature because it is not partisan, according to Rep. Joe Towns Jr.
It is difficult to see what happened to that young man in the footage, but you would want to do something about it. If a dog were beaten like that in this county, what would happen? The people said Towns.
Two days after footage of the beating by Memphis police was made public, the official response is already under way.
Protesters continued to take to the streets in Memphis and other areas to express their outrage over the incident and to protest against the police treatment of Black people.
Attorneys hope other cities will take similar action in the near future with their saturation police units to create greater trust in their communities. “We must keep in mind that this is just the next step on this journey for justice and accountability, as clearly this misconduct is not restricted to these specialty units. It goes on for so much more.
The Tennessee Black Police Experience: How the Federal Policing Reform Project After George Floyd’s Death Lately Missed a Chance to Save His Life
House Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons, Rep. G.A. Hardaway and Rep. Joe Towns, Jr., announced their plan during a press conference on Saturday.
Some of the issues the bills aim to address include implicit bias training, mental health evaluations for police officers, limits on officers transferring departments after facing discipline or being fired, and a reevaluation of low-level traffic stops.
Republicans hold a sizable majority in the Tennessee General Assembly, but the Democrats said they were confident they could get bipartisan support because of the magnitude of the incident, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported.
“If we don’t have federal police reform, we’re going to see more and more of these hashtag being used to spread misinformation and false accusations,” said Crump in an interview on This Week.
The federal policing bill that bears George Floyd’s name failed to pass in the Senate and efforts to end qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that protects police officers from being held personally liable for violating a person’s rights, have not succeeded in Congress.
The police captain in Montgomery County is a retired woman. She is the founder of The Black Police Experience, which promotes the education of the intersection of law enforcement and the Black community. She is also a professor of criminal justice at Howard University in Washington, DC, and at Montgomery College in Maryland. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion.
Based on my 28 years of experience as a former police officer and captain, it was clear to me that the officers lacked supervision, showed little professional maturity and escalated a situation into what would eventually become a deadly encounter through gross negligence and a complete disregard for human life.
The damage is even more traumatic for the Black community, given that the five officers who were charged with murder, are all Black. The members of the Black community expect the police to be their eyes and ears.
The association has an unusual stance. It did not defend the arrested officers or say that they were just doing a tough job that required them to make split-second decisions, which many police unions do to shield their officers from accountability.
Efforts to push for police reform in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020 have been largely replaced with calls to address the fear of rising crime, partially through hiring more police officers. President Joe Biden proposed funding for 100,000 new police officers as part of his Safer American Plan and the omnibus appropriations bill included $324 million in funding to hire more police officers.
Some have praised Chief Cerelyn Davis for her quick action in the case, but she was also responsible for creating the SCORPION police unit that was used to hold the charged officers.
States and local jurisdictions have tried to tackle police misconduct through new policies and legislation. Law enforcement has conducted training time and again and revised policy over and over, and yet we still have too many unnecessary deaths at the batons, feet, hands, fists, and guns of police.
The writer has 28 years of law enforcement experience and not just as a captain as reflected in the article.
The five former police officers accused in the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man pulled from his car during a traffic stop last month and then brutally beaten, pleaded not guilty today during their first court appearance in Memphis.
“If we look at some past incidents in our country, there’s been some mistakes made,” said Ron Johnson, a former Missouri State Highway Patrol captain, referring to the handling of previous cases of police brutality. I think a lot of things have been done right.
A year ago we wouldn’t have seen what we’re seeing today, according to Johnson.
The police initially said there was no forced entry in Taylor’s case. But officers had used a battering ram to enter her home before shooting her. Floyd appeared to be suffering medical distress, Minneapolis police initially said. But video showed Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
The video that was released in January is relevant to the initial stop and beating of the man, according to Steven Mulroy, who is the prosecutor for the county.
Still, law enforcement and legal analysts are now pointing to Memphis’ actions as a new example of how to maintain trust in the community after fatal police encounters.
Body camera footage of the brutal incident, released late last month, cast a spotlight on the city’s law enforcement practices and renewed calls for police reform nationwide.
Memphis as a Good Example of How to Handle High-profile Police Violation Cases: Scott vs. Slager, indictment, and discipline
The preliminary results of an autopsy were commissioned by the family and showed that he suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.
Chief Davis vowed immediate and appropriate action after noting that the officers conduct during the stop was serious. The department was “serving notice to the officers involved,” she said.
Sink said February 7 that seven officers – beyond the six who’d been fired at the time – were facing disciplinary action for policy violations. The discipline decisions are covered in Tuesday’s announcement.
“The police department obviously learned something from … other high-profile cases when district attorneys were not transparent, when they did not act quickly,” said Areva Martin, an attorney and legal affairs commentator.
They did the right thing by charging these officers and bringing them into custody after a grand jury investigated the case.
In a news conference Friday, he said that Memphis was a good example of how to handle police brutality cases because it had swift criminal charges.
CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers said the swiftness of the charges reminded him of the case involving the April 2015 death of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot in the back after officers pulled him over for a broken brake light in South Carolina.
Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager was arrested days after the shooting and indicted on a murder charge two months later. The officer who was accused of murdering Scott pleaded guilty to violating civil rights by acting as if he were guilty of a crime. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
The Memphis tragedy unfolds: The aftermath of the tragic shooting of Nichols and the people who love it, but are afraid of their time
“The last thing you want to do is take a high tension event and then add that thing that’s going to increase tension … on a Friday night knowing that people don’t have to be at work in the morning and they have the whole weekend ahead of them,” said CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller.
But, Miller said, the delay allowed authorities to show the public “the wheels of justice are turning and turning relatively quickly.” The additional time also allowed officials to “unite the faith community in Memphis, the voice of the family and the family’s lawyers, and the key community contacts” in calling for calm.
Police departments throughout the country, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Nashville, and New York, said they were either monitoring events or already had plans in place for protests.
Over the past few years, we have watched many of these cases. “And when (law enforcement authorities) come forward and when they’re transparent and they provide information to the community, we typically see a very peaceful response.”
Mostly peaceful protesters in Memphis took to Interstate 55 Friday night after the videos went online, blocking both lanes of the highway’s bridge connecting the western Tennessee city to Arkansas. There were no arrests.
Pole-camera video released Friday shows that after the EMTs arrived and before the ambulance arrived, first responders repeatedly walked away from Nichols, with Nichols intermittently falling onto his side.
The footage stunned hardened law enforcement experts. President Joe Biden was one of the officials who expressed outrage, saying it was another painful reminder that Black and Brown Americans are tired every day.
Cheryl Dorsey, a retired sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department, said the footage of Nichols’ fatal encounter has left many unanswered questions about what Memphis PD did to prevent the tragedy.
She told CNN Saturday that all of this was preventable. There are officers who are on the job who are not allowed to take their time doing what they do. This was not anything that they aren’t accustomed to doing.”
The City Council Chairman of Memphis grew emotional as he told CNN that despite the positive change in the treatment of brutality cases there is much more that needs to be done.
“You become so used to watching police violence in the city of Memphis,” said L.J. Abraham, an organizer with the Tennessee-based Equity Alliance. “But I don’t think any of us ever expected to see someone as gentle and kind and nonviolent as Tyre be pulled out of his car and beaten to death. It could happen to anybody if that happened to him.
We’ve got to fight the bad players in our community and now we have to fight our own police officers. That is deplorable,” Robinson said. We are going to have to do something.
The council chair told CNN that the unit wouldn’t be dissolved without giving the officers new training.
A Humane and Responsible Approach to Investigation of a Memphis Officer Killed and Injured in the Decay of Tyre Nichols
US Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, called for Congress to revive national police reform legislation and said the previously stalled legislation was a good starting point.
“It’s the right starting point, and Sen. (Cory) Booker, chairman of the crime subcommittee, has been working on this for years. I think he and Sen. (Tim) Scott should sit down again quickly to see if we can revive that effort, but that in and of itself is not enough. He said that we need a national conversation about policing in a humane and responsible way.
The 29-year-old was a father and also the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. His mother said that he spent his Sundays doing laundry and getting ready for the week.
The mother of Nichols created a GoFundMe that raised over a million dollars by the Sunday afternoon. Wells and her husband need money for mental health services as well as time off from their jobs, according to the page. It states they want to build a skate park in honor of Tyre, who loved skating and sunsets.
The officers, paramedics and those who filed paperwork on scene are being looked at by the district attorney.
Prosecutors moved “extraordinarily quick” with charges against the five officers “primarily responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols,” the district attorney said.
Outside the courtroom after the hearing, an assistant district attorney said that Memphis and the world need to see that what’s right is done in the case. Everyone who did something criminal will be brought to justice in this case.
Warren said that it was necessary to check where the police department was weak, what happened with their procedures, and what happened with their oversight.
An intense public conversation about how police officers treat Black residents has taken place as a result of the firing of another officer and the removal of a seventh.
Memphis police said in a news release that they were looking at the actions and inactions of Officer Preston Hemphill.
That body-cam video does not show Hemphill at the second site, where the county’s district attorney has said Nichols was beaten and suffered his serious injuries.
Tyre Nichols and his Family in Memphis, Tennessee During the August 26 Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Is Still Going Strong
The fire personnel terminated over their response to the encounter are emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge and fire Lt. Michelle Whitaker, the fire department said Monday.
The lieutenant stayed in the fire truck while the fired EMTs did not conduct a primary examination of the patient for the first 19 minutes.
Attorneys for the two fired police officers commented on CNN. Martin’s attorney, William Massey, said “no one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.”
“Some of the questions that remain will require a focus on Desmond Mills’ individual actions,” and “on whether Desmond’s actions crossed the lines that were crossed by other officers during this incident,” Ballin said.
The attorney told CNN on Monday that they failed him by failing him by excessive force, severely beating him, not intervening, and not rendering aid.
The attorney said Nichols’ family still is trying to absorb the breadth of this multi-agency investigation, while also dealing with the loss of their loved one.
The Nichols family is expected to hold a press conference Tuesday night at Memphis’ Mason Temple Church of God in Christ headquarters, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous last speech the day before he was assassinated in that city, according to a press release from their attorney Ben Crump.
In the days since Tennessee officials released video footage of Memphis police officers brutally beating Tyre Nichols, law enforcement has faced a new wave of criticism.
“To the extent that you’re trying to build police- community relations, by putting out statements that are signalling one thing, and then the video footage releases later on shows completely the opposite, that’s problematic”, said Ms. Headley.
The Minneapolis Police Department said a police officer responded to a forgery and arrested a suspect in handcuffs on May 25, 2020
The Minneapolis Police Department said officers responded to a forgery and arrested a suspect on May 25, 2020. The officers were able to get the suspect in handcuffs and he appeared to be suffering from a medical condition. They called for an ambulance.
George Floyd was the man captured on video and he begged, “I can’t breathe!” while Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd died that day.
When the New York Police Department disclosed Eric Garner’s death in 2014, a police spokesperson said a man was “being placed in custody, went into cardiac arrest and died,” according to a New York Daily News article at the time.
In 2018, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office first said that 23-year-old Dujuan Armstrong died of a drug overdose inside the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, Calif. But as the Guardian reported, body-camera footage released later showed that officers put Armstrong in a restraining jacket and a spit mask before he became unresponsive. An autopsy found that Armstrong died of asphyxiation due to the restraints.
For example, John Elder was the Minneapolis Police Department’s public information director in 2020 and wrote the initial statement about Floyd’s death. He told the Los Angeles Times that he got his information from sergeants and computer-aided dispatch, and that he hadn’t seen any video footage of the encounter before writing the press release.
“This had literally zero intent to deceive or be dishonest or disingenuous. Elder told the newspaper that the statement would have been different, if he had known about the situation on the video.
“But I think really where the conflict comes in is when there are discrepancies in the report or in the statements that are put out that don’t match the evidence when it comes out. She said that the language used was particularly one that tries to abdicate responsibility.
She said she worked with a agency that brought in community leaders for an explanation of an incident before discussing it with the media. Departments can also acknowledge if they are still looking into what happened, she said, including if they haven’t reviewed any video evidence yet.
The two discipline cases about the use of force focused on whether the officers filed the required reports about the incidents and did not appear to examine if the officers’ used of force was warranted.
A Memphis Police Officer’s View of a Domestic Violence Violation involving a Stop Sign in 2021 and a Missing Report by Martin
In August 2021, Haley crashed into a stop sign while responding to a call about an aggravated assault and was given a traffic ticket. Haley told the hearing that as he was going to the scene, a call came over the radio that one of the responding officers had a gun and was holding a suspect at arm’s length.
The violation was dismissed because the hearing officer said that Officer Haley took full ownership for the accident and was very humble during the hearing.
Mills graduated with a degree in criminal justice from West Virginia State University in 2013 and began at the Memphis Police Department in March 2017.
In March 2019, Mills violated procedure when he dropped his personal digital assistant (PDA) into the street while entering his squad car. The device was then run over by a separate car.
It was Mills’ first violation and he was reprimanded for it, according to department records.
Later that month, Mills failed to file a response to resistance form when he used physical force to take a woman down to the ground so she could be handcuffed and arrested. Mills was reprimanded once more and said he didn’t realize his actions necessitated use of the form.
A loaded handgun was found in the rear passenger side of the squad car used by Martin and his partner. Martin said he only looked the car from the outside and failed to do a proper pre- and post-shift inspection. During the time that he worked that day, he and his partner conducted two traffic stops, in which the suspects were put in the backseats after the gun was found. After the suspects left the vehicle, the officers did not inspect it. Martin was issued a three-day suspension without pay, according to the files.
In September 2020, Martin violated protocol by mishandling a domestic abuse complaint between two sisters, one of whose husband requested a report. Martin did not think it was necessary to take the report because the man’s wife didn’t want it and the parties were drunk. The responding officers, including Martin, threatened the involved parties that if they had to take a report, both sisters would be arrested, according to department records.
“Memphis Police Officers are directed by department policy and state law to make a complete report on the scene of Domestic abuse calls,” the hearing officer wrote. The officer cannot base their decision to arrest on a victim’s willingness to cooperate with the prosecution, or on the victim’s consent.
“Officer Martin is respectful when dealing with others regardless of their sex, race, age, or rank,” the evaluation stated. He approaches his calls with a positive attitude and is well received by the public. He is continually a top leader in arrests and calls, and not one person he has arrested has complained.”
Smith began at the department in March 2018. He crashed into a third vehicle in January 2021, causing it to spin out and crash with two people inside. All parties were sent to the hospital in non-critical condition.
Smith said the driver of the second vehicle went right and then left into his lane suddenly. He admitted to speeding, but said his memory was somewhat unclear due to his minor head injury from the airbag, according to a summary from the disciplinary hearing.
New footage of the Memphis officer’s killing of a 29-year-old Black man and the ongoing investigation of alleged homicides
Additional footage relating to the deadly Memphis police beating of a 29-year-old Black man – up to 20 hours of it – has yet to be released, a prosecutor said Wednesday as his office contemplates whether to file more charges in the case.
Mulroy wouldn’t give more details about what could be heard on the video, but he did say that it would be up to the city of Memphis and Memphis police.
Mulroy said last week the footage showed where the initial stop and beating took place and where the second location took place. The other footage could be crucial in the investigation.
“The incident report that has gone public does not match up on all fours with what one sees when one looks at the video that’s already been released,” Mulroy said Wednesday.
Such comments are an indication that this is the latest example of the arrest of a Black person in which the version of events given by authorities does not match up with video or witness accounts. Other instances – such as the deadly encounters involving George Floyd, Ronald Greene and Walter Scott – have led to charges filed against law enforcement officers.
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Rev. Al Sharpton and families of other Black people killed in police encounters came together for Nichols’ funeral, celebrating his life and making renwed calls for police reform.
A radio talk show host in Memphis posted a photo of a report on the police department’s website. The account of the police report was reported by The New York Times.
A Beautiful Son, a Beautiful Person: The G.F. Sharpton Justice in Policing Act – Is That a Good Idea?
Mulroy has asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to expedite its investigation, and all involved in the encounter are being scrutinized as prosecutors consider additional charges, he has said.
The mother of a man remembered as “a beautiful person” echoed others’ calls for the passage of a bill.
The legislation was twice approved by the House. but it never went anywhere in the Senate. If passed, the act would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences by moving to another jurisdiction.
Why would we want to support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act? You have to think again before you face the man. Sharpton said you should think twice before you shoot someone.
“There’s nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors, that you walked through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors. You had to apply for the police department on your own. The police chief had to get there on his own. People had to go to jail, some of them lost their lives, so how dare you act like that was a sacrifice for nothing?
“This is a continuous fight that we have to fight for. We have to fight for justice. We cannot continue to let these people brutalize our kids,” Wells said.
“The only thing that’s keeping me going is the fact that I really, truly believe that my son was sent here on an assignment from God,” she said tearfully at Wednesday’s funeral.
The Investigation of the Deaths of Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith and another Nashville, TN, officer charged with murder in a car
According to documents from the Tennessee Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, Haley sent pictures of himself to other officers and a woman when he stood over Nichols as he lay propped against a police car.
Haley’s lawyer declined to comment, and lawyers for the other four officers either declined to comment or did not respond to requests from The Associated Press.
Haley, who wore a black hoodie over his head, sprayed Nichols in the eyes with a spray of a chemical irritant after forcing him to leave his car and using loud profanity.
The charges against Mills said that they were captured on the body worn camera laughing and making silly comments about their involvement.
They accused Mills of not giving Nichols’ mother an accurate account of the incident, as well as accusations that he walked away and decontaminated himself from chemical irritant spray.
A hearing officer wrote of Justin Smith: “You admitted you struck an unarmed and non-violent subject with a closed fist two to three times in the face because you and your partner were unable to handcuff him. … You sprayed the subject with yourirritant spray and then held him as other officers kicked, punched and pepper sprayed him.
The pending cases of Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith, who were both fired and charged with murder, are being reviewed by the District Attorney’s Office.
NPR’s Martin Kaste told All Things Considered that the documents, which pertain to the department’s internal review, “paint a picture of officers with a very unprofessional attitude.”
In addition to the reviews of the officers’ cases, county officials put their names on a list of police officials who had been charged with a crime.
That classification could prompt prosecutors to drop any cases involving their testimony, the New York Times reports, adding that some defense attorneys are compiling a roster of all officers who served in the SCORPION unit, “which could imperil hundreds of cases across the city.”
Local defense attorney Brandon Hall told the Memphis newspaper the Commercial Appeal that he was in court Wednesday when he saw a prosecutor drop a case involving some of the officers in question, and expects a similar outcome in other cases.
Josh Corman, a former prosecutor and defense attorney, told the newspaper that he thought it would be “a nightmare” for prosecutors to use the five officers as witnesses.
According to the Executive Director of the NAACP’s Memphis Branch, there were several police-related complaints that she received after the death of Timothy Nichols, though she did not specify whether they were about the specific officers or SCORPION unit.
“They didn’t exhibit any integrity, so it makes me afraid that other people have been treated this way,” she said. “If they go back and find out somebody might have been convicted for something that they did not do, you’re definitely going to have to reopen cases.”
All five men have been free on bond, and appeared only briefly on Friday, standing side by as each of their lawyers entered pleas on their behalf. The parents of Tyre Nichols sat in the courtroom gallery beside their attorney, Ben Crump.
Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, called Friday’s arraignment “the beginning of the process of justice,” and said she and her family were determined to see it through to the end.
The defendants’ brief courtroom appearance didn’t give her the courage to look at what they had done to her son. They’re going to watch me at every court date until we get justice for my son.
Anthony Perry, the attorney for Tadarrius Bean, and the Shelby County Sheriff’s office: prosecuting an ex-officer in Nichols’ beating and death
John Keith Perry, the attorney for Tadarrius Bean, signaled after Friday’s hearing that his strategy is likely to rely on convincing a jury that not all five former officers shared equal culpability in Nichols’ beating and death.
“You can see how the individual defendants helped each other, and in that particular case, he was doing his job, no matter who he was, no matter what their involvement was,” he said. He never hit anyone. He did his job and never did anything else.
“Let’s not forget that my client is a Black man in a courtroom in America,” he said. The system cannot fail Mr. Mills and that a fair outcome is achieved, I will work hard to make that happen.
The five officers face a sentence of up to 60 years for second-degree murder. Shelby County Criminal Court judge James Jones Jr. set the next court date for May 1.
The City Council voted preliminarily on six amendments to the police department last week and one of them banned officers from making traffic stops in cars that were not marked. Among other measures, the council also voted to strengthen the civilian review board that investigates complaints of police abuse.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157756023/memphis-tyre-nichols-police-officers-court-charges
Memphis Police and Fire Chiefs Will Release Additional Information on the Charges and Investigations related to Nichols’s Death During a Decay
Faced with high rates of violent crime, Memphis officials have in recent years hired hundreds of new police officers.
The department has struggled to fill its ranks as it has lowered hiring criteria, even attempting to recruit officers with criminal records. The moves could mean more police officers who aren’t fit to work and are likely to abuse their authority.
The city is ready to release additional information on Wednesday afternoon according to the chief legal officer.
Both the city’s police and fire departments have been conducting administrative investigations to determine whether any employees involved in the incident violated department policies, according to Sink.
The Director of Communications will release a new video and audio in 20 hours, as well as the body camera footage that was made public in late January.
The city will be releasing redactions regarding the charges and administrative investigations related to Nichols’ death.
During the hearing, a member of the committee asked if the officers who struck Nichols were still employed by the department. One of the suspended officers placed hands on the legs of Nichols.
Potential charges of “false reporting” related to the initial police report were being investigated, Erica Williams, a spokesperson for Mulroy’s office, told CNN around the same time.
She did not give a timetable, but she did say that the investigative files will be posted online when the information is nixed.
That was the first time the city announced a seventh officer was fired. The person and the officer are accused of doing something, but the name and details of the crime weren’t immediately made public.
Second-Degree Murder Charged in Shelby County, Tennessee, is a Class A State Penalized with up to 60 Years in Prison
Each of the accused faces charges of murder, kidnapping, assault, and official oppression. Second-degree murder in Tennessee is considered a Class A felony punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison.
In addition, two Shelby County Sheriff’s Office deputies who were at the scene were suspended for five days each without pay for their parts in the case, according to a sheriff’s office news release obtained by CNN affiliate WHBQ.
