The January 7 Violence Involving a Memphis Black Man: Officers Who Failed Their Oaths to Protect and Serve, and the Memphis Police Revisited
Protesters gathered in US cities over the weekend after the death of a Memphis man in a police beating. Officials said the investigation into the incident will continue, though they were unsure of whether additional charges could be brought.
The January 7 clash has made a difference in the way people respond. The five Memphis officers involved were fired and charged with murder and kidnapping in Nichols’ death and the police unit they were part of was disbanded.
Ben Crump said he thinks there will be more revelations during the investigation, but that he doesn’t know if it will lead to criminal charges.
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. The best solution was to speed up the investigation and consideration of charges so they could be brought first. and then the release of the video,” he added.
Many have pointed out that the police assault on Nichols is similar to the attack on King by the Los Angeles police in 1991. The beating of Nichols shows that despite more than two decades of police reform, there has not been much change in the way police officers treat minority men and women.
He was left slumped on the ground in handcuffs before being taken to the hospital. Nichols was eventually hospitalized and died three days later.
All of the officers failed their oaths, according to celebrity lawyer Benjamin Crump. “They failed their oath to protect and serve. Look at that video, it shows who was attempting to protect and serve.
Protesters marching in cities from New York City to Atlanta carried signs with the name of the young black man who was beaten and called out for his mother, who died as a result.
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.
The Memphis Police Department is Going through a tough time. The case against the Nichols unit in the Memphis SCORPION unit and the Memphis City Council
While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of doubt on the title of Fraternity and it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted, the police department decided Saturday to permanently deactivating the unit.
The culture of the SCORPION unit, as seen in the video, was reprehensible. We demanded that they quit immediately before this happens again.
“I think the smart move and the mayor is correct in shutting it down. The actions that are being taken are not representative of the Memphis Police Department.
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.
“We saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.
The officers charged in the encounter with Nichols – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr. – are expected to be arraigned on February 17. They are charged with second-degree murder and other counts.
The lawyer for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., said he didn’t cross lines that others crossed during the confrontation. The system Mills worked within made him a victims, according to the attorney.
Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. The two sheriffs office deputy have been put on leave.
Ben Crump said on CNN that if they did not use Nicholsons’ tragic death to get George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed, they were betraying the public.
A Black Caucus Educator’s Perspective on Police Reform: A Democrat-Mexican Assembly Report on Memphis Police Chief Davis and Shelby Sweet Love
Plans are underway for Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford to meet with Biden about police reform. A date for the meeting has not yet been set.
Gloria Sweet-Love is the Tennessee State Conference NAACP President and she supports Memphis Police Chief Davis for doing the right thing by not waiting a year to fire his officers for beating up a man.
She said that Congress should be applauded for failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, because it was writing another Black man’s obituary. It’s up to you to dispose of the blood of Black America. So stand up and do something.”
On the state level, two Democratic state lawmakers in Tennessee said Saturday that they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the Tennessee general assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline. Representative G.A Hardaway said the bills aim to address mental health care for law enforcement officers and other topics.
While Democrats hold the minority with 24 representatives, the Republicans have 99 and this legislation should get passed by both sides of the legislature.
The Memphis dog incident happened 24 years ago: Police misconduct, mental health evaluation and civil court damages if police are deemed inadmissible
It would be hard to look at this footage and not remember what happened to the young man. If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?” Towns said something.
Just two days after the video of the beating was made public, the official response to it is already underway.
Protesters continue to gather on the streets of Memphis and elsewhere in the United States to express outrage over the incident and also protest against treatment of Black people by police.
State officials have been initiating investigations into local police departments, recognizing that the federal government can’t take on every case nationwide.
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.
Among the issues the bills aim to address are 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, NBC News reported.
The Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that the Republicans hold a large majority in the Tennessee General Assembly, but Democrats think they can get some bipartisan support because of the incident.
“Without federal police reform, I think we’re going to continue to see these hashtags proliferate so much that we can’t keep up with them,” Crump told ABC’s This Week.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would ban chokeholds, prohibit no-knock warrants in federal drug cases, end qualified immunity for law enforcement officers – and more.
President Joe Biden referenced the failed legislation in his statement about Nichols on Friday, and many leaders – from the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.
The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.
According to a fact sheet on the legislation at the time, the measure would also allow “individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.”
The bill was mostly passed along party lines in the two years that Democrats controlled the House. It never made it to the Senate even after Democrats took control in the mid-2000s due to disagreements about qualified immunity.
It took six months of talks, but a deal that could get 60 votes in the Senate was able to be reached.
In the spring of 2020, Booker told reporters that he and his team had not made any progress at the negotiating table. We were moving away from it, based on recent back-and-forth paper. We stopped the negotiations because they were stopped. The work will continue.
Is there bipartisan support for constitutional reforms? The case for qualified immunity reform in the wake of a beating by police in Memphis, Tennessee
The president is not able to give local law enforcement the power to adopt the measures in his order, it is up to the federal government to give local law enforcement incentives.
Video footage of police brutally beating a black man in Memphis, Tennessee has revived calls for police reform. But in an era of divided government, the likelihood of any legislation making it to President Biden’s desk remains slim.
In some cases, local governments have taken their own actions. Many states have considered some form of qualified immunity reform since Floyd’s death. In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a series of police reforms that created a system to decertify law enforcement officers found to have engaged in serious misconduct – joining the majority of states that have similar decertification authorities.
The NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and other groups have called for congressional action in the wake of the brutal police beating and death of a man, but the prospect for bipartisan negotiations on Capitol Hill is very low.
“Senator Scott has been working on police funding and reform for the better part of the last decade,” a spokesperson for Scott told CNN. He has encouraged his colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join him in his continued efforts to increase safety in our communities.
But any effort would need bipartisan support and 60 votes to clear the Senate and would then have to pass a GOP-controlled House, an extremely difficult task and at this point, unlikely, outcome.
Laws, Rules, and Reforms: A State of the Union with a Key Player in the Negotiation on Public Safety and Justice Reform
“I don’t know that there is any law that can stop that evil that we saw that is just, I mean, just difficult to watch,” Jordan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “What strikes me is a lack of respect for human life, so I don’t know that any law, any training, any reform is going to change, you know, this man was handcuffed. They continued to beat him.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the GOP leadership and Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN that “I don’t know what the pathway is” to finding a deal on policing legislation.
Cornyn said that the issue of changing qualified immunity on police officers — to make it easier to sue them in civil court — remains a central sticking point.
The Nevada Democrat told NPR that he wants to know “what more we can be doing from an executive action standpoint” and added that he thinks Biden can be a key player in negotiations.
“I believe the president has the ability to bring us together in a very unique way,” Horsford said, noting Biden’s role in passing gun safety legislation and the bipartisan infrastructure legislation. We expect the president to help us reach a bipartisan agreement on comprehensive police accountability and justice reform.
He wants Biden to address the issue in the upcoming State of the Union in order to center it on the pain many families are experiencing and the people who experience it everyday in America.
“When a mother has to be concerned with her child going to a park, when a family member has to be concerned about someone busting down someone’s door in the middle of the night, when a young man gets pulled over for what may or may not even be a traffic stop, and it ends in death because of bad policing — all of us should be concerned because any of us could be next.”
Horsford added: “Congress has a role to play, and anyone who says they don’t is abdicating their responsibility to keep our community safe. In one minute, you will have to say you’re for safety and do nothing to keep the community safe.
He said he reached out to Scott, one of the central players in previous negotiations, to come up with ways to negotiate on principles of justice and police reform. “We are looking for ways to tackle the pattern and practices of cities like Memphis that have higher rates of use of force against Black residents.”
It’s a false choice to say that we don’t support law enforcement or hold them accountable in order to keep the people safe, he said.
“It had many elements in it that are important: banning chokeholds, dealing with no-warrant searches, dealing with accreditation of police departments. It’s necessary that we do all these things, but not sufficient,” said the Illinois Democrat.
“Imagine my anger, when we were denied the duty to intervene and de-escalating training, resources, and reporting so that we all had eyes around the country,” Scott said.
We should agree on legislation that is simple. Too many are too concerned with who gets the credit. I know that when a conservative Republican starts talking about policing in America, some people seem to just turn the channel. That’s wrong.”
“There’s things we can do. I believe there’s a lot of grant dollars that could be used. He said there’s reform that can happen there. “But it’s just a difference in, I think, philosophy. The Democrats always think that it’s a new law that’s going to fix something that terrible.”