The Memphis Special Unit Dismantled After a 29-Year-Old Officer Robbed of a Police Officer and Charged with a Crimes Code of Incrimination

The investigation into the Memphis police beating that led to the death of a 29-year-old man will continue despite questions over whether there could be more charges.

The city dismantled its controversial special unit known as SCORPION in the wake of Nichols’ death. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said it made 566 arrests between October 21st and January 22nd.

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.”

Mulroy said officials knew the video without charges for the officers could be cendiary. “The best solution was to expedite the investigation and to expedite the consideration of charges so that the charges could come first and then the release of the video,” he added.

Investigators say the officers broke department rules by using excessive force against Nichols and failing to report it, among other things. They also say officers took off their body cameras, and that several were laughing and bragging about the encounter immediately after.

A few days after he was pulled over, the man died. Bodycam video showed one of the officers, Demetrius Haley, aggressively pulling Nichols out of his car, forcing him to the ground and pepper-spraying him before another officer, who was later fired but not criminally charged, used a Taser against him.

“Your on-duty conduct was unjustly, blatantly unprofessional and unbecoming for a sworn public servant,” the Memphis Police Department wrote in requesting that Haley and the other officers be decertified.

After the video depicting the police beating of a 29- year-old was released, protesters went to the streets to show their displeasure and there will be more gatherings and prayers on Sunday.

The Memphis Police Department and the Memphis Public Interest in the SCORPION/Johnson-Miranda Black-Hole Collision

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.

“While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION,” the statement went on, “it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.”

“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 police department and the leadership need to be heldaccountable, according to Memphis City Council member Frank Colvett. “She’s going to have to answer not just to the council but to the citizens – and really the world.”

The city of Memphis is being hailed for its swift investigation and transparency in the wake of the brutalized man by police officers.

Easter- Thomas said that they saw a peaceful and direct sense of protest in Memphis, as well as hope that the system would get it right.

And on Thursday, the officers – all of them also Black – were charged with second-degree murder and kidnapping amid mounting public pressure to release footage of the incident.

The attorney for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., put out a statement Friday night saying that he didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation. The attorney, Blake Ballin, told CNN Mills was a “victim” of the system he worked within.”

Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

The Memphis Police Chief’s Legacy: Stop Waiting for Six Months to Shoot a 15-Year-old Black Man and Do Something

He specifically urged federal lawmakers to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was twice approved by the House but stalled in the Senate in 2021.

The Congressional Black Caucus is asking the President to meet with them to push for reform of the police force, caucus chair Steven Horsford said in a news release.

Memphis Police Chief Davis was applauded by the Tennessee State Conference NAACP President for not waiting six months to fire officers who beat up a 15-year-old.

She said that Congress should stop writing obituaries for Blacks by failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality. The blood of Black America is on your hands. Stand up and do something.

The Democratic state lawmakers said on Saturday that they would file police reform legislation in order to get it done by Tuesday.

While Democrats hold the minority with 24 representatives compared to the Republican majority of 99 representatives, Rep. Joe Towns Jr. said this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature.

Memphis Police Officers Have a Moral Moral Role to Play with: After the Video of Tyre Nichols, Our Country was Born and Learned

“You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something. What would happen to the dog in this country if it were beat that badly? Towns said.

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told CNN that on hearing that initial account she thought it was “just a strange summary of what occurred on a traffic stop.” Once she viewed video of what actually happened, she was “outraged,” she said.

It was more prevalent in the 1980’s when I became a police officer than it was in the 1990’s and 2000’s. “Even before body cams, cops were getting more professional and wouldn’t make it personal, like it seemed to be in this case. This is so far out of the norm.

To reduce the chance of confusion during police encounters, police training typically includes a single officer at the scene to issue clear and specific commands. Police officers must respond to any act of defiance in a professional manner.

There is no evidence that the officers stop the aggressive use of force. If anything, it shows the contrary.

After the public saw video of the Memphis police brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, the official efforts to respond are already underway.

Attorneys said that they hope that other cities take similar action with their saturation police units. We must keep in mind that this is just the next step in the journey for justice and accountability, and that it is not limited to these specialty units. It extends far beyond that.

The Black Police Experience: Why officers in the Tennessee General Assembly are so bad for police, they can’t do their job and they will fail to reform

Speaker of the House John Ray Climus, Representative G.A. Hardaway, and Rep. Joe Towns, Jr., announced their plan at a press conference.

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.

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.

“without federal police reform, I think we’re going to continue to see these phrases become so popular they can’t keep up, we can’t even keep up with them,” she said.

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.

There is a retired Montgomery County, Maryland police captain listed in this article. She founded The Black Police Experience, which seeks to educate the public about law enforcement and the Black community. She is a professor of criminal justice at Howard University and Montgomery College in Maryland. The opinions that she expresses in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

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 mother said that the officers charged with her son’s death brought shame to their own families. They brought shame to the Black community.”

The association’s current stance is unusual. It did not defend the arrested officers outright or say that they were just doing a difficult job that required them to make split-second decisions – responses we’ve come to expect from police unions that so often help shield officers accused of misconduct from accountability.

Efforts to get police reform done following George Floyds death in 2020 have been replaced by calls to hire more police officers to deal with the fear of crime. President Joe Biden proposed funding for 100,000 new police officers as part of his Safer America plan last year, and a bill in the coming years would provide $324 million to hire more police officers.

While some have praised Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis’ swift action in the case, she is also who created the now-deactivated SCORPION police unit that the charged officers were part of.

New policies have been put in place to fight police misconduct. Law enforcement has changed policy a lot over the years but still has too many deaths from batons, feet, hands, fists and guns.

This article has been modified to accurately reflect the writer’s experience; she has 28 years of combined experience in law enforcement, not just as a captain.

There were charges of second- degree murder and kidnapping against five former officers. The police body camera and street camera footage of the fatal encounter after a January 7 traffic stop was released by officials one day later.

Memphis law enforcement after the fatal shooting of an 18-year old black man: How to maintain trust in the community after fatal police encounters, according to O’Mara

After the fatal police shooting of an 18 year old black man in Ferguson, Missouri, Johnson helped restore order and said they have learned from it.

“A year ago, two years ago, we wouldn’t have seen some of the things we’re seeing here,” Johnson said of Memphis law enforcement’s handling of Nichols’ death.

In previous instances of deadly police violence, such as the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky, police in 2020 and the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police the same year, the quick filing of charges and release of video shows how different this case is.

Memphis taking actions after fatal police encounters shows how to maintain trust in the community after fatal police encounters, law enforcement analysts say.

“We are now looking at cops through a different prism and when cops don’t act, when cops allow an event to happen over four, five, ten minutes, then maybe they should be held responsible to an even higher standard,” Mark O’Mara, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, said Saturday. We are in a new era in which we look at police behavior in a different way.

The preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for Nichols’ family said he suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” family attorney Benjamin Crump said this week.

On January 15th, Chief Davis promised to take appropriate action after noting the seriousness of the officers conduct during the stop. She stated that the department served notice to the officers involved.

The department said in a statement that the officers had failed in their duty to intervene and render aid and had been terminated.

“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.

The grand jury was convened in this case and charged the officers, which was the right thing.

Memphis police and prosecutors have been given a “blueprint” on how to prosecute future brutality cases, thanks to the rapid criminal charges they have been given.

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 former officer’s 2016 state murder trial ended in a mistrial but Slager pleaded guilty to violation of civil rights by acting under the color of law in Scott’s killing. He was sent to a federal prison for 20 years.

Protest of the Memphis Protest Video Against the Online Controversy of the Fourth Amendment Protests at the Ellipse Turn of the Screw

CNN law enforcement says that taking a high tension event and then adding something that will make people more tense is not a good idea.

But, Miller said, the delay allowed authorities to show the public “the wheels of justice are turning and turning relatively quickly.” The extra time allowed officials to unify the faith community in Memphis, the voice of the family and the family’s lawyers, and key community contacts in calling for calm.

Police departments across the country – including in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Nashville and New York – said they were either monitoring events or already had plans in place in case of protests.

Over the past several 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.

Though paramedics arrived minutes after officers disengaged, Nichols appeared to be left without assistance before an ambulance showed up.

Memphis PD and the Victims of Nichols’ Violations of the Civil Liberation Principle: A Complaint to the Police or a Los Angeles Police Officer?

The experts were stunned by the footage. Officials across the country expressed outrage – including President Joe Biden, who said it was “yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single 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 young on the job and do what they do on a regular basis. This was not something they are used to doing.

Memphis City Council Chairman Martavius Jones grew emotional after watching the video, telling CNN that despite the positive shift in the handling of brutality cases, much more needs to be done.

My baby was just trying to go home to be safe for me, that’s what the online fundraiser reads. Tyre was unarmed, nonthreatening, and respectful to police during the entire encounter!”

The community needs to see the police officers commit crimes against citizens, but we need to see it too when it’s White police officers.

But disbanding the unit without giving officers new training would be “putting lipstick on a pig,” city council chair Martavius Jones told CNN Saturday.

Investigating the Memphis Police killing of Tyre Nichols: A GoFundMe with a memorial skate park for the family of a good boy and father

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee called on congress to revive national police reform legislation, saying the bill was a good start.

It’s the right starting point and Sen.Cory Booker has been working on it 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. We need a national conversation about policing in a responsible, constitutional, and humane way,” he said.

The 29-year-old was the baby of his family and a father. His mother said he was a good boy who used to do laundry and get ready for the week.

A GoFundMe created by Nichols’ mother has raised over $1,085,600 as of Sunday afternoon. Wells and her husband will benefit from the donations due to the cost of their mental health services and time off from their jobs. They want to build a memorial skate park in memory of Tyre, who loved skating and sunsets.

“We are looking at everybody who had any kind of involvement in this incident,” from the officers and paramedics on scene to those who filed the paperwork, Shelby County District Attorney Steven Mulroy said Monday.

Prosecutors moved “extraordinarily quick” with charges against the five officers “primarily responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols,” the district attorney said.

“Memphis, and the whole world, needs to see that what’s right is done in this case,” Paul Hagerman, an assistant district attorney, said in the hallway outside the courtroom after the hearing. Everybody who was involved in the criminal activity is brought to justice.

“We need to make sure that we go through our police department and see where we were weak, what happened with our procedures, what happened with our oversight,” Warren said.

A seventh officer has been relieved of duty because of the latest police killing to prompt angry nationwide protests about how police officers treat Black residents.

Memphis police said in a news release Monday that Officer Hemphill and other officers have been the subject of an investigation.

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.

The Memphis Fire Chief’s Investigation into the Nichols-Long Collision, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last Speech in Memphis

Emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge were among the personnel who were fired over their response to the encounter.

The two EMTs that responded failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment on the scene, according to a news release from the fire department.

Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis said that an investigation found no evidence of driving recklessly by Nichols before he was stopped. The investigation faulted five former officers for lying in a report about an incident and for other policies violations, including lying in a report about an incident.

“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.

They either failed him by using excessive force, failing by severely beating him, failing him by not intervening, or failing him by not providing aid, according to the attorney.

The attorney said that the family is still trying to understand the breadth of this investigation and also 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.

Critics say the unclear and obfuscatory language police sometimes use to describe violent incidents to the public can further damage trust with communities that may already be skeptical of law enforcement.

The Minneapolis Police Department Responded to a Forgery in Progress and Detected a Medically Impaired, 21-Year-Old Minneapolis Officer

Minneapolis police officers responded to a forgery in progress and made an arrest. The suspect was brought into handcuffs and officers noted that he seemed to be suffering from a medical problem, according to the release. “Officers called for an ambulance.”

The man in the video was George Floyd, who was captured on camera by a bystander, pleading, “I can’t breathe!” as the former Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. Floyd passed away 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.

John Elder was the public information director of the Minneapolis Police Department in 2020 and wrote the initial statement about Floyd’s death. He told the Los Angeles Times that he had gotten information from officers, and that he had not seen any video of the encounter.

“This had literally zero intent to deceive or be dishonest or disingenuous. Had we known that this [situation] was what we saw on the video, that statement would have been completely different,” Elder told the newspaper.

There are discrepancies in the report and statements that are put out that don’t match the evidence when it comes out and that is where the conflict comes from. She said that when the language used is such that it abdicates responsibility.

She said she worked with an agency that would bring in community leaders to give an explanation of the incident before discussing it with the media. She said that departments could acknowledge if they are still looking into the matter and haven’t yet looked at any video evidence.

The Memphis death of Nichols, the victim of the Memphis rioting and the alleged violation of the Fourth Amendment’s civil rights ‘commence’

In roughly three weeks, a funeral for the man who died from being beaten by police in Memphis will be held and it will be followed by protests and calls for accountability nationwide.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to attend the funeral at the invitation of Nichols’ family. George Floyd, the brother of Philonise Floyd and the mother of Breonna Taylor are also expected.

There will be services at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. The time is in the central time. The funeral will be streamed on both Facebook and YouTube, organizers said.

The two separate cases about the use of force focused on whether officers filed the required reports, but didn’t look at if the use of force was justified.

Haley said he did not understand how much force was needed to fill out the form. His lieutenant said Haley was a “hard-working officer” who “routinely makes good decisions” and “he was sure that this was a limited event.” Haley was given a written reprimand.

The violation was dismissed because the hearing officer said that the officer took full ownership of the accident and was humble during the hearing.

Darren R. Mills: Domestic Violence in Memphis, Tennessee, at the March 20, 2017 Insights into his Conducting on a Teen Pedestrian

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.

The first time Mills was reprimanded, he immediately reported the incident to his union representative, according to the records.

Later that month, Mills failed to file a response to resistance form when he used force to take a woman down to the ground. In the hearing in August 2021, Mills said he did not realize his actions necessitated use of the form and was again issued a written reprimand.

Martin had a loaded handgun found in the back of his squad car. Martin said he failed to do a proper pre- and post-shift inspection, and only inspected the car from the outside. During his shift that day, he and his partner conducted two traffic stops in which suspects were taken to the backseat where the gun was found. Police officers did not inspect the car after the suspects left it. Martin was issued a three-day suspension without pay, according to the files.

A lieutenant and other officers were at the hearing and defended Martin, saying that the victim didn’t want a report and that Martin is not responsible.

“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. “Officer[s] cannot base their decision to arrest based [on] the victim’s consent or on the perception of the victim’s willingness to cooperate with prosecution.”

An evaluation states that Officer Martin is respectful when dealing with others regardless of race, sex, or rank. He approaches his calls with good will and is well received by the public. He’s been a top leader in the arrests and calls for a long time.

In March of this year, Smith joined the department. In January 2021, he was passing a vehicle and crashed into its rear, causing it to spin and crash into a third vehicle, which had two people inside. The parties were sent to the hospital for observation.

Smith said the second vehicle driver left his lane suddenly and went right. He admitted to speeding, but was unsure about his memory because of the head injury he sustained from the crash, according to the summary.

The documents released this week shed light on the alleged wrongdoing of the five officers charged in Nichols’ death, which includes a claim that Haley took pictures of him as he lay bleeding. The images were shared with non- police officers.

Attorneys for the other four officers either refused to answer or didn’t reply to The Associated Press’ requests.

The Memphis Police Department wants to have the five officers who are charged with murder stripped of their certifications to work in law enforcement. The police chief of Memphis signed requests for decertifying the officers.

Haley, Smith, and the Memphis SCORPION Unit: The case against three officers in the killing of a non-violent driver with loud profanity

Haley, who was driving an unmarked car and wore a black sweatshirt hoodie over his head, forced Nichols from his car using loud profanity, then sprayed him directly in the eyes with a chemical irritant spray, according to the statement.

“You and other officers were captured on body worn camera making multiple unprofessional comments, laughing, bragging about your involvement,” the decertification charges against Mills said.

“You admitted you didn’t provide immediate medical aid and didn’t give the mother an accurate account of what happened, even though you knew that,” they accused Mills of later failing to give her an accurate account.

In his report, the hearing officer said that Justin Smith admitted to hitting the non-violent man with a closed fist two to three times because he and his partner were not able to cuff him. While other officers kicked, punched and pepper sprayed him, you held the individual’s arm and sprayed his face with your chemical irritant spray.

The closed and pending cases will be reviewed by the district attorney’s office, as well as the charges against the five men.

According to Martin Kaste of NPR the documents show a picture of officers with a very unprofessional attitude.

In addition to putting the officers’ other cases up for review, county officials put their names on a so-called list of police officials accused of being dishonest or facing criminal charges.

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.”

Brandon Hall told the Memphis newspaper that he was in court on Wednesday when the prosecutor dropped the case against some of the officers, and expects similar results in other cases.

It would be a nightmare for a prosecutor to use the five officers as witnesses in a case, according to Josh Corman, a defense attorney and former prosecutor.

Vickie Terry, the Executive Director of the NAACP’s Memphis Branch, told Memphis TV station WREG that her office received several police-related complaints after Nichols’ death (though she didn’t specify whether they were about those specific officers or the SCORPION unit).

She said that she was afraid that others had been treated this way. “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.”

The Alabama Unarmed Black Man’s Case of In-Custody Killing: A U.S. Law Enforcement Attorney’s Perspective

The family of an unarmed Black man who was shot and killed by a Shreveport, Louisiana, police officer has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the officer.

After a short foot pursuit, an officer “located Mr. Bagley as he rounded a building corner and fired one shot from his service weapon, which struck Mr. Bagley in the chest,” state police said. Bagley later was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The lawsuit states that the use of lethal force against an innocent man is excessive and without justification.

Tyler is currently on paid leave while the state police investigation is going on. The officer has been with the department since May 2021, Chief Wayne Smith said.

In Louisiana, four state troopers and another law enforcement officer were indicted on charges last year stemming from the in-custody killing of 49-year-old Ronald Greene, a Black man violently beaten by officers during an arrest.

“I am asking for the community to remain patient as we continue to conduct a very thorough investigation,” Davis said following Bagley’s death. “Transparency in the investigation is a priority for our agency.”

Ronald Haley, the family’s attorney, tells CNN that the family hopes to view the video before the funeral.

Further information will be released in coordination with the District Attorney’s Office. We do not have a timeline at this time,” Nick Manale, a spokesperson for state police, told CNN via email.

Laura Fulco, the first assistant district attorney for Caddo Parish, said that the Louisiana State police had a case under investigation. It’s still under investigation.

Attorney John Keith Perry: Bringing justice to Nichols’ mother, Row Vaughn Wells, Ben Crump, and Tadarrius Bean

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. Ben Crump is the lawyer for the parents of the boy.

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 did not have the courage to look at her when they appeared in court. “So they’re going to see me at every court date, every one, until we get justice for my son.”

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.

“He was doing his job, no more, no less, than any of the other individual defendants,” he said. “He never struck anybody. He never did anything other than his job.”

He said his client is a Black man in a courtroom in America. “I will work hard so that the system doesn’t fail or that a fair outcome is achieved.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157756023/memphis-tyre-nichols-police-officers-court-charges

Memphis City Council Adopted Six Reforms to Improve the Police Department: a Case Study of the Second-Dimensional Murder

15 to 60 years is the sentence for the second-degreemurder charge against the five officers. Shelby County Criminal Court judge James Jones Jr. set the next court date for May 1.

Last week, the City Council preliminarily approved six ordinances to revamp the police department, including one that would restrict officers’ ability to conduct routine traffic stops and another that would ban officers from making traffic stops while in unmarked cars like the ones officers used to stop Nichols. The council voted to strengthen the civilian review board that investigates police abuse complaints.

Memphis officials have made it a priority to hire many new police officers amid persistently high rates of violent crime.

Even as the department struggled to fill its ranks, it has lowered hiring criteria, even going so far as to ask for permission to recruit officers with criminal records. Those moves could mean more unfit police officers and more likely to abuse their authority.