Memphis police video leaves many unanswered questions
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The nation and the city of Memphis struggled to come to grips Saturday with video showing police pummeling Tyre Nichols — footage that left many unanswered questions about the traffic stop involving the Black motorist and about other law enforcement officers who stood by as he lay motionless on the pavement.
The five disgraced Memphis Police Department officers, who are also Black, have been fired and charged with second-degree murder and other crimes in Nichols’ death three days after the arrest. The video released Friday renewed questions about how fatal encounters with law enforcement continue even after repeated calls for change.
A Memphis police spokeswoman declined to comment on the role played by other officers who showed up at the scene.
Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis has said that other officers are under investigation, and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said two deputies have been relieved of duty without pay while their conduct is investigated.
Cities nationwide had braced for demonstrations, but the protests were scattered and nonviolent. In Memphis, several dozen demonstrators blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that carries traffic over the Mississippi River toward Arkansas. Semitrucks were backed up for a distance.
Demonstrators at times blocked traffic while chanting slogans and marching through the streets of New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. In Washington, protestors gathered across the street from the White House and near Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Memphis remained on edge. Ahead of the protests, some downtown Memphis businesses boarded up windows, and the school system canceled after school activities. Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which has about 100,000 students, postponed athletics and extracurricular activities on Saturday.
Christopher Taylor was among the protesters at the Interstate 55 bridge. The Memphis native said the officers appeared to be laughing as they stood around after the beating.
“I cried,” he said. “And that right there, as not only a father myself, but I am also a son, my mother is still living, that could have been me.”
Blake Ballin, the lawyer for fired officer Desmond Mills, told The Associated Press in a statement Saturday that the videos “have produced as many questions as they have answers.” The question of whether the city would stay peaceful "has been answered,” he said.
Some of the other questions will focus on what Mills “knew and what he was able to see when he arrived late to the scene” and whether his actions "crossed the lines that were crossed by other officers during this incident,” Ballin said.
The arrest was made by the so-called Scorpion unit, which has three teams of about 30 street officers who target violent offenders in areas beset by high crime, Davis said.
In an AP interview Friday, she said she would not shut down a unit if a few officers commit “some egregious act” and because she needs that unit to continue to work.
“The whole idea that the Scorpion unit is a bad unit, I just have a problem with that,” she said.
A few hours later, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the unit has been inactive since the Jan. 7 arrest.
“It is clear that these officers violated the department’s policies and training," he said.
The city was "initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units,” Strickland said in a statement.
Davis acknowledged that the police department has a supervisor shortage and said city officials have pledged to provide more of them.
“The lack of supervision in this incident was a major problem,” Davis said. “When officers are working, you should have at least one supervisor for every group or squad of people. Not just somebody who’s at the office doing the paperwork, somebody who’s actually embedded in that unit.”
The recording shows police savagely beating Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker, for three minutes while screaming profanities at him throughout the attack. The Nichols family legal team has likened the assault to the infamous 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King.
On the video, officers can be be seen holding Nichols down and repeatedly striking him with their fists, boots and batons as the Black motorist screamed for his mother.
The video is filled with violent moments showing the officers chasing Nichols and leaving him on the pavement propped against a squad car as they fist-bump and celebrate their actions.
After the first officer roughly pulls Nichols out of a car, Nichols can be heard saying, “I didn't do anything,” as a group of officers begins to wrestle him to the ground.
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