Five Memphis Cops Charged With Murder After Beating A Man To Death During A Traffic Stop

Legal Issues

from the cops-have-a-murder-problem dept

It’s rare to see a cop charged with murder. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was not only charged but convicted (!) of murder after kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nearly 10 minutes, and for three minutes after another officer told Chauvin he could no longer detect Floyd’s pulse.

Officer Chavin — an anomaly in terms of criminal justice — now has company. Five Memphis police officers have been fired and charged with multiple crimes, including second-degree murder, for the brutal beating that ended the life of Tyre Nichols. Here are their names:

The Memphis Police Department on Friday identified them as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith. They range in age from 24 to 32 and each served on the department for about 2 1/2 to five years.

And it was murder. The footage above, released by the Memphis PD, was captured by a nearby pole camera. It shows the clearest objective view of the violence inflicted on Nichols by these officers. It shows an officer kicking him three times in the face while he’s restrained on the ground. It shows officers holding him up while another strikes him in the back with a baton. It shows officers holding Nichols with his hands restrained behind them while another officer repeatedly punches him in the face.

It shows the cops dragging Nichols’ nearly lifeless body across the concrete and propping it up against the door of a cruiser. It shows them milling around, refusing to render aid. It shows so-called “first responders” arriving at the scene and refusing to respond to the clear medical emergency. It shows more than 20 minutes elapse before any aid is rendered, during which Nichols repeatedly slumps over on his side, only to be propped up again by cops attempting to make things look less medically serious than they actually are.

If you still have the stomach for more, the Memphis PD has also posted body cam recordings. But be warned, those videos have audio. Not only will you hear the clear distress in Nichol’s voice, but you’ll hear the blows being rained on him, the officers’ laughter, and their attempts to exonerate themselves by saying things to each other about guns being grabbed, etc.

It’s not clear when Memphis PD officials decided to actually watch this footage, but its initial news release is full of exonerative copspeak that attempts to blame the victim and refuses to discuss the acts of violence committed by the officers.

Compare the descriptions above with the innocuous-sounding statement released by the PD:

Here’s the most relevant part of that statement, in case you’re unable to see/read the embed:

On January 7, 2023, at approximately 8:30 p.m., officers in the area of Raines Road attempted to make a traffic stop for reckless driving. As officers approached the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled on foot. Officers pursued the suspect and again attempted to take the suspect into custody. While attempting to take the suspect into custody, another confrontation occurred; however, the suspect was ultimately apprehended. Afterward, the suspect complained of having shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene.

“Ultimately apprehended” is the brutal beating. “Complained of having shortness of breath” apparently refers to Nichols’ beaten body repeatedly slumping to the ground as he lost consciousness. To the MPD’s credit, it did fire the officers and it did leave this exonerative horseshit tweet intact, perhaps as a reminder to itself to get all the facts in before issuing statements.

Perhaps not. It’s too early to tell. At least the MPD chief, Cerelyn Davis, stepped up quickly to condemn the actions of these officers.

“This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual,” Davis said in the video, her first on-camera comments about the arrest. “This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

So did Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, who charged the officers not only with second-degree murder but with aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct, and official oppression. But Mulroy is also saying things that suggest he’s not wholeheartedly backing these prosecutions. Bringing a stack of charges makes it easier for juries to hand down convictions for lesser crimes, which means murder convictions are a lot less likely. And he’s saying things like this, which suggests he’s still trying to put as much distance between the heinous acts and the indicted officers as possible:

After Nichols was stopped, there was “an altercation” in which officers doused the motorist with pepper spray, and Nichols tried to flee on foot, Mulroy said, describing what followed in highly elliptical terms.

“There was another altercation at a nearby location at which the serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols,” the prosecutor said.

What the fuck. Serious injuries are only “experienced” by people injured by inanimate objects. When humans injure other humans, the people performing the injury are normally called assailants or otherwise pointed to as the origin of the injuries. But when it’s cops doing the injuring, somehow assault just becomes something that happens to people without any intervention from law enforcement officers.

And while this description may be accurate, it’s also unfortunate:

The Nichols family viewed the police footage on Monday with their attorney, Ben Crump, who compared it to the 1991 videotaped Rodney King beating by four police officers whose acquittal of criminal charges the following year sparked several days of riots in Los Angeles.

Well, we all know how that turned out. Four cops faced serious criminal charges. All were acquitted of assault charges. Three of the four were acquitted of excessive force charges, with the last one resulting in a hung jury.

The fallout from this beating continues. Two sheriff’s deputies who were at the scene have been suspended pending an investigation. Both arrived after the beating, but neither deputy rendered aid or attempted to provide any assistance to the beaten man.

The unit that housed the five fired MPD murder suspects has been disbanded. The so-called “Scorpion” team (it stands for [brace yourself and your soon-to-be-rolling eyes] “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”) was formed to crack down on violent crime. But it appears to have actually encouraged it. Violent criminals assaulted a man in the street January 7th, ultimately killing him. And it’s only the most visible expression of the unit’s, shall we say, “controversial” tactics.

Will this be the cop crime that prompts serious reform efforts? Probably not. I mean, none of the others have managed to move the dial much. Soon this too will become part of law enforcement’s sordid history, something we can point to as an outward symptom of inner rot, but the kind of rot law enforcement agencies and their powerful supporters are more than happy to live with, if not actively encourage.

Filed Under: memphis, memphis pd, murder, tyre nichols