On January 7th, five former Memphis police officers were charged with murder after footage of a traffic stop surfaced that showed them kicking and punching a motorist for several minutes as he cried out for his mother. The officers were seen brutally beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, in the video from the arrest, with no signs of him resisting.
US President Joe Biden expressed his deep pain and horror at the clip. Lawyers for Mr. Nichols’ family likened the assault to the 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King.
The incident sparked peaceful protests in Memphis on Friday night, with some demonstrators blocking a major highway in the city and small-scale demonstrations were held elsewhere in the country. Many protesters held banners demanding justice for Mr. Nichols and an end to “police terror”.
The police initially said that Mr. Nichols had been stopped on suspicion of reckless driving, which has not been substantiated. Unfortunately, Mr. Nichols died in the hospital three days later, on January 10th.
The Memphis Police Department released four graphic videos of the traffic stop and its violent aftermath on Friday, totalling more than an hour of footage. The first clip shows officers pulling Mr. Nichols out of his vehicle and shouting at him to get on the ground. “I didn’t do anything!” he says.
Watch the video (You may be redirected to YouTube based on its graphic content):
Officers demand that he lie down flat. “Get on the [expletive] ground!” one officer shouts, as another is heard saying: “Tase him!” An officer shouts: “Put your hands behind your back before I break your [expletive].” “You guys are really doing a lot right now,” Mr. Nichols says to the officers. “I’m just trying to go home.”
Within seconds one of the officers fires a Taser at Mr. Nichols, who leaps up and manages to run away. A separate video, from a CCTV camera mounted on a utility pole, shows officers beating Mr. Nichols after catching up with him in a residential area. Two officers are seen holding Mr. Nichols down while others take turns kicking and punching him and striking him with an expandable baton.
They drag him across the ground and prop him sitting up against a squad car. More than 20 minutes elapse until an ambulance is seen arriving.
He was stopped by police at around 20:30 at the junction of East Raines Rd and Ross Road in Memphis, but he fled south along Ross Road before he was apprehended near Castlegate Lane after a second confrontation with police.
The third and fourth videos show police body camera footage of the beating, with Mr. Nichols being held down, pepper-sprayed and assaulted as he repeatedly shouts: “Mom!” The videos also show officers milling about recounting details of the incident as Mr. Nichols lies slumped against the car.
Some of the officers claim that Mr. Nichols “swung” at them or reached for their guns, though neither allegation is clear from the released video. Officers can also be heard saying that nothing was found in his car. Mr. Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, has said her son was only about 230ft (70m) from home when Memphis police officers “murdered him”.
Representatives of the family have described Mr. Nichols as the father of a four-year-old son and a keen skateboarder who had recently enrolled in a photography class. He worked for the FedEx parcel delivery firm. One of the lawyers, Antonio Romanucci, said: “This young man, by definition of the law in this state, was terrorised.”
AGS NEWS 