Memphis Police Department fires 6th officer involved in Tyre Nichols beating death

This is what happened to 72 police officers after killings that gained national attention and sparked protests over police abuse. iStock; Anadolu Agency/Getty; InsiderWe checked in on the police officers behind some of the highest-profile police killings of the past 20 years. Some end up behind bars. Others get raises.The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades.These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness.  Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar.    Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate.Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism.    Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired.People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives.  Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes.A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay.An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice.Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are."Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department.  "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesIn rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application.Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him."Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022.Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via APOthers spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation.Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

This is what happened to 72 police officers after killings that gained national attention and sparked protests over police abuse. iStock; Anadolu Agency/Getty; InsiderWe checked in on the police behind some of the most high-profiled police killings of the last 20 years. Some end up behind bars. Others get raises.The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades.These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness.  Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar.    Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate.Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism.    Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired.People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives.  Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes.A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay.An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice.Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are."Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department.  "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesIn rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application.Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him."Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022.Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via APOthers spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation.Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

This is what happened to 72 police officers after killings that gained national attention and sparked protests over police abuse. iStock; Anadolu Agency/Getty; InsiderWe checked in on the police behind some of the most high-profiled police killings of the last 20 years. Some end up behind bars. Others get raises.The police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month resulted in five officers involved being charged with murder and fired from the Memphis Police Department. Nichols's killing was notable for its apparent cruelty: Officers pepper sprayed, kicked, and punched an unarmed man to death. Footage from a nearby pole camera captured much of the assault, as well as officers standing around Nichols as he lay grievously injured. One detective took a photo and texted it to at least five others. The Nichols case was unusual for the speed at which the officers involved were fired and charged, but the incident itself shared many similarities to other instances of egregious police violence that have risen to national attention in past decades.These killings often draw intense public scrutiny, in some cases prompting departments to shut down elite "street crime" squads like Memphis's Scorpion unit or forcing lawmakers to question police budgets and tactics. The victims in these cases become nationally known and their names — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo — rallying cries against police abuses.Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Ultimately, though, most of those officers fall out of public consciousness.  Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar.    Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. Some dwindled into obscurity after resigning or being fired. Others stayed on the force and even received promotions. A few became pro-police rallying points, while others ended up incarcerated for their crimes — an extreme rarity for police who kill people on the job. Fewer than 2% of police officers who shoot and kill people while on duty are charged with murder or manslaughter, and fewer still are convicted, according to data collected by Philip Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies police shootings. Despite nationwide protests demanding greater police accountability, that figure hasn't changed markedly since 2005, the first year Stinson began collecting data."Every time there's a big case, we think, 'maybe this is the case where something changes,'" he said. "But it doesn't." Prosecutors in most states still face steep obstacles to building criminal cases against officers. More departments have adopted body-worn cameras, but officers often fail to use them appropriately. Officers and police unions continue to close ranks around their colleagues who have been accused of using excessive force.There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. A 2021 bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, would have created a nationwide database of police misconduct, but that legislation stalled and withered in a Republican-controlled Senate.Insider attempted to contact the officers named in this article, but did not receive any replies to requests for comment. Multiple officers could also not be reached for comment.The incidents that Insider reviewed, focusing on those that rose to national media and received mention in thousands of news clips, are not representative of officer-involved killings as a whole. Instead, these cases show how officers involved in high-profile killings like the one in Memphis last month can end up anywhere from behind bars to back on the force. The cops who left the forceMany of the officers involved in high profile police killings resigned under public pressure or were fired by their departments following the incidents, but either never faced charges or were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing. These former cops are a grab bag of outcomes. Some fought unsuccessfully to be reinstated, while others drifted into different lines of work — sometimes with their past following them to their new professions.Two of the four officers who fired their weapons in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed when police shot him 41 times in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, joined the New York City Fire Department. Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were acquitted of all charges in Diallo's death and months later successfully applied to become firefighters, prompting a wave of media coverage and criticism.    Diallo's father, along with representatives from the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel and the Vulcan Society fraternal order of Black firefighters all condemned the hirings."If a Black man had ever murdered somebody and went to trial for murder, no matter what the circumstances, that man would not be allowed to be a firefighter," Paul Washington, then-president of the Vulcan Society, said at the time. Two Black firefighters transferred to different firehouses after McMellon was assigned to their engine company. (The FDNY denied at the time that the transfers were related to McMellon.)McMellon is still an active member of the FDNY, the department confirmed to Insider, while Murphy is retired.People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, several officers in high-profile killings complained in the following years that they became pariahs and found it difficult to restart their lives.  Darren Wilson, the officer who in 2014 shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, claimed a year after the incident that he faced death threats, was forced to move neighborhoods and was denied rejoining the police force after his acquittal. Wilson, who became a right-wing rallying point with supporters raising almost five hundred thousand dollars for him after the incident, told The New Yorker that he had quit a retail job stocking shoes after two weeks when reporters started calling the store.A similar infamy dogged one of the officers who beat and injured Rodney King. Timothy Wind, one of the officers who repeatedly struck King, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired by the LAPD. He drew protests after being hired as an unarmed community service officer in Culver City, California in 1994. Wind eventually moved to small town Indiana to avoid scrutiny, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012, but maintained he did nothing wrong and attended law school with the intent on pursuing a career in criminal justice. The AP reported in 2021 that he had moved to Kansas. Calls placed to numbers listed under his name didn't go through or weren't answered.Other officers have retired with pensions or quietly found other careers. Michael Oliver, one of the NYPD officers involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell in 2006, was forced to resign but allowed to collect $40,000 in pension benefits, according to the New York Post. He later became a salesman at a New Jersey BMW dealership. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity. At least two officers in the cases that Insider reviewed wrote books about their experiences, most recently one of the three Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the botched raid that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor.Jonathan Mattingly, who did not face any charges for his role in the raid, retired in 2021 and quickly wrote a tell-all book about the incident. Published through right-wing outlet The Daily Wire's imprint DW Books, Mattingly's book frames himself as a good cop unjustly vilified by "the media and the woke mob." He repeatedly blames Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who shot and wounded Mattingly after police broke down the door while executing a warrant late at night, for provoking officers to kill Taylor. (Attorneys for Walker in his civil suit against the Louisville Department assert the book "perpetuates a lie" that their client knew it was police officers knocking down the door.) Mattingly also devotes part of the book to his past assignments in an "alpha male" street crime unit and suggests celebrities such as LeBron James and Oprah Winfrey spread lies about the raid. In one section, he claims that defense attorneys refused to take him on as a client — something he suggests was discrimination due to his "race and profession." "I guess Oprah was wrong. My whiteness didn't give me that unfair advantage or even a fair playing field. I'm simply a white guy in a WOKE world," Mattingly writes.A Republican gubernatorial candidate canceled his appearance at a fundraiser last month after learning Mattingly would also be a speaker. The cops who stayedPolice officers back their own. Even officers accused of severe misconduct often keep working as cops – including in cases where police departments shell out millions to settle civil lawsuits."There's that thin blue line where officers are not just reluctant to, but don't report on one another. It's such a pervasive problem," said Mari Newman, a civil rights attorney in Colorado who has sued police departments. "Officers don't just stick together, but cover up each other's wrongdoing." Three officers who in 2020 placed a "spit hood" over the head of Daniel Prude, then pushed his face into the ground, suffocating him to death, were working for the Rochester, New York police department as recently as last year, city records show. The city paid $12 million to Prude's family; the officers were not charged. The two officers who shot Stephon Clark seven times in his grandmother's backyard still work for the Sacramento Police Department; that city has paid more than $4 million to Clark's family. The officers were not charged.Involvement in notorious police killings hasn't stopped some officers from receiving promotions and honors.In Seattle, the two officers who killed Charleena Lyles in her apartment in front of her children in 2017 are still on the force, according to city records. Six officers charged and acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 still work for the police department; one has been promoted to lieutenant. The officers who killed Lyles weren't charged. In New York City, Kenneth Boss, one of the officers who fired shots in the killing of Diallo in 1999, stayed on the force for nearly 20 more years after being acquitted of murder charges. Boss received a promotion in 2015, and one year later a New York police union named him a "Sergeant of the Year" for rescuing a couple stranded on an island in Jamaica Bay.An image of George Floyd is seen at a memorial in San Diego for Black Americans who have lost their lives due to systemic racism and racial injustice.Mario Tama/Getty Images It can also take so long to build a criminal case against police that even officers who do get prosecuted can stay on the force for years before charges are brought. Elijah McClain, 23, died in August 2019 after three police officers in Aurora, Colorado, slammed him into a wall, held him to the ground, and put him in a chokehold. Paramedics arriving on the scene diagnosed the by-then unconscious McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with ketamine; he suffered a heart attack on the way to the hospital. An autopsy report found the cause of death to be "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint."McClain, who had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to get cold easily, had been wearing a ski mask while walking through the Denver suburb. A resident called 911 to report a "sketchy" person.Initially, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. The local district attorney, acting on information collected by the police department, declined to prosecute. The department's internal investigation was "cursory and summary at best," independent investigators later found.All three officers went back to work.One of them, Randy Roedema, was involved in another excessive force case the very next year. Another, Jason Rosenblatt, responded "ha ha" when a colleague texted him making fun of McClain's death; he was fired over that incident.Two years after McClain's death a state-appointed special investigator brought charges against the three officers. The new investigation had been spurred by massive racial justice protests in the summer of 2020."Make no mistake, we recognize that this case will be difficult to prosecute," Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said in a news conference at the time. "These types of cases always are."Prosecutors who want to bring charges against officers who kill face a myriad of challenges. There is a standard requiring them to prove that the officer acted unreasonably, a high legal bar. Other officers in a department may stonewall attempts to gain information, and body camera footage from the incidents can be incomplete or nonexistent. Police unions can also be quick to defend their members against any punitive measures for their actions on the job. Even after the charges, the Aurora police union insisted that the officers "did nothing wrong" and that McClain's death was related to his decision to "violently resist arrest." "The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department," the union said in a statement issued at the time of the charges.Officers sometimes leave the department where the incident occurred, transferring townships or jurisdictions. The NYPD reassigned one of the other officers involved in the Diallo killing to a unit at a sleepy airfield in southern Brooklyn where the department conducts helicopter operations. Two of the three officers charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019 left the Jackson, Mississippi police department after Robinson's death, for the nearby city of Clinton's police department.  "We don't want anything to do with a bad cop and if I thought these guys were bad cops, we wouldn't have hired them," Clinton's police chief Ford Hayman told local news in 2020. Hayman and Clinton Mayor Phil Fisher attended the officers' arraignment for moral support. Fisher has implied the criminal charges may be politically motivated and called on the media to "spend as much time in the exoneration process as they have in the accusing process." One of the officers Clinton hired was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison.Police killings have sparked widespread protest movements demanding increased accountability and an end to discriminatory policing.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesIn rare instances, officers are too politically toxic to keep on staff. After killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann has applied for at least two other policing jobs but withdrew his applications after his hiring sparked community furor. Loehmann was not charged in Rice's death, but was fired from the Cleveland police department in 2017 for lying on his employment application.Last year, Loehmann was briefly hired to be the sole cop in the tiny town of Tioga, Pennsylvania, before protest prompted the city to reverse its decision. Tioga's mayor told local news that Rice's death never came up in the interview process."I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour," mayor Dave Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish." The cops who were convictedIn the past 18 years, 172 police have been charged with murder or manslaughter for an on-duty shooting, according to Stinson, the professor at Bowling Green State University, and 55 of them have been convicted of some crime. That data doesn't include cases that didn't involve a gun, like the killings of George Floyd or Tyre Nichols.Out of the 72 officers that Insider researched, 16 of them were convicted or pleaded guilty.Some convicted officers received long sentences, like Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd and is set to remain in prison until 2038. Amber Guyger, the Texas officer convicted of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean after allegedly mistaking his apartment for her own, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though she will be eligible for parole starting in September 2024.In some cases, officers found support from police unions while awaiting trial. Gescard Insora, an NYPD detective who was the first to open fire on Sean Bell in 2006, was acquitted of criminal charges but fired and reported by the New York Post in 2013 to have gotten a job with the Detectives Endowment Association. Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop convicted of killing Laquan McDonald, worked as a janitor for a Chicago police union while his case was pending.Van Dyke, who was released from prison in 2022, now works in construction and still lives with his family in the Chicago area, according to his lawyer Dan Herbert. "He's doing okay," Herbert said. "It took a lot out of him."Jason Van Dyke, was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald. He served less than half of his seven year sentence and was released in 2022.Brian Jackson/Sun-Times via APOthers spend little or no time behind bars. Johannes Mehserle, a transit cop who shot Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, served 11 months in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer who fired a round into a dark stairwell that ricocheted and killed Akai Gurley, was sentenced to five years of probation.Insider couldn't find current contact information for Mehserle and a voicemail left for his father didn't receive a response. One of Liang's lawyers agreed to pass on a reporter's contact info, but no response was received.In Memphis, some hope that the indictment of the five officers who killed Tyre Nichols proves to be a break with the past. Steve Nelson, the Shelby County district attorney, took office last year after beating prosecutor Amy Weirich, who faced allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and a track record of not charging cops, according to the Huffington Post. But the outcome of any case of officer-involved killings or police abuse always carries a level of uncertainty. Policing is fragmented across nearly 18,000 jurisdictions, said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who has studied the effect of racial justice protests on police departments. That means 18,000 different approaches to holding officers accountable for violence."For every example of accountability, it's easy to pick an example of an officer who skirted consequences for misconduct," Nix said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police's Scorpion unit has renewed scrutiny on other elite "street crime" squads around the country. People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesHow elite police units, like the Memphis Scorpion squad that killed Tyre Nichols, commit the crimes they're created to stopThey went by different names.Red Dog. CRASH. The Gun Trace Task Force. Street Crime Unit. The Special Operations Section. The "Death Squad." The Place-Based Investigations Unit.Scorpion.But the specialized "street crime" squads, created in police departments around the country in response to rising rates of homicide and drug- and gun-related crimes, share a pattern of abuse.The outgrowth of decades of popular policing theories that advocate concentrating attention on high-crime areas, "street crime" squads in practice tend to focus on drugs, guns, or gangs – typically in lower-income neighborhoods with fewer white residents. Their aggressive tactics are so notorious – and so similar – that in many cities they're known as "jump-out boys" for the way officers spill out of their cars to accost people during stops. In Chicago, such units have contributed to residents seeing the police as "an occupying force" that make some neighborhoods feel like "an open-air prison," the Department of Justice found in 2017."They patrol our streets like they are the dog catchers and we are the dogs," one Chicago resident told investigators.The proliferation of these "street crime" squads is under renewed scrutiny after five members of Memphis's Scorpion unit were charged earlier this year with beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to death in what should have been a routine traffic stop."What we've seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behavior of these units can morph into 'wolf pack' misconduct," Ben Crump, an attorney for Nichols' family, which is suing the city, wrote in an open letter to the city of Memphis last month. "The 'why' of Tyre Nichols's death is found in this policing culture itself."Insider's review of nearly two dozen units established to target neighborhoods police viewed as high-crime zones found repeated complaints of abuse, discrimination, criminal violence, and corruption. Oftentimes, these units have been disbanded after egregious incidents, including the use of deadly force, only to be reconstituted months or years later under a different name when  they become politically popular again. Specialized units have been connected to some of the most high-profile and flagrant cases of police brutality of the last 30 years, including the killings of Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner."There are umpteen examples of this turning into a nightmare. These elite units are going off the rails," said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has written extensively about police militarization. "It happens so often that you have to conclude this is a flawed model."A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.Brian Snyder/ReutersTyre Nichols and the Memphis Scorpion unit On the evening of January 7, members of the Memphis police department stopped Tyre Nichols in the middle of a six-lane road on the outskirts of the city for what they alleged was reckless driving. It was dark. A group of officers, screaming obscenities, yanked him from his car and forced him to lay on the ground. One member of the unit used pepper spray, hitting Nichols and some of the other officers. Nichols broke free and ran down a nearby street."I hope they stomp his ass," one of the pepper-sprayed officers, who stayed behind at the scene of the stop, is heard saying on body-camera footage.About eight minutes later, officers found Nichols a half-mile away. Officers shook him, sprayed him with pepper spray, and kicked him in the head, footage released by the city shows. As Nichols staggered, moaning incoherently, some officers held him upright while others punched him in the head.After several minutes, officers handcuffed Nichols and leaned him against a car. In the roughly 20 minutes before he was loaded into an ambulance, Nichols was mostly silent and motionless.Nichols, who family members described as a free spirit skateboarder and photographer with his mom's name tattooed on his arm, died three days later. State police investigators said he died from injuries sustained during the "use-of-force incident with officers." Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Dean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentMemphis launched Scorpion in fall 2021, with four teams of 10 officers each directed to focus on violent crime. Memphis clocked more than 300 murders that year and 290 in 2020, far more than in the years before the pandemic. Only a few months after forming Scorpion, Mayor Jim Strickland was already boasting that the unit was helping turn the tide."Since its inception last October through January 23, 2022, the Scorpion Unit has had a total of 566 arrests — 390 of them felony arrests," he said. "They have seized over $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons."Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis disbanded the unit in the wake of Nichols' homicide.The contours of Nichols's death resonate with New Yorkers who recall the era of stop-and-frisk, with Atlantans who remember the heyday of the Red Dog unit, with Baltimore residents scarred by the abuses of the Gun Trace Task Force – and with residents of dozens of other major cities that have established elite, aggressive units dedicated to targeting specific neighborhoods where police believe crime proliferates.An elite squad's mistakes led to Breonna Taylor's deathLouisville, Kentucky's Place-Based Investigations unit was supposed to help police eliminate some of the most persistent violent crime in the city. Tasked with going after drugs and guns, the unit, founded in 2019, was disbanded fewer than six months later after a botched police raid killed 26-year-old emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor.The unit's very first mission was targeting suspected drug dealing on Elliott Avenue, miles from Taylor's home. But the scope of its investigation rapidly broadened to include Taylor, who police erroneously suspected of holding drugs on behalf of her ex-boyfriend. Plainclothes officers, acting on false information from the Place-Based Investigations Unit, broke into Taylor's home with a battering ram, failing to knock and announce their presence as their warrant required. Inside, Taylor's boyfriend, who later told police he thought an intruder was trying to break in, shot one officer in the thigh. Police opened fire on the couple, killing Taylor.Later, in a plea agreement, one of the members of the Place-Based Investigations unit would admit that she and other officers based the justification for the warrant to search Taylor's home not on evidence, but on a "gut belief." Taylor's death helped spur the swell of nationwide protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020.The story behind the creation of the Place-Based Investigations Unit shows how well-intentioned academic researchers and ties to other police officers can help such squads proliferate around the country, Kraska, the Eastern Kentucky University professor, said.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisThe Louisville department had consulted with Tamara Herold, a former Cincinnati police officer turned University of Nevada Las Vegas criminologist, about a study that seemed to show that focusing an increased police presence on geographic areas with high levels of crime could lead to sustained crime reductions. Two years after Taylor's death, nine other cities had adopted the model, the Washington Post reported. Herold, who has said Taylor's death was a "horrific tragedy" but is "not a defining feature of this initiative," is still pitching it to police departments. "Hot-spots policing can be very effective. Cops count. When police are present, we can have a significant deterrent effect," Herold told the Police 1 podcast last month, acknowledging that if done poorly, the model can "strain police-community relationships." Herold did not respond to a request for comment.Memphis's Scorpion unit emerged a few years after a regional anti-crime group consulted with former New York City Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly on a strategy for tackling gang violence. Kelly is the architect of some of New York's most controversial policing strategies, including the creation of anti-crime units, and is a vocal advocate for stop-and-frisk.Reports from the private investigations firm K2 Intelligence, where Kelly then worked, recommended Memphis increase staffing levels in specialized units to fight street crime. By 2019, according to the Marshall Project, the city had done so.The New York Police Department directed officers to aggressively target suspicious activity in neighborhoods they viewed as high-crime areas. Here, officers frisk and arrest men in Harlem in 1995.Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesMemphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Davis, who took the reins of the Memphis PD in 2021, previously led the force in Durham, North Carolina. Before that, she rose through the ranks in Atlanta, including a stint leading a unit of the so-called Red Dogs, an Atlanta street-crime squad that was disbanded in the face of abuse allegations and lawsuits.Elite police units are magnets for scandal Virtually every big city has had an elite unit that's been broken up after leaders concluded that it went too far. Atlanta public safety commissioner George Napper created the Red Dog unit in 1987, at a time when Atlanta was dealing with a surge in crack cocaine use. Its name comes from a football play, but was later claimed to be an acronym for "Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia." An article in the Atlanta Constitution from its first year describes how the team would descend on reports of drug activity, make arrests, and seize drugs and cash."When the squad sweeps an area, anyone moving, especially young, black males, is told to hit the ground, hands behind his head, face down," the newspaper said. "Police officials admit the squad does little to reduce the flow of drugs into the city or the demand for them, but Mr. Napper said even what little the squad can do is important."Two decades later, though, the concerns about the unit's methods and effectiveness that had been raised from the start came to a head. The unit was abolished in 2011 after a raid on the Eagle, a gay bar, whose patrons and employees filed lawsuits claiming that police illegally detained them and used homophobic slurs while they lay handcuffed on the barroom floor. The city ended up paying more than $1 million in settlements.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisDecades before Atlanta ended its elite unit operations, Detroit scrapped its "Stress" anti-robbery squad in the 1970s after its members shot dozens of rounds into an apartment where off-duty Wayne County deputies were playing poker, killing two. Chicago disbanded its Special Operations Section in 2007 amid a wide-ranging corruption scandal. Prosecutors ultimately charged 13 of its members with breaking into homes to rob residents and conducting illegal traffic stops to shake down drivers. Eleven pleaded guilty and two went to prison, including one who admitted to ordering a hit on a fellow officer he believed was collaborating with the federal investigation.   The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.More recently, in Baltimore, all eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were charged in 2017 and convicted of crimes including robbing drug dealers, stealing cash and filing bogus overtime claims. And in 2021, Springfield, Massachusetts responded to a Justice Department report about abuses by its narcotics bureau by shifting the team's focus to firearms.Police chiefs say elite teams are popular and effectiveMany police leaders and criminologists say specialized units do work that other officers can't. Uniformed officers conducting patrols or responding to 911 calls don't have the time or tools to surveil gangs and gather information on the flow of drugs and guns, they say, and it takes dedicated officers to take criminal networks down.Tyre Nichols's death is far from the only instance where what should have been a routine traffic stop turned violent. In May 2020, Atlanta police threatened college student Messiah Young with a handgun before arresting Young and his passenger. The officers were fired. This photo is a still pulled from body camera footage.Associated PressThe units can also be politically popular. "Police departments say these units are created in response to community demand for specialized policing," said Jorge Camacho, a former New York prosecutor now with Yale Law School.The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.Meanwhile, police chiefs contend they are essential to fighting crime."It works. They make a lot of good cases, a lot of good arrests. Put a lot of bad people away to help solve the issue," Florida's Orange County Sheriff John W. Mina, who previously led the Orlando Police Department, told CNN last year.Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. New York Mayor Eric Adams reintroduced the city's controversial street crime units last year. Here, Adams points to a chart of gun violence he said shows his policies are working.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe popularity of these units among some elected officials, criminologists, and law enforcement can sometimes shield them from scrutiny, allowing abusive practices and corruption to fester. Police leaders had been receiving complaints about the Gun Trace Task Force for years before it was disbanded in 2017, The Baltimore Sun reported, including a 2015 tip from a local reporter that the task force's leader, Wayne Jenkins, was robbing people. Until his arrest on racketeering charges in 2017, Jenkins was widely considered "a rising talent," the Sun wrote, "with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods."There's not a clear explanation for why so many elite units go bad. In interviews with Insider, experts suggested that a confluence of mission overreach, militarized training, inadequate supervision, racism, and other factors could be to blame.Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. August 10, 2016U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights DivisionA recent report from the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank, castigated U.S. police academies' "paramilitary approach" to training for prompting police officers to view community members "as the enemy." Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said lowering the ratio of officers to supervisors within elite units could begin to address some of their issues."When you have these young, aggressive, proactive cops all together, with no controls, what do you think is going to happen?" Alpert said. "These units need more supervision, more control."Camacho said that part of the problem is that when all police have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."You have a bunch of officers with a mandate to look at homicide," he said, prompting them to be "hyper-vigilant." "They view anything as an indicator of violent crime," he added, "and respond accordingly.""There is no hunting like the hunting of man"Even after decades of elite units being shut down over abuses, cities have continually found ways to resurrect them. In New York, one notorious police unit has twice been disbanded only to come back from the dead.The cyclical saga of the Street Crime Unit is a prime example of how even after egregious incidents, such squads are often reconstituted under a different name, even as their mission and tactics remain the same.Established in 1971, by the late 1990s, the NYPD's Street Crime Unit was "known as the commandos" of the department, "an elite squad of nearly 400 officers," a New York Times reporter wrote in 1999, "dispatched into menacing neighborhoods each night to chase down rapists, muggers and dangerous fugitives, and above all, to get illegal guns off the streets."They wore t-shirts with a Hemingway quote: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."Former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, shown here leaving a press conference after a federal judge ruled the department's use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, later consulted on the formation of Memphis's Scorpion squad.Andrew Burton/Getty ImagesThe unit made up less than 2% of the force but seized 40% of the illegal guns confiscated by the NYPD. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani preached a "broken windows" policing doctrine that advocated zero tolerance toward even minor offenses.In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot."I wish I could bottle their enthusiasm and make everyone take a drink of it," then-NYPD commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Daily News in 1998. But on February 4, 1999, four members of the Street Crime Unit fired 41 bullets at 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo while he was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, after the officers said he reached into his pocket as if to draw a firearm. Diallo was unarmed and reaching for his wallet, multiple investigations into his killing later found. The officers were acquitted of criminal charges and temporarily reassigned to desk duty.The police killing sparked a maelstrom of accusations that the Street Crime Unit's pervasive violence, particularly against poor, Black and brown New Yorkers, had gone ignored for years. Investigation of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department's Narcotics Bureau. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts. July 8, 2020United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office District of MassachusettsUproar over Diallo's death — and a class-action lawsuit challenging the department's use of stop-and-frisks, which plaintiffs said was a form of illegal racial profiling — forced the NYPD to disband the Street Crime Unit in 2002.In spirit, though, the Street Crime Unit continued. Many of its officers were absorbed into new plainclothes units, called anti-crime units, that were charged with the same mission of preventing violent crime. And their tactics spread: NYPD officers made more stop-and-frisks in the early 2000s than they had in the 1990s, a second class-action lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleged. The ranks of anti-crime units grew to nearly 600 officers by 2020.  "The problem on a most basic, fundamental level is that the leadership of most departments does not want to deal with the Constitution," New York civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, who sued the city over stop-and-frisk, told Insider.The purpose of stopping so many New Yorkers for patdowns was explicitly racial, then-state senator Eric Adams testified in federal court in 2013. An analysis by The Intercept found that plainclothes officers, including members of the anti-crime units, were responsible for or involved in 31% of police shootings since 2000, despite composing only 2% of the police force. The anti-crime units were involved in notorious police killings, including the fatal 2018 shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally ill man, in Brooklyn; the fatal 2006 shooting of Sean Bell; and, in 2014, the death by suffocation of Eric Garner, whose last words, "I can't breathe," have become an emblem of protests against police brutality.  Amid the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, another police commissioner decided to shut down the units. The NYPD "can move away from brute force," then-commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time.But less than two years later, now-Mayor Adams brought back the controversial squads, this time rebranded Neighborhood Safety Teams, amid a panic over rising crime rates and a deadly attack in 2022 on two police officers. A member of Chicago's Special Operations Squad making an arrest in 2005, two years before the unit was broken up amid allegations of corruption.Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty ImagesAdams promised not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But he also said the squads were necessary in order to disrupt "the flow of guns in our cities."Their early record has not been promising. Most of the arrests made by the Neighborhood Safety Teams have nothing to do with guns, City & State reported. The most frequent type of arrest their officers have made is for possession of a fake ID.Elite police squads get rebranded after controversies New York is far from the only place where notorious squads have been disbanded and reformed. The New Haven Police Department dissolved its Street Interdiction Squad in 2007 amid a theft and bribery scandal, then reconstituted it two years later. Miami resurrected its Street Narcotics Unit under a new moniker, but was forced to dissolve it in 2013 under fire from the Department of Justice, which partially blamed it for a spate of police shootings. Experts say cities that stand up street crimes units risk replacing one kind of violence with another. Such units bring "a new level of aggression and threat to the community," said Maurice Hobson, a professor at Georgia State University who has written a book about Atlanta's Red Dog unit. After Atlanta shut the unit down, the city also created a new specialist team to take its place: the APEX unit. (In 2021, the unit was rebranded as the Titan unit.) "From people in the community, the only change when the APEX unit came out was they changed their uniforms," said Tiffany Roberts, the policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights. The death of Tyre Nichols has prompted others to come forward with claims of mistreatment at the hands of the Scorpion unit. Maurice Chalmers-Stokes, 19, told Memphis media that he was thrown into a fence last fall by a group of officers, including one of the cops accused of killing Nichols. He is suing the city, and fighting charges for possessing a stolen gun that police say they found on him in that interaction.NPR reported that four of the five officers charged in Nichols's death, who had two to six years of experience, had been disciplined by the Memphis police. One of the officers, Demetrius Haley, was disciplined in 2021 for not reporting an incident where a colleague — who resigned — yanked a woman from a car and dislocated her shoulder.Haley was also named in a 2016 lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who said that Haley was one of the corrections officers who abused him at a Shelby County jail. The case was dismissed. Moore, who worked on the New York City stop-and-frisk case, said part of the issue with elite units is that some of them are stretched too thin. But he said no matter how many supervisors are on the job, street-crime teams often do what politicians and policymakers want them to do."Leadership does not want these officers to have their hands tied," he said. "They want them to go out and be aggressive."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police's Scorpion unit has renewed scrutiny on other elite "street crime" squads around the country. People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesHow elite police units, like the Memphis Scorpion squad that killed Tyre Nichols, commit the crimes they're created to stopThey went by different names.Red Dog. CRASH. The Gun Trace Task Force. Street Crime Unit. The Special Operations Section. The "Death Squad." The Place-Based Investigations Unit.Scorpion.But the specialized "street crime" squads, created in police departments around the country in response to rising rates of homicide and drug- and gun-related crimes, share a pattern of abuse.The outgrowth of decades of popular policing theories that advocate concentrating attention on high-crime areas, "street crime" squads in practice tend to focus on drugs, guns, or gangs – typically in lower-income neighborhoods with fewer white residents. Their aggressive tactics are so notorious – and so similar – that in many cities they're known as "jump-out boys" for the way officers spill out of their cars to accost people during stops. In Chicago, such units have contributed to residents seeing the police as "an occupying force" that make some neighborhoods feel like "an open-air prison," the Department of Justice found in 2017."They patrol our streets like they are the dog catchers and we are the dogs," one Chicago resident told investigators.The proliferation of these "street crime" squads is under renewed scrutiny after five members of Memphis's Scorpion unit were charged earlier this year with beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to death in what should have been a routine traffic stop."What we've seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behavior of these units can morph into 'wolf pack' misconduct," Ben Crump, an attorney for Nichols' family, which is suing the city, wrote in an open letter to the city of Memphis last month. "The 'why' of Tyre Nichols's death is found in this policing culture itself."Insider's review of nearly two dozen units established to target neighborhoods police viewed as high-crime zones found repeated complaints of abuse, discrimination, criminal violence, and corruption. Oftentimes, these units have been disbanded after egregious incidents, including the use of deadly force, only to be reconstituted months or years later under a different name when  they become politically popular again. Specialized units have been connected to some of the most high-profile and flagrant cases of police brutality of the last 30 years, including the killings of Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner."There are umpteen examples of this turning into a nightmare. These elite units are going off the rails," said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has written extensively about police militarization. "It happens so often that you have to conclude this is a flawed model."A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.Brian Snyder/ReutersTyre Nichols and the Memphis Scorpion unit On the evening of January 7, members of the Memphis police department stopped Tyre Nichols in the middle of a six-lane road on the outskirts of the city for what they alleged was reckless driving. It was dark. A group of officers, screaming obscenities, yanked him from his car and forced him to lay on the ground. One member of the unit used pepper spray, hitting Nichols and some of the other officers. Nichols broke free and ran down a nearby street."I hope they stomp his ass," one of the pepper-sprayed officers, who stayed behind at the scene of the stop, is heard saying on body-camera footage.About eight minutes later, officers found Nichols a half-mile away. Officers shook him, sprayed him with pepper spray, and kicked him in the head, footage released by the city shows. As Nichols staggered, moaning incoherently, some officers held him upright while others punched him in the head.After several minutes, officers handcuffed Nichols and leaned him against a car. In the roughly 20 minutes before he was loaded into an ambulance, Nichols was mostly silent and motionless.Nichols, who family members described as a free spirit skateboarder and photographer with his mom's name tattooed on his arm, died three days later. State police investigators said he died from injuries sustained during the "use-of-force incident with officers." Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Dean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentMemphis launched Scorpion in fall 2021, with four teams of 10 officers each directed to focus on violent crime. Memphis clocked more than 300 murders that year and 290 in 2020, far more than in the years before the pandemic. Only a few months after forming Scorpion, Mayor Jim Strickland was already boasting that the unit was helping turn the tide."Since its inception last October through January 23, 2022, the Scorpion Unit has had a total of 566 arrests — 390 of them felony arrests," he said. "They have seized over $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons."Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis disbanded the unit in the wake of Nichols' homicide.The contours of Nichols's death resonate with New Yorkers who recall the era of stop-and-frisk, with Atlantans who remember the heyday of the Red Dog unit, with Baltimore residents scarred by the abuses of the Gun Trace Task Force – and with residents of dozens of other major cities that have established elite, aggressive units dedicated to targeting specific neighborhoods where police believe crime proliferates.An elite squad's mistakes led to Breonna Taylor's deathLouisville, Kentucky's Place-Based Investigations unit was supposed to help police eliminate some of the most persistent violent crime in the city. Tasked with going after drugs and guns, the unit, founded in 2019, was disbanded fewer than six months later after a botched police raid killed 26-year-old emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor.The unit's very first mission was targeting suspected drug dealing on Elliott Avenue, miles from Taylor's home. But the scope of its investigation rapidly broadened to include Taylor, who police erroneously suspected of holding drugs on behalf of her ex-boyfriend. Plainclothes officers, acting on false information from the Place-Based Investigations Unit, broke into Taylor's home with a battering ram, failing to knock and announce their presence as their warrant required. Inside, Taylor's boyfriend, who later told police he thought an intruder was trying to break in, shot one officer in the thigh. Police opened fire on the couple, killing Taylor.Later, in a plea agreement, one of the members of the Place-Based Investigations unit would admit that she and other officers based the justification for the warrant to search Taylor's home not on evidence, but on a "gut belief." Taylor's death helped spur the swell of nationwide protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020.The story behind the creation of the Place-Based Investigations Unit shows how well-intentioned academic researchers and ties to other police officers can help such squads proliferate around the country, Kraska, the Eastern Kentucky University professor, said.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisThe Louisville department had consulted with Tamara Herold, a former Cincinnati police officer turned University of Nevada Las Vegas criminologist, about a study that seemed to show that focusing an increased police presence on geographic areas with high levels of crime could lead to sustained crime reductions. Two years after Taylor's death, nine other cities had adopted the model, the Washington Post reported. Herold, who has said Taylor's death was a "horrific tragedy" but is "not a defining feature of this initiative," is still pitching it to police departments. "Hot-spots policing can be very effective. Cops count. When police are present, we can have a significant deterrent effect," Herold told the Police 1 podcast last month, acknowledging that if done poorly, the model can "strain police-community relationships." Herold did not respond to a request for comment.Memphis's Scorpion unit emerged a few years after a regional anti-crime group consulted with former New York City Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly on a strategy for tackling gang violence. Kelly is the architect of some of New York's most controversial policing strategies, including the creation of anti-crime units, and is a vocal advocate for stop-and-frisk.Reports from the private investigations firm K2 Intelligence, where Kelly then worked, recommended Memphis increase staffing levels in specialized units to fight street crime. By 2019, according to the Marshall Project, the city had done so.The New York Police Department directed officers to aggressively target suspicious activity in neighborhoods they viewed as high-crime areas. Here, officers frisk and arrest men in Harlem in 1995.Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesMemphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Davis, who took the reins of the Memphis PD in 2021, previously led the force in Durham, North Carolina. Before that, she rose through the ranks in Atlanta, including a stint leading a unit of the so-called Red Dogs, an Atlanta street-crime squad that was disbanded in the face of abuse allegations and lawsuits.Elite police units are magnets for scandal Virtually every big city has had an elite unit that's been broken up after leaders concluded that it went too far. Atlanta public safety commissioner George Napper created the Red Dog unit in 1987, at a time when Atlanta was dealing with a surge in crack cocaine use. Its name comes from a football play, but was later claimed to be an acronym for "Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia." An article in the Atlanta Constitution from its first year describes how the team would descend on reports of drug activity, make arrests, and seize drugs and cash."When the squad sweeps an area, anyone moving, especially young, black males, is told to hit the ground, hands behind his head, face down," the newspaper said. "Police officials admit the squad does little to reduce the flow of drugs into the city or the demand for them, but Mr. Napper said even what little the squad can do is important."Two decades later, though, the concerns about the unit's methods and effectiveness that had been raised from the start came to a head. The unit was abolished in 2011 after a raid on the Eagle, a gay bar, whose patrons and employees filed lawsuits claiming that police illegally detained them and used homophobic slurs while they lay handcuffed on the barroom floor. The city ended up paying more than $1 million in settlements.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisDecades before Atlanta ended its elite unit operations, Detroit scrapped its "Stress" anti-robbery squad in the 1970s after its members shot dozens of rounds into an apartment where off-duty Wayne County deputies were playing poker, killing two. Chicago disbanded its Special Operations Section in 2007 amid a wide-ranging corruption scandal. Prosecutors ultimately charged 13 of its members with breaking into homes to rob residents and conducting illegal traffic stops to shake down drivers. Eleven pleaded guilty and two went to prison, including one who admitted to ordering a hit on a fellow officer he believed was collaborating with the federal investigation.   The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.More recently, in Baltimore, all eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were charged in 2017 and convicted of crimes including robbing drug dealers, stealing cash and filing bogus overtime claims. And in 2021, Springfield, Massachusetts responded to a Justice Department report about abuses by its narcotics bureau by shifting the team's focus to firearms.Police chiefs say elite teams are popular and effectiveMany police leaders and criminologists say specialized units do work that other officers can't. Uniformed officers conducting patrols or responding to 911 calls don't have the time or tools to surveil gangs and gather information on the flow of drugs and guns, they say, and it takes dedicated officers to take criminal networks down.Tyre Nichols's death is far from the only instance where what should have been a routine traffic stop turned violent. In May 2020, Atlanta police threatened college student Messiah Young with a handgun before arresting Young and his passenger. The officers were fired. This photo is a still pulled from body camera footage.Associated PressThe units can also be politically popular. "Police departments say these units are created in response to community demand for specialized policing," said Jorge Camacho, a former New York prosecutor now with Yale Law School.The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.Meanwhile, police chiefs contend they are essential to fighting crime."It works. They make a lot of good cases, a lot of good arrests. Put a lot of bad people away to help solve the issue," Florida's Orange County Sheriff John W. Mina, who previously led the Orlando Police Department, told CNN last year.Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. New York Mayor Eric Adams reintroduced the city's controversial street crime units last year. Here, Adams points to a chart of gun violence he said shows his policies are working.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe popularity of these units among some elected officials, criminologists, and law enforcement can sometimes shield them from scrutiny, allowing abusive practices and corruption to fester. Police leaders had been receiving complaints about the Gun Trace Task Force for years before it was disbanded in 2017, The Baltimore Sun reported, including a 2015 tip from a local reporter that the task force's leader, Wayne Jenkins, was robbing people. Until his arrest on racketeering charges in 2017, Jenkins was widely considered "a rising talent," the Sun wrote, "with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods."There's not a clear explanation for why so many elite units go bad. In interviews with Insider, experts suggested that a confluence of mission overreach, militarized training, inadequate supervision, racism, and other factors could be to blame.Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. August 10, 2016U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights DivisionA recent report from the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank, castigated U.S. police academies' "paramilitary approach" to training for prompting police officers to view community members "as the enemy." Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said lowering the ratio of officers to supervisors within elite units could begin to address some of their issues."When you have these young, aggressive, proactive cops all together, with no controls, what do you think is going to happen?" Alpert said. "These units need more supervision, more control."Camacho said that part of the problem is that when all police have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."You have a bunch of officers with a mandate to look at homicide," he said, prompting them to be "hyper-vigilant." "They view anything as an indicator of violent crime," he added, "and respond accordingly.""There is no hunting like the hunting of man"Even after decades of elite units being shut down over abuses, cities have continually found ways to resurrect them. In New York, one notorious police unit has twice been disbanded only to come back from the dead.The cyclical saga of the Street Crime Unit is a prime example of how even after egregious incidents, such squads are often reconstituted under a different name, even as their mission and tactics remain the same.Established in 1971, by the late 1990s, the NYPD's Street Crime Unit was "known as the commandos" of the department, "an elite squad of nearly 400 officers," a New York Times reporter wrote in 1999, "dispatched into menacing neighborhoods each night to chase down rapists, muggers and dangerous fugitives, and above all, to get illegal guns off the streets."They wore t-shirts with a Hemingway quote: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."Former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, shown here leaving a press conference after a federal judge ruled the department's use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, later consulted on the formation of Memphis's Scorpion squad.Andrew Burton/Getty ImagesThe unit made up less than 2% of the force but seized 40% of the illegal guns confiscated by the NYPD. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani preached a "broken windows" policing doctrine that advocated zero tolerance toward even minor offenses.In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot."I wish I could bottle their enthusiasm and make everyone take a drink of it," then-NYPD commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Daily News in 1998. But on February 4, 1999, four members of the Street Crime Unit fired 41 bullets at 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo while he was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, after the officers said he reached into his pocket as if to draw a firearm. Diallo was unarmed and reaching for his wallet, multiple investigations into his killing later found. The officers were acquitted of criminal charges and temporarily reassigned to desk duty.The police killing sparked a maelstrom of accusations that the Street Crime Unit's pervasive violence, particularly against poor, Black and brown New Yorkers, had gone ignored for years. Investigation of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department's Narcotics Bureau. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts. July 8, 2020United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office District of MassachusettsUproar over Diallo's death — and a class-action lawsuit challenging the department's use of stop-and-frisks, which plaintiffs said was a form of illegal racial profiling — forced the NYPD to disband the Street Crime Unit in 2002.In spirit, though, the Street Crime Unit continued. Many of its officers were absorbed into new plainclothes units, called anti-crime units, that were charged with the same mission of preventing violent crime. And their tactics spread: NYPD officers made more stop-and-frisks in the early 2000s than they had in the 1990s, a second class-action lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleged. The ranks of anti-crime units grew to nearly 600 officers by 2020.  "The problem on a most basic, fundamental level is that the leadership of most departments does not want to deal with the Constitution," New York civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, who sued the city over stop-and-frisk, told Insider.The purpose of stopping so many New Yorkers for patdowns was explicitly racial, then-state senator Eric Adams testified in federal court in 2013. An analysis by The Intercept found that plainclothes officers, including members of the anti-crime units, were responsible for or involved in 31% of police shootings since 2000, despite composing only 2% of the police force. The anti-crime units were involved in notorious police killings, including the fatal 2018 shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally ill man, in Brooklyn; the fatal 2006 shooting of Sean Bell; and, in 2014, the death by suffocation of Eric Garner, whose last words, "I can't breathe," have become an emblem of protests against police brutality.  Amid the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, another police commissioner decided to shut down the units. The NYPD "can move away from brute force," then-commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time.But less than two years later, now-Mayor Adams brought back the controversial squads, this time rebranded Neighborhood Safety Teams, amid a panic over rising crime rates and a deadly attack in 2022 on two police officers. A member of Chicago's Special Operations Squad making an arrest in 2005, two years before the unit was broken up amid allegations of corruption.Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty ImagesAdams promised not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But he also said the squads were necessary in order to disrupt "the flow of guns in our cities."Their early record has not been promising. Most of the arrests made by the Neighborhood Safety Teams have nothing to do with guns, City & State reported. The most frequent type of arrest their officers have made is for possession of a fake ID.Elite police squads get rebranded after controversies New York is far from the only place where notorious squads have been disbanded and reformed. The New Haven Police Department dissolved its Street Interdiction Squad in 2007 amid a theft and bribery scandal, then reconstituted it two years later. Miami resurrected its Street Narcotics Unit under a new moniker, but was forced to dissolve it in 2013 under fire from the Department of Justice, which partially blamed it for a spate of police shootings. Experts say cities that stand up street crimes units risk replacing one kind of violence with another. Such units bring "a new level of aggression and threat to the community," said Maurice Hobson, a professor at Georgia State University who has written a book about Atlanta's Red Dog unit. After Atlanta shut the unit down, the city also created a new specialist team to take its place: the APEX unit. (In 2021, the unit was rebranded as the Titan unit.) "From people in the community, the only change when the APEX unit came out was they changed their uniforms," said Tiffany Roberts, the policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights. The death of Tyre Nichols has prompted others to come forward with claims of mistreatment at the hands of the Scorpion unit. Maurice Chalmers-Stokes, 19, told Memphis media that he was thrown into a fence last fall by a group of officers, including one of the cops accused of killing Nichols. He is suing the city, and fighting charges for possessing a stolen gun that police say they found on him in that interaction.NPR reported that four of the five officers charged in Nichols's death, who had two to six years of experience, had been disciplined by the Memphis police. One of the officers, Demetrius Haley, was disciplined in 2021 for not reporting an incident where a colleague — who resigned — yanked a woman from a car and dislocated her shoulder.Haley was also named in a 2016 lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who said that Haley was one of the corrections officers who abused him at a Shelby County jail. The case was dismissed. Moore, who worked on the New York City stop-and-frisk case, said part of the issue with elite units is that some of them are stretched too thin. But he said no matter how many supervisors are on the job, street-crime teams often do what politicians and policymakers want them to do."Leadership does not want these officers to have their hands tied," he said. "They want them to go out and be aggressive."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

An overhead "sky cop" camera offered the most thorough visual accounting of Tyre Nichols' beating; this time the criminals they stopped were cops. The image from video released on Jan. 27, 2023, by the City of Memphis, shows Tyre Nichols on the ground as medics arrive during a brutal attack by five Memphis police officers on Jan. 7, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn.City of Memphis via AP All 5 officers charged in Tyre Nichols' death failed to capture the entire incident on body cameras. Three of the five removed their cameras during the still-active scene, according to new police docs. All 5 officers were fired and have since been charged with second-degree murder. All five Memphis Police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols failed to capture the entire encounter on their body-worn cameras, and three of the five fully removed their body-worn cameras during the still-active scene, according to newly-released police documents obtained by Insider.Following Nichols' death, the police department released portions of responding officers' body-worn camera footage, as well as CCTV video of the encounter. The most thorough accounting of the deadly confrontation, however, came from controversial "sky cop" cameras that are installed throughout Memphis in crime hotspots and have cost the city more than $10 million.Police documents obtained by Insider on Tuesday paint a picture of repeated missteps by responding officers, one of whom admitted to taking and then sharing a photo of Nichols, bloodied, bruised, and handcuffed on his personal cellphone in the aftermath of the confrontation. The Tennessee Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, a state board agency, received the police documents late last month as part of five decertification requests made by the Memphis Police Department for the five officers involved. Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith, Demetrius Haley, and Tadarrius Bean were all fired and have since been charged with second-degree murder in Nichols' death.On the evening of Jan. 7, Memphis police officers stopped Nichols on suspicion of "reckless driving," though police officials have since said they haven't found evidence that Nichols was driving erratically. An initial confrontation between Nichols and several officers ensued as they pulled him out of his vehicle and pushed him to the ground. A second confrontation occurred after Nichols got up and ran away as an officer tried to Tase him. Body-camera footage showed several officers beating Nichols while he was on the ground.Nichols died three days after the traffic stop.Tennessee policy requires officers to activate their body cameras during "all law enforcement encounters and activities."But investigators said Martin failed to activate his body-worn camera during the first confrontation with Nichols. "At some point," he also removed the camera from his duty vest and placed it in an unmarked vehicle, according to the documents.According to the records, Bean also removed his body-worn camera from his duty vest and put it on the trunk of a squad car during the "active scene" and then walked away from the device while it was still recording in order to have a conversation with his fellow officers about the incident. Mills's camera caught the initial interaction with Nichols, officials said, but the officer later removed his duty vest and placed it on the trunk of an unmarked vehicle with the camera still attached.Both Haley and Smith also failed to capture the encounter with Nichols in its entirety, according to police records. Six cops in total have been fired as a result of the beating, and seven more officers with the department are facing an internal investigation and possible discipline, the City of Memphis announced Tuesday.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Mills, an ex-Memphis officer now charged in Tyre Nichols' beating death, was reprimanded for failing to report his use of physical force. Former Memphis Police officer Desmond Mills, Jr., shown here on January 26, 2023, was one of five former offices arrested in the death of Tyre Nichols.Shelby County Sheriff's Office via Associated Press A Memphis ex-cop involved in Tyre Nichols' beating was previously disciplined. Records show that Desmond Mills Jr. received a reprimand for failing to report his use of force. A woman Mills helped arrest alleged that officers beat her and slammed her head into a squad car. One of the former Memphis police officers charged in the beating death of Tyre Nichols was previously disciplined for failing to report his role in a different beating incident, according to disciplinary records released by the Memphis Police Department.Desmond Mills Jr., one of the five ex-officers charged with second-degree murder in 29-year-old Nichols' death, received a written reprimand in 2021 for failing to report his use of physical force during an arrest two years earlier.Mills assisted three other officers in the arrest of a woman on March 21, 2019. He said the woman was resisting arrest, so he grabbed her by the arms and took her to the ground while another officer handcuffed her, according to the disciplinary records.The woman later filed a complaint against the Memphis police officers involved, alleging that one officer grabbed her after she refused to get into his squad car, and that a second officer began beating her with a black object, grabbing her hair, and slamming her head into the squad car. She denied resisting arrest, and reported injuries including a black eye, abrasions, and swelling on her hands and face.Mills had been required to fill out a document known as a "response to resistance form" after using physical force to restrain the woman.Mills himself was not accused of using excessive force in the incident and was only disciplined for his failure to report the incident."Officer Mills stated he was familiar with completing the response to resistance document in Blue Team, but he did not realize it applied to his actions in this case," a document summarizing Mills' disciplinary hearing said. "It was explained to him if the individual refuses to comply with verbal commands and he is required to use any type of physical force to gain compliance, he should complete the response to resistance form."Two of the officers involved in the arrest were later disciplined for "excessive and unnecessary force," and a third was disciplined for failure to report the use of force, as Mills was.Mills' defense attorney did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.In a separate disciplinary incident in March 2019, Mills received another written reprimand for dropping a department-issued device on a roadway, where it was run over by a car.The disciplinary records said Mills reported responding to an accident call on the interstate and placing his "personal digital assistant" in his pocket, where it fell out while he got into his squad car. "The PDA came out and went into the street and an unknown vehicle ran over your PDA," the records said, adding that Mills had violated the department's policy on "Rough or Careless Handling of Equipment."Mills is not the only officer who was disciplined for failing to report a use of force. Ex-officer Demetrius Haley, who is also charged in Nichols' beating death, received a similar written reprimand for a 2021 incident in which he saw a fellow officer rip a woman from her car and dislocate her shoulder.In total, four out of the five officers charged in Nichols' death had previously been disciplined for various matters.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Memphis Police Department Officer Preston Hemphill was "relieved of duty," a spokesman for the department confirmed on Monday. A portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 in Memphis, Tenn. Nichols was killed during a traffic stop with Memphis Police on Jan. 7.Adrian Sainz/AP Photo Officer Preston Hemphill has been placed on paid leave in connection to the fatal arrest of Tyre Nichols.  He is the sixth Memphis police officer to be taken off the force following Nichols' death.  Nichols died three days after a group of officers brutally beat him during a traffic stop on January 7.  An officer involved in the arrest of Tyre Nichols — a Black man who was severely beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee, and later died — has been "relieved of duty," authorities said on Monday. Officer Preston Hemphill is now on paid administrative leave "pending the outcome of the investigation," a spokesman for the Memphis Police Department told Insider. Hemphill joined the Memphis Police Department in 2018. It was not immediately clear what role Hemphill played in the arrest of Nichols. Authorities say 29-year-old Nichols was brutally beaten by five now-fired Memphis Police Department police officers during a traffic stop for "reckless driving" on January 7.Nichols, a father, was hospitalized in critical condition and died three days later.The five other police officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Desmond Mills Jr. — were fired and indicted last week on murder and other charges in connection to Nichols' death. Two firefighters who treated Nichols after the beating were also relieved from duty and the city said its actively reviewing if any additional charges will be filed against the firefighters. On Friday, officials released video of Nichols' arrest, which shows him being tased, pepper sprayed, and punched multiple times. Once in handcuffs, Nichols was observed slumping to the ground after the brutal beating. The officers involved in Nichols' arrest were members of the MPD's SCORPION unit, a specialized unit formed in 2021 to fight violent street crime. On Saturday, in the wake of protests against Nichols' death, the unit was disbanded. Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family, said a private autopsy showed Nichols "suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating, and that his observed injuries are consistent with what the family and attorneys witnessed on the video of his fatal encounter with police on January 7, 2023."Nichols' death has sparked outrage in Memphis and across the country. The city braced for violent demonstration after the release of the video of the arrest on Friday, but the protests remained largely peaceful. Protests in other cities also remained overwhelmingly peaceful. In New York and Los Angeles — where police stood guard in riot gear — there were some clashes.In New York, an NYPD cruiser windshield was smashed. The NYPD told Insider that police arrested three people at a protest near Union Square.In Los Angeles, protesters tore down a police barricade. A man reportedly tossed a lit firework at a police car.But the scenes were nothing like those after the murder of George Floyd in police custody, which set off protests that at times escalated into looting and arson.The Memphis Police Department said Sunday its cops hadn't arrested a single demonstrator.President Joe Biden released a statement on Nichols' death on Thursday, calling it "a painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all.""Public trust is the foundation of public safety and there are still too many places in America today where the bonds of trust are frayed or broken," Biden said in the statement. "We also cannot ignore the fact that fatal encounters with law enforcement have disparately impacted Black and Brown people."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Videos of police brutality can be traumatizing, especially for the Black community. Balancing transparency and mental health is key, experts say. RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, and Rodney Wells, Nichols' stepfather, at a news conference in Memphis, January 23. The family has urged peaceful protests.Gerald Herbert/AP Images Body cam footage of Tyre Nichols' death was released Friday evening. Graphic videos of police brutality can be traumatizing, especially for the Black community. Balancing transparency and accountability with trauma is key, experts say. Memphis is reeling after the release of bodycam footage showing Tyre Nichols being beaten by police.Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died three days after he was held at a traffic stop and beaten by Memphis police officers. The police department fired the five officers, who are facing second-degree murder charges, and released video footage of the arrest Friday evening.But many members of the Black community and police accountability experts say video footage can do more harm than good, even if the evidence can provide transparency and accountability in cases of police brutality.RowVaughn Wells, Nichols' mother, has refused to watch the video, and urged parents not to show it to kids."What I've heard is very horrific, very horrific and any of you who have children please don't let them see it," Wells told the public.Prior to the video release, protesters gathering at Martyr Park in Memphis said they weren't waiting for the videos to reveal what happened because they already knew enough.On social media, some chose to counteract the expected brutality of the footage with images they said were from Nichols' life. One poster shared a video of Nichols skateboarding, saying they hoped the footage would be amplified amid the violence of the video. Video footage can be retraumatizingMembers of the Black community have similarly said they won't be watching the video of Nichols' death, and are urging the public not to share the video. Bodycam footage of police brutality cases are often graphic and can be traumatizing for viewers, especially Black people.—Charity Sadé (@BlckFemmesMattr) January 27, 2023 "It is traumatizing to see, especially for Black people. If it takes watching Black people get tortured & not the fact that we have been screaming forever about the violence from police then they need to figure that sh-t out, but not at the expense of Black people," one Twitter user wrote.Others have shared steps on limiting exposure to graphic video footage, urging people to stop sharing the videos online.Family and officials who watched the video described it as "heinous" and "inhumane.""It was an unadulterated, unabashed, non-stop beating of this young boy for three minutes," Antonio Romanucci, the Nichols family's attorney, said, likening Nichols to "a human pinata."Citizens in Memphis await the release of video footage of Tyre Nichols' death.Gerald Herbert/AP PhotoBodycam footage does not always prevent police brutalityBody-worn cameras are meant to improve officer safety, increase evidence quality, and protect the public.Research on the effectiveness of body cams have yielded mixed results: One 2021 report by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Council on Criminal Justice's Task Force on Policing found that complaints against police dropped 17% and the use of police force fell by nearly 10%, while other studies found no statistically significant differences in either use of force or civilian complaints.In the courtroom, video footage can provide "immeasurably important" evidence in police brutality cases, according to Christopher E. Brown, principal attorney at The Brown Firm, a law firm that litigates cases involving police excessive force.One of the most powerful examples of the significance of video played out in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd. Bodycam footage from the police officers involved in Floyd's arrest revealed his death from various angles, and both prosecutors and defense attorneys used the video extensively throughout the case."If there weren't video, you're dealing with the blue line: the officers protecting one another. From their perspective, it's admirable. From our perspective, it's atrocious. The bodycam footage penetrates that line," Brown told Insider.Balancing transparency and accountabilityReleasing video footage of police brutality is also a way to ensure transparency and accountability for law enforcement, which has an obligation to the public, according to experts."One of the most important things about state violence is that it often happens in public spaces," Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said. "So it really does go beyond the individual interaction between the police officers in question and the person injured. It's a public issue that all of us should be invested in and care about, and that could impact all of us at some point."Bonds, a Black lawyer fighting to end police brutality, said it's "incredibly valid" that viewing graphic footage can be traumatic, and said she doesn't watch these videos unless her work requires it. Having footage available to the public, however, can provide power to pressure law enforcement to hold officers accountable, Bonds said."It is the responsibility of the people who put these videos out there to give viewers advanced notice and the option to opt out," Bonds told Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Videos of police brutality can be traumatizing, especially for the Black community. Balancing transparency and mental health is key, experts say. RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, and Rodney Wells, Nichols' stepfather, at a news conference in Memphis, January 23. The family has urged peaceful protests.Gerald Herbert/AP Images Body cam footage of Tyre Nichols' death is expected to be released Friday evening. Graphic videos of police brutality can be traumatizing, especially for the Black community. Balancing transparency and accountability with trauma is key, experts say. Memphis is bracing for unrest as the public waits for police to release bodycam footage of Tyre Nichols' death.Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died three days after he was held at a traffic stop and beaten by Memphis police officers. The police department fired the five officers, who are facing murder charges, and are expected to release video footage of the arrest on Friday evening.But many members of the Black community and police accountability experts fear that video footage can do more harm than good, even if the evidence can provide transparency and accountability in cases of police brutality.RowVaughn Wells, Nichols' mother, has refused to watch the video, and urged parents not to show kids the video when it's released."What I've heard is very horrific, very horrific and any of you who have children please don't let them see it," Wells told the public.Members of the Memphis clergy and activist community have had several meetings with city officials to discuss planning for the release of the video in a way that would minimize any unrest.Balancing transparency and trauma is a difficult but important necessity for advancing justice, according to police accountability experts and lawyers.Video footage can be retraumatizingMembers of the Black community have similarly said they won't be watching the video of Nichols' death, and are urging the public not to share the video. Bodycam footage of police brutality cases are often graphic and can be traumatizing for viewers, especially Black people.—Charity Sadé (@BlckFemmesMattr) January 27, 2023 "It is traumatizing to see, especially for Black people. If it takes watching Black people get tortured & not the fact that we have been screaming forever about the violence from police then they need to figure that sh-t out, but not at the expense of Black people," one Twitter user wrote.Others have shared steps on limiting exposure to graphic video footage.Family and officials who watched the video described it as "heinous" and "inhumane.""It was an unadulterated, unabashed, non-stop beating of this young boy for three minutes," Antonio Romanucci, the Nichols family's attorney, said, likening Nichols to "a human pinata."Citizens in Memphis await the release of video footage of Tyre Nichols' death.Gerald Herbert/AP PhotoBodycam footage does not always prevent police brutalityBody-worn cameras are meant to improve officer safety, increase evidence quality, and protect the public.Research on the effectiveness of bodycams have yielded mixed results: One 2021 report by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Council on Criminal Justice's Task Force on Policing found that complaints against police dropped 17% and the use of police force fell by nearly 10%, while other studies found no statistically significant differences in either use of force or civilian complaints.In the courtroom, video footage can provide "immeasurably important" evidence in police brutality cases, according to Christopher E. Brown, principal attorney at The Brown Firm, a law firm that litigates cases involving police excessive force.One of the most powerful examples of the significance of video played out in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd. Bodycam footage from the police officers involved in Floyd's arrest revealed his death from various angles, and both prosecutors and defense attorneys used the video extensively throughout the case."If there weren't video, you're dealing with the blue line: the officers protecting one another. From their perspective, it's admirable. From our perspective, it's atrocious. The bodycam footage penetrates that line," Brown told Insider.Balancing transparency and accountability with traumaReleasing video footage of police brutality is a way to ensure transparency and accountability for law enforcement, which has an obligation to the public, according to experts."One of the most important things about state violence is that it often happens in public spaces," Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said. "So it really does go beyond the individual interaction between the police officers in question and the person injured. It's a public issue that all of us should be invested in and care about, and that could impact all of us at some point."Bonds, a Black lawyer fighting to end police brutality, said it's "incredibly valid" that viewing graphic footage can be traumatic, and said she doesn't watch these videos unless her work requires it. Having footage available to the public, however, can provide power to pressure law enforcement to hold officers accountable, Bonds said."It is the responsibility of the people who put these videos out there to give viewers advanced notice and the option to opt out," Bonds told Insider.Regardless of whether members of the public decide to watch the footage, which family attorney Ben Crump said will "evoke strong emotions," the Nichols family remains steadfast in their calls for peaceful protest."This is a special case. We had a special son," Nichols' stepfather Rodney Wells said, adding later, "Please, please protest, but protest safely."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Tyre Nichols died after a confrontation with Memphis police, sparking multiple investigations. Body cam video is due to be released on Friday. A portrait of Tyre Nichols on displayed at a memorial service for him on January 17, 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee.Adrian Sainz/AP Photo Tyre Nichols died after being brutally beaten by five Memphis police officers, city officials have said. The five police officers involved in the beating have been charged with second-degree murder. Here is a timeline of events as they unfolded. Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died three days after he was stopped at a traffic stop and beaten by Memphis police officers.The Memphis Police Department have so far released few details about the incident, but were expected to release video footage of the arrest on Friday evening. Multiple officials warned that the footage is shocking and disturbing, and will likely lead to public protests.Five officers have been charged with Nichols' murder, and have since been released from jail on bond.Here's a timeline of the events, and what we know so far:January 7, around 8:30 p.m: Nichols is stopped, arrested, and beatenMemphis police officers tried to stop Nichols for "reckless driving" near the intersection between Raines Road and Ross Road, according to the department.A confrontation occurred as officers approached his vehicle and Nichols ran away, police said.There was another confrontation when officer tried to arrest him, according to the police.Nichols then said he was experiencing shortness of breath, and an ambulance was called, with Nichols brought to a hospital in "critical condition," according to the police statement.January 10: Nichols diesThe Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that Nichols had "succumbed to his injuries." It gave no official cause of death.Tyre Nichols, who died in a hospital on January 10, three days after sustaining injuries during his arrest by Memphis police officers, is seen in this undated picture obtained from social media.Facebook/Deandre Nichols/via REUTERSJanuary 15: Police announce first investigationsThe Memphis Police Department announced that it was starting its own administrative investigation, and said that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations and the Shelby County District Attorney's Office were also starting an independent investigation into the use of force by Memphis police officers.January 18: DOJ and FBI announce another investigationKevin G. Ritz, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, announced that the the United States Attorney's Office, working with the FBI and Department of Justice, has opened a civil rights investigation.January 20: Memphis Police says five officers firedMemphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Dean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin, and Desmond Mills Jr. are facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentMemphis police said in a statement that five officers were fired, and that its investigation found the five men "violated multiple department policies, including excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid."It named the officers as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith.January 23: Attorneys say beating lasted three minutes, with bodycam footage showing Nichols being used as a "human pinata"After Nichols' family and their lawyers viewed the body cam footage from his arrest, attorney Antonio Romanucci said that officers beat Nichols for three minutes.Rodney Wells, Nichols' stepfather, said that "no father, mother should have to witness what I saw today."Wells added that the footage showed Nichols repeatedly calling out for his mother, according to The Washington Post.Romanucci also said that Nichols was "defenseless the entire time.""He was a human pinata for those police officers," he said. "It was unadulterated, unabashed, non-stop beating of this young boy for three minutes."Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said the footage would be made public at an "appropriate time," when it would not interfere with investigations. Jan. 24: Family autopsy shows he suffered "extensive bleeding"Family attorneys Crump and Romanucci told Insider that their legal team had conducted an independent autopsy of Nichols' body."We can state that preliminary findings indicate Tyre suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating, and that his observed injuries are consistent with what the family and attorneys witnessed on the video of his fatal encounter with police on January 7, 2023," they said.RowVaughn Wells, the mother of Tyre Nichols, cries as she is comforted by Tyre's stepfather Rodney Wells.Gerald Herbert/AP PhotoJanuary 25: Police chief calls the incident "heinous, reckless, and inhumane"Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis condemned the incident, while pledging that her department would cooperate with all investigations.She said that she expects the release of the body cam footage to spark outrage and protests."This incident was heinous, reckless, and inhumane, and in the vein of transparency when the video is released in the coming days, you will see this for yourselves," she said in a statement released late on Wednesday."I expect you to feel what the Nichols family feels, I expect you to feel outrage in the disregard of basic human rights, as our police offers have taken an oath to do the opposite of what transpired on the video."January 26: Fired Memphis police officers charged with murderThe Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that the five officers would be charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping in possession of a deadly weapon, official misconduct, and official oppression. All five were booked into jail, then quickly released after posting bond, according to Fox13Memphis.January 26: Biden says Nichols' death shows the justice system needs workPresident Joe Biden posted a message on Twitter saying he and First Lady Jill Biden "extend our hearts to the family of Tyre Nichols – they deserve a swift, full, and transparent investigation.""Tyre's death is a painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our justice system lives up to the promise of fairness and dignity for all," Biden said.January 27: Police say they can't substantiate reckless driving claimDavis, the police chief, told CNN her department has not been able to substantiate allegations from the five officers that Nichols was driving recklessly, which was the purported cause of the traffic stop. Davis said investigators have pored over cameras at the scene of the traffic stop, as well as officers' body-worn cameras, and haven't found anything proving reckless driving."We've taken a pretty extensive look to determine what the probable cause was, and we have not been able to substantiate that," Davis said. "It doesn't mean that something didn't happen, but there's no proof."January 27: US cities brace for protests ahead of footage releaseMemphis and other major cities across the US were bracing for protests ahead of the scheduled release of the footage on Friday evening.Authorities in New York City; Washington, DC; San Francisco; and Atlanta all confirmed they had been anticipating protests and preparing their police departments.At a press conference on Friday, members of Nichols' family urged protesters to remain peaceful. Nichols' stepfather, Rodney Wells, told reporters he was "very satisfied" with the swift consequences for the five officers involved, which included second-degree murder charges."More importantly, we want peace, we do not want an uproar," he said. January 27: Memphis officials announce an investigation into the SCORPION Unit the 5 officers were serving onPolice Chief Cerelyn Davis announced a review of the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods unit, which was first launched in late 2021. All five officers involved in Nichols' beating were assigned to the unit.The SCORPION unit is a specialized force comprising roughly 50 officers patrolling known hotspots for crime throughout the city, often focusing on seizing weapons and investigating gangs. In its first three months, the unit made over 300 arrests and seized 95 weapons, according to local NBC affiliate WMC.Attorneys representing Nichols' family criticized the SCORPION Unit on Friday, calling for its dissolution. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said he has since learned of several excessive force allegations against SCORPION Unit officers, including a man who said one of the officers threatened him at gunpoint just days before the Nichols beating."We are asking chief Davis to disband the SCORPION Unit, effective immediately," Nicholas family attorney Antonio Romanucci said Friday. "The intent of the SCORPION Unit has now been corrupted. It cannot be brought back to center with any sense of morality and dignity."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Capitol Police Use Of Force Reports Expose Unprovoked Brutality Against Jan. 6 Protesters Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A 104-page report issued three months after the events at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, said the Capitol Police’s Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) was ordered by supervisors not to use “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” like flash bangs. However, video evidence—along with Capitol Police Use of Force Reports obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—exposes conflicts in timelines, the brutality of the unprovoked attacks against Jan. 6 protesters, and how leadership ordered the deployment of munitions on a peaceful crowd. A photographer and police officer give first aid to Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021. The man at left was once wanted by the FBI. (Video Still/Sam Montoya for The Epoch Times) The Video Evidence Victoria White According to Police1, the “#1 resource for law enforcement online,” which promotes “the highest standards of business ethics,” police are trained to target large muscle groups like legs, chest, abdomen, and arms with batons. Intentionally striking areas like the head, sternum, and spine are considered to be the same act of deadly force as firing a gun. However, a video shows Jan. 6 defendant Victoria White being beaten over the head 35 times with a metal baton and punched in the face by an officer of the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia. White, seen wearing a Trump hat, is unarmed and posed no threat to the officer. She raises her hands in defense during the brutal attack, collapsing more than once, only to be stood up by other officers to be maced and beaten again. According to a Use of Force report filed 1/7/21 by Officer Dante Price, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times, “approved strike areas” for use of a baton “include arms, legs and large muscle groups.” Injuries suffered by Dante’s victim required hospital transport. Another report of an injury caused by use of a baton, filed 1/8/21 by Officer Ryan Kendall, states “approved target areas” include the “upper abdomen.” “To add insult to injury,” her legal team said at a Jan. 6, 2022 press conference, “she was indicted for being pushed into the tunnel entrance and for daring to put her hands up in a defensive posture while getting beaten by the police.” White has filed a $1 million lawsuit against D.C. Police Chief Robert Contree and seven unnamed officers, including one known as “Officer Whiteshirt,” given the moniker as it is believed his clothing identified him as an officer in a position of authority. Roseanne Boyland Another video obtained by The Epoch Times shows D.C. Metro Police Officer Lila Morris beating an unconscious 34-year-old Roseanne Boyland of Kennesaw, Georgia with a steel baton and then with a large wooden walking stick. According to witnesses, Boyland lost consciousness and stopped breathing after being crushed beneath the weight of other fallen protesters. Being unconscious, Boyland was no threat to the officer. Video still from bodycam footage showing Officer Lila Morris picking up a wooden stick that she uses to beat Rosanne Boyland. (Metropolitan Police Department/Graphic by The Epoch Times) A DC medical examiner claims Boyland died of an accidental overdose of Adderall, a suspicious ruling that sparked outrage from Boyland’s friends and family. Her father, Bret Boyland, said his daughter had been taking Adderall for about 10 years to treat an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The Epoch Times reported on Feb. 10, an investigation by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau cleared Morris of any wrongdoing and deemed her beating of the unconscious Boyland as “objectively reasonable.” A separate report describes how Morris first used the wooden stick while beating Boyland to strike 41-year-old filmmaker Luke Coffee on the left elbow. A second swing missed before she sprayed him in the face with pepper gel. “Morris then inexplicably turned her fury on the motionless Boyland, striking her in the ribs once and twice in the head,” the report said. Ashli Babbitt Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old unarmed Air Force veteran and ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump was shot and killed by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. While news media has labeled Babbitt as a violent “insurrectionist” who was trying to breach the Speaker’s Lobby, a frame-by-frame analysis of the video from The Epoch Times shows Babbitt tried to stop the violence against the Speaker’s Lobby at least four times before she was fatally shot. Moments before being shot to death, Ashli Babbitt confronts three police offers for not stopping the vandalism outside the U.S. House. (Video Still/Tayler Hansen) Two reports, filed by two officers who were with Byrd at the moment he shot Babbitt, were also obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times. According to a report by Paul McKenna of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) Uniformed Service Bureau, as protesters “began pounding” on the “East door of the lobby” and breaking the glass, he drew his weapon along with Byrd and Officer Reggie Tyson. He “yelled ‘stay back’ ‘get back’ several times during the incident.” “A woman climbed through the far left window pane, which had been broken out by the group,” McKenna attested. “Lt. Byrd fired one shot hitting the woman. She fell back out of the window and I continued yelling at the group to get back and away from the doors.” McKenna claims the incident happened between 1430 and 1500 hours (2:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.). The report was signed by McKenna on June 9, 2021. It was signed by his supervisor five months earlier, on Jan. 7, 2021. Use of Force report regarding the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Lieutenant Byrd at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, signed7/9/21 by Paul McKenna and 01/09/21 by his supervisor. (United States Capitol Police Use of Force Report/The Epoch Times) In the second report, filed Jan. 7, 2021, Tyson said he heard “shots fired” over his radio some time after 1440 (2:40 p.m.). In an attempt to protect himself, Tyson said he withdrew his weapon and made his way to the lobby east side of the capitol along with Byrd and McKenna. “A protester tried to climb through the broken window where she was shot one time as she fell back.” Tyson claims the time of the incident was around 1500 hours (3:00 p.m.). In another report, USCP Officer Tyler Stoyle claims he responded to “a shots fired” call over their his radio at “1400 hours” (2:00 p.m.), 40 minutes earlier than Tyson claimed to have heard the call of “shots fired.” A separate report filed by USCP Officer Jason McGinnis, said he “responded to the North side of Crypt” at “approximately 1400 hours” and drew his baton to “hold the line of unscreened individuals that were trespassing.” However, it wasn’t until “after the initial surge had ended” and McGinnis “was moving trespassers out of the South Door” that he claimed “there were reports of shots fired in the Speaker’s Lobby Stairs to the second floor.” During an interview with NBC, Byrd also claimed to hear “shots fired.” However, Byrd was the only one to fire a weapon on Jan. 6, 2021. This, and the conflicts in times reported by police regarding when they heard “shots fired,” raises questions. Use of Force Report filed by Reggie Tyson of the United States Capitol Police regarding the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Lieutenant Byrd in the United States Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. (United States Capitol Police Use of Force Report) According to a July 25 report by The Epoch Times, Stan Kephart—a 42-year law enforcement veteran and former director of security for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics who has testified in court more than 350 times as an expert witness on policing issues—said Babbitt was “murdered … under the color of authority.” However, a review of the reports filed by Tyson and McKenna, the Bureau Commander found “the circumstances support the Use of Force” and did not recommend any further investigation. Ashli Babbitt (upper right) begins to fall back after being shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on Jan. 6, 2021. (Sam Montoya/Screenshot via The Epoch Times) Byrd also told NBC he yelled verbal warnings so hard that his throat hurt for days after. Neither of the reports filed by Tyson or McKenna corroborate his claim. Byrd cannot be heard shouting anything on the video either. Byrd insisted he opened fire on an unarmed Babbitt only as a “last resort.” “I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said. In August 2021, the U.S. Capitol Police investigation cleared Byrd of any wrongdoing. Use of Force Reports According to a report released March 7 by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), “the January 6th attack on the Capitol raised concerns” about the preparedness of USCP “to respond to violent demonstrations.” Key findings from the report: Eighty officers “identified concerns related to use of force, including that they felt discouraged or hesitant to use force because of a fear of disciplinary actions.” Approximately 150 Capitol Police officers reported 293 use of force incidents on Jan. 6. All were deemed justified by the department. These incidents involved pushing (91), batons (83), withdrawing a firearm from its holster (37), chemical spray (34), other physical tactics (22), pointing a firearm at a person (17), less-lethal munitions (7), a diversionary device (1) and firing a firearm (1). Of the 293 Use of Force (UOF) reports filed, The Epoch Times has obtained 161 of them, including the ones filed by Tyson and McKenna regarding the shooting of Babbitt by Byrd. ‘Less Than Lethal Munitions’ UOF Reports According to one UOF report, dated 1/7/21, Officer Adam Descamp said he was ordered by Deputy Chief Eric Waldow “to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol. “I deployed multiple FN303 projectiles from the FN303 launcher, administered strikes with the PR-24 baton and utilized the Sabre red pepper spray to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” Descamp wrote of his actions at “approximately 1215 hours” (12:15 p.m.). Waldow was incident commander of the Civil Disturbance Unit on Jan. 6, which was reported to be highly disorganized and woefully unprepared. At “approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Melissa Lee also reported on 1/7/21 that she “was ordered to the scene by Deputy Chief Waldow to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol Building,” using nearly the same, identical verbiage as Descamp. “I deployed multiple FN303 projectiles from the FN303 launcher to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” she wrote. A report filed by Officer Matthew Flood, also “at approximately 1215 hours,” also states he was ordered by Deputy Chief Waldow “to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol.” “I deployed multiple projectiles from the FN303 launcher, and chemical agent spray,” he wrote, using language remarkably similar to that of Descamp and Lee, “to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” he wrote on his report, also date 1/7/21. “At approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Tina Cobert also reported on 1/7/21 that she “was ordered to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol by Deputy Chief Waldow. “I deployed multiple projectiles from the FN 303 Launcher to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” she also wrote. Also “at approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Christopher Sprifke reported he “was ordered to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol by Deputy Chief Waldow. “I deployed multiple PepperBall projectiles to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol building,” he wrote in his 1/7/21 report. “At approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Shauni Kerkhoff said she was also “ordered by Deputy Chief Waldow, Eric to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol. “I deployed multiple projectiles from the PepperBall launcher to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” she wrote in his report, also dated 1/7/21. In February 2021, the U.S. Capitol police union issued an overwhelming no-confidence vote for a half-dozen of the force’s top leaders, including Waldow. Instead of leading his team of officers, Waldow chose to physically engage rioters, a move many of his fellow officers saw as wrong. In October 2021, Waldow submitted paperwork for his resignation. At “approximately 1400hrs,” Officer Patrick Kahl reported that he “discharged multiple 40mm baton rounds after individuals began and continued fighting with USP Officers while trying to gain unlawful access to the United States Capitol Building through the Rotunda Door.” At 1500 hours, Officer Justin Green reported launching a flash bang “to disperse the crowd” in an effort to “rescue” one of the department’s sergeants who was “pinned in the center of the crowd.” He fired a second flash bang as demonstrators were “breaching the Rotunda door.” Conflicting Reports These UOF reports contradict the report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton, who said the CDU was ordered by supervisors not to use less than lethal munitions and that “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including flash bangs, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.” Read more here... Tyler Durden Fri, 07/29/2022 - 21:40.....»»

At the Memphis traffic stop, Demetrius Haley walked over to Tyre Nichols while actively on the phone and never gave him a reason for the stop. Demetrius Haley is one of five former Memphis police officers charged with murder in Tyre Nichols' death.Memphis Police Department via AP Former Memphis officer Demetrius Haley never told Tyre Nichols why he was pulled over. Department records say Haley approached Nichols while talking on the phone in a black hoodie. He yelled profanities, despite no evidence that Nichols ever swore at or threatened officers. When Tyre Nichols was pulled over at E. Raines and Ross roads in Memphis on January 7, a Memphis officer wearing a black hoodie jumped out of his unmarked car and approached him yelling profanities while talking on the phone, according to a police decertification record provided to Insider.Then-officer Demetrius Haley, who has since been fired and charged with Nichols' murder, never told the 29-year-old driver why he stopped his car, according to the records, which were provided to Insider in response to a public records request."You exited your unmarked vehicle stopped in an opposing traffic lane and you forced the driver out of his vehicle while using loud profanity and wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie over your head," a statement of charges sent to Haley on January 14 reads. "You never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest."A day after Nichols' beating, the department released a statement describing a "confrontation" with an alleged reckless driver, later identified as Tyre Nichols. Police Chief CJ Davis later said there was no evidence that Nichols ever drove recklessly.Haley — who joined the department in August 2020 and was a member of the now-disbanded SCORPION unit — is one of the five officers charged with the murder of Nichols.Haley, along with Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III, and Desmond Mills Jr., pulled Nichols over less than 100 yards from his mother's home on Jan. 7 and beat him so severely he died in the hospital three days later.Nichols' death and the release of the video of his brutal beating prompted national protests against police brutality and led to the disbandment of the SCORPION unit.Within 20 days, the five officers were charged with murder. Two other officers have been on paid administrative leave, and seven remain under investigation by the department on internal charges. The Memphis police department's internal charges against Haley, which resulted in his termination, said that Haley and the other officers were caught on body-worn camera making unprofessional comments, including "that muthafucka made me spray myself," as they laughed and bragged about their involvement. "Your conversation and lack of concern for the injured subject was witnessed by a civilian who took photographs and cell phone video," the report said.There was no audio on the body camera that indicated Nichols ever used profanity or any violent threats toward the officers, according to the report."You also were on an active cell phone call where the person overheard the police encounter," the record said. By the time of Nichols' beating, Haley had already racked up a short list of departmental violations, including a failure to write up a use of force report after his colleague ripped a woman out of her car in 2021 just for laughing inside with her aunt. Video from the scene of Nichols' killing showed the group of officers kicking, punching, and pepper spraying Nichols as he told them he was trying to get home and called out for his mom. An attorney for Martin had previously said that none of the officers intended for Nichols to die, but an attorney for Nichols' family told Insider in Memphis that their "actions were designed to kill." Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Former officer Demetrius Haley admitted to sharing a photo of a handcuffed Nichols with at least five people, according to docs obtained by Insider. People protest in Memphis following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between police and Tyre NicholsShameka Wilson for Insider A Memphis police officer reportedly took and shared photos of Tyre Nichols following his beating. Five officers have been charged in Nichols' death. Seven more officers are under investigation.  One of the Memphis police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols took and texted a photo of the bloodied and bruised 29-year-old following the brutal beating as he sat handcuffed and propped up against a cruiser, according to police documents obtained by Insider. Former officer Demetrius Haley admitted to sharing a photo of Nichols with at least five people, including two other officers, a civilian employee at the department, and a female acquaintance; a sixth person also obtained the photo, according to the records. Street camera footage from the scene appears to show Haley taking cellphone photos of Nichols as he sat slumped against a police car. Haley said he used his personal cell phone to take the photographs while he stood in front of Nichols who was "obviously injured" and handcuffed, the documents said.On the evening of January 7, Memphis police officers stopped Nichols on suspicion of "reckless driving," though police officials have since said they haven't found evidence that Nichols was driving erratically. An initial confrontation between Nichols and several officers ensued as they pulled him out of his vehicle and pushed him to the ground. A second confrontation occurred after Nichols got up and ran away as an officer tried to Tase him. Body-camera footage showed several officers beating Nichols while he was on the ground. Nichols died three days after the traffic stop.The Memphis Police Department submitted documents for the five officers charged in the beating, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith, Haley, and Tadarrius Bean, to the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission last month as part of an effort to decertify the officers who have since been charged with second-degree murder, according to The New York Times.Six cops in total have been fired as a result of the beating, and seven more officers with the department are facing an internal investigation and possible discipline, the City of Memphis announced Tuesday.The Memphis Police Department declined to comment.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Demetrius Haley, who is now charged with Nichols' murder, received a written reprimand for failing to report the use of force in November 2021. Demetrius Haley is one of five former Memphis police officers charged with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols.Memphis Police Department via AP Former Memphis officer Demetrius Haley came under fire two years before beating Tyre Nichols. In Feb. 2021, Haley was on the scene when another officer ripped a woman from her car. Despite seeing the officer dislocating the woman's shoulder, he didn't write a use of force report. Years before beating Tyre Nichols, then-Memphis police officer Demetrius Haley was on the scene of another brutal incident where a woman was ripped from her car by a fellow officer who didn't approve of her laughing, according to police disciplinary records obtained by Insider.On February 21, 2021, Haley assisted three other Memphis officers in a shooting investigation. One of the four officers approached Kadejah Townes, who was running into a Walgreens to get a Redbox movie to watch with her aunt.The officer asked Jones if she had seen or heard shooting and the woman said she hadn't, Townes reported to the department.After Townes returned to the car where her aunt had been waiting, another officer, Alexis Brown, approached again, this time demanding that she get out of the car and give her ID."Ya'll over here laughing, I need to see ID," Brown said, according to the complaint. "As a matter of fact, get out of the car."Townes said she refused to get out of the car because she hadn't done anything, but that Brown reached through the window, unlocked the door, and pulled her out. Haley then assisted in putting Townes in handcuffs and placing her in a cruiser. He later told department investigators he didn't know what she was being arrested for.Haley said he had mentioned the women were laughing before Brown approached the car, but he "didn't think anything of the occupants laughing because it's not illegal to laugh."The officers then transported Townes and her aunt to jail, but several of their family members followed the cruiser, according to the report.At one point, Brown pulled the cruiser over and drew her gun at Townes' brother, who had been following them, and issued him a citation for interfering with police, according to the report.Townes was booked on disorderly conduct and her aunt was released and driven home. After Townes made a complaint of excessive use of force to the Memphis Police Department, a hearing was held on the misconduct. The allegations against Brown were sustained and she ultimately resigned. Haley, though, only received a written reprimand for failing to write up a use of force report. Haley — who joined the department in August 2020 and was a member of the now-disbanded SCORPION unit — is one of the five officers charged with the murder of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.Haley — along with Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III, and Desmond Mills Jr — pulled Nichols over less than 100 yards from his mother's home on Jan. 7 and beat him so severely he died in the hospital three days later. Nichols' death prompted national protests against police brutality and led to the disbandment of the SCORPION unit.Within 20 days, the five officers were charged with murder. Two other officers have been on paid administrative leave. In addition to the use of force incident, Haley's disciplinary records include a traffic violation in which he struck a stop sign with his cruiser.After that incident, his superior jumped to his defense.At a hearing on the incident, Haley's supervisor, identified only as Lt. Flagg, said that he was one of "her best officers" and that he was hard working."She stated the department needs several more officers like Haley," the January 2021 hearing report says.Insider's attempt to reach Townes was unsuccessful Thursday. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Vice President Kamala Harris and Al Sharpton were among hundreds of guests at Tyre Nichols' funeral at Mississippi Boulevard Church in Memphis. Tyre Nichols' funeral was held Wednesday at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis.A man arranges flowers around Tyre Nichols' casket at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tenn., on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolThe funeral of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Memphian who was brutally beaten by five police officers on January 7, was held Wednesday at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. Nichols, who has a 4-year-old son, has been remembered by his family and friends as a lover of sunsets, photography, and skateboarding. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, on Tuesday, accepting her invitation to the funeral.Rev. Al Sharpton, the Founder and President of the National Action Network (NAN), eulogized Nicholas and attorney Ben Crump delivered "a call to action" in a service led by Rev. J. Lawrence Turner.  Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, also attended. Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, known as "The BLVD", is the first African American church in the city of MemphisThe sanctuary at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church is seen before the start the funeral service for Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tenn., on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolNichols' death jolted Memphis activists into action this month. The police department was also quick to launch an investigation into the officers involved. Within a week, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, Shelby County District Attorney's Office, and the Department of Justice had all launched investigations into the officers' actions. On January 20, five officers — all of them Black and members of the SCORPION anti-crime unit — were fired. On Thursday— 28 hours before the release of the body camera video showing the brutal beating — they were charged with second-degree murder.Their unit was disbanded on Saturday.Two other officers have been on paid administrative leave since the start of the investigation, the Memphis police department announced this week.Reporters and media were kept out of the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church sanctuary on Wednesday, but the service was livestreamed for the public. Inclement weather delayed the service by a few hoursTerry Lawrence, of Memphis, Tenn., spreads ice melting salt around Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church where a funeral service for Tyre Nichols will be held after a delay due to weather on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023AP Photo/Jeff RobersonInclement weather caused travel delays to Memphis on Tuesday and Wednesday, prompting organizers to move the funeral from 10:30 a.m. CT to 1 p.m. CT. Snow and frigid 27-degree weather did not deter guests from showing up to the church to honor Nichols. At the start of the service on Wednesday, Rev. J. Lawrence Turner noted guests ventured out in "treacherous" conditions to make it to the funeral. The church is located in midtown, about a 10-minute drive from the Raines Road and Ross Road intersection where Nichols was pulled over by Memphis officers on January 7.  Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump escorted Tyre Nichols' mother and step-father into the churchAttorney Benjamin Crump, left, RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, center, and stepfather Rodney Wells, center right, all arrive to the funeral service for Tyre Nichols, at Mississippi Boulevard Christian ChurchAP Photo/Jeff RobersonCivil rights attorney Ben Crump is representing the Nichols family. Crump has become the go-to lawyer for high-profile police killings in the US. On Tuesday, Crump's office announced that Vice President Kamala Harris would attend the funeral. "Vice President Harris and Ms. Wells spoke exclusively, and during this emotional time, the Vice President was able to console Ms. Wells and even help her smile," Crump said in a statement Tuesday. "Tyre's parents invited Vice President Harris to the funeral tomorrow, and were pleased that she accepted their invitation."Former New Orleans mayor Mitchell Joseph Landrieu is recognized during the funeral service for Tyre Nichols.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolPoliticians, activists, and families of police brutality victims filled the church for the funeral. Al Sharpton said that people who show up when the cameras are around need to support the family when the cameras are gone, too.  RowVaughn Wells wept as she approached her son's casketRowVaughn Wells cries as she and her husband Rodney Wells arrive for the funeral service for her son Tyre Nichols at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tenn.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolRowVaughn Wells has addressed the community several times since her son died.Each time, she asked that demonstrations stay peaceful in his honor.Nichols' was severely beaten less than 100 yards from his mother's home. Speaking at Mt. Olive CME Church in downtown Memphis last week, Wells said that she had a pain in her stomach the night her son was beaten and she didn't know why. Now, she believes it was her son's pain that she was feeling. On Wednesday, Tiffany Rachal, mother of Houston police shooting victim Jalen Randle, sang a song at Nichols' funeral. Before she did, she addressed Wells."My condolences go out to this mother. I'm here to offer my condolence to you. I pray that God bless you. I pray that God heal your broken heart," she said. "We're fighting together and all the mothers all over the world need to come together and stop all of this." Vice President Kamala Harris hugs RowVaughn Wells during the funeral service for Wells' son Tyre Nichols.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolVice President Kamala Harris spoke Wednesday at the funeral. After embracing RowVaughn Wells, Rev. Al Sharpton asked Harris to share a few words at the church."Mrs. Wells. Mr Wells, you have been extraordinary in terms of your strength, your courage, and your grace," Harris said. "And we mourn with you, and the people of our country mourn with you."  Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the funeral service for Tyre Nichols at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolHarris said that Nichols' death was not in the service of public safety and that he should be alive."Mothers around the world, when their babies are born, pray to God when they hold that child that that body and that life will be safe for the rest of their life," she said. "Yet we have a mother and a father here who mourn the life of a young man who should be alive today."Harris demanded that congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, saying President Biden will sign it. Rev. Al Sharpton spoke directly to the officers who beat NicholsRev. Al Sharpton stands in the front of the sanctuary at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tenn., before the funeral service for Tyre Nichols on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolRev. Al Sharpton told the church he understood that "as a Black man" he understood why Tyre's last words were calling for his mother. "He knew if he could just get mother, they would stop beating him, stop stomping on him," Sharpton said.The civil rights leader opened the first part of his eulogy with harsh words for the five officers who beat Nichols. He called their actions "offensive" in the city where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated."Five Black men who wouldn't have had a job in the police department, would not have been thought of to be in an elite squad, in the city where Dr. King lost his life, he said.Sharpton said that those officers and their Chief C.J. Davis never would have had a job if it wasn't for activists fighting and marching on their behalf."How dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing," Sharpton said. "You ain't in no New England state, you in Tennessee where we had to fight for you." Sharpton also spoke of the importance of passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would end qualified immunity for officers.Doing so would ensure 'the same manners you have on the white side of town you have on the white side of town," he said."Why do we want the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to pass, because then you'll have to think twice before you beat Tyre Nichols," he said. "If you don't have qualified immunity, your wife would be telling you before you leave home, 'behave yourself because we could lose the house, we could lose the car.'" Vice President Kamala Harris greets friends and family of Tyre Nichols.Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP, PoolKeyana Dixon, Nichols' big sister, was 11 years older. She said that when she was growing up she had to watch her little brothers, sometimes taking them places she didn't want to. Nichols, though, was easy to watch, she said. "He didn't want anything other than to watch TV with a big bowl of cereal," she said.Dixon told the guests at the funeral she was devastated when she learned of her brother's death, but even in death he didn't lose his light."When my mother called me and said my baby brother was gone I lost my faith. I cried. I screamed at God, asking how could he let this happen. Then my tears turned to anger and anger turned to deep sorrow," she said."Pain l never felt when those monsters murdered my baby brother, they left me completely heartbroken," she added. "All I want is my baby brother back." Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Memphis police put Preston Hemphill, the only known white cop involved in Tyre Nichols' death, on leave. Five Black officers were charged. Flanked by the parents of Tyre Nichols and faith and community leaders, civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks next to a photo of Nichols during a press conference on January 27, 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee.Scott Olson/Getty Images Attorneys for Tyre Nichols' family suggested a white cop involved in the victim's arrest got special treatment. Officer Preston Hemphill was placed on paid leave in connection to the fatal beating of Nichols.  "Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre's death just now coming to light?" the lawyers asked. Attorneys for the family of Tyre Nichols — the Black man who died after being beaten by police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, earlier this month — suggested on Monday that the only known white officer involved in the victim's arrest was getting special treatment. The Memphis Police Department confirmed that officer Preston Hemphill, who is white, was "relieved of duty" and put on paid administrative leave "pending the outcome of the investigation."The announcement came days after five fired Memphis police officers — all of whom are Black — were charged with murder in the 29-year-old Nichols' death. An attorney for Hemphill told Insider on Monday that his client "was the third officer at the initial stop" of Nichols on January 7 and that "he was never present at the second scene."Lawyers for the Nichols family said that Hemphill can be seen on body camera footage released by the Memphis Police Department last week "violently pulling Nichols from his car while hitting him on the ground with a Taser, later saying, 'I hope they stomp his ass' after Nichols ran away.""The news today from Memphis officials that Officer Preston Hemphill was reportedly relieved of duty weeks ago, but not yet terminated or charged is extremely disappointing," Nichols family attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a joint statement.They added, "Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre's death just now coming to light? We have asked from the beginning that the Memphis Police Department be transparent with the family and the community — this news seems to indicate that they haven't risen to the occasion.""It certainly begs the question why the white officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye, and to date, from sufficient discipline and accountability," Crump and Romanucci said. Insider has asked the Memphis Police Department when exactly Hemphill was placed on administrative leave, but did not immediately receive a response.A Memphis police spokesperson told CNN that Hemphill had been on administrative leave since the beginning of the investigation.Meanwhile, the Shelby County District Attorney's Office said prosecutors could still file more criminal charges in connection to the fatal beating. "We are looking at all individuals involved in the events leading up to, during, and after the beating of Tyre Nichols," the district attorney's office said in a statement, explaining, "This includes the officer present at the initial encounter who has not — so far — been charged, Memphis Fire Department personnel, and persons who participated in preparing documentation of the incident afterward."The DA's office said it "worked extraordinarily swiftly but thoroughly to charge those whose offenses were plain and clear and directly contributed to the death of Mr. Nichols, but in no way is this investigation over.""While we are committed to transparency, we cannot comment on the details of an ongoing investigation or give previews of what charges we may or may not bring," it continued.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Preston Hemphill, the only known white officer involved in Tyre Nichols' death, is seen on video deploying his Taser as Nichols runs away. A portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 in Memphis, Tenn. Nichols was killed during a traffic stop with Memphis Police on Jan. 7.Adrian Sainz/AP Photo Officer Preston Hemphill was placed on paid leave over the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols.  He is the sixth Memphis police officer to be taken off the force following Nichols' death.  Nichols died three days after a group of officers brutally beat him during a traffic stop on January 7.  An officer involved in the arrest of Tyre Nichols — a Black man who was severely beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee, and later died — has been "relieved of duty," authorities said on Monday. Officer Preston Hemphill is now on paid administrative leave "pending the outcome of the investigation," a spokesman for the Memphis Police Department told Insider. Hemphill, who is white, joined the Memphis Police Department in 2018. Lee Gerald, an attorney representing Hemphill, told Insider that his client "was the third officer at the initial stop of Mr. Nichols.""As per departmental regulations Officer Hemphill activated his bodycam," and the footage was later released by police, according to Gerald, who added that Hemphill "was never present at the second scene.""He is cooperating with officials in this investigation," Gerald said.Authorities say 29-year-old Nichols was brutally beaten by five now-fired Black Memphis Police Department police officers during a traffic stop on January 7. While the MPD initially said that Nichols had been bulled over for "reckless driving," Chief Cerelyn Davis said on Thursday that officers had no proof to pull Nichols over, and called the video "heinous, reckless, and inhumane."Nichols, a father, was hospitalized in critical condition and died three days later.The five other police officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Desmond Mills Jr. — were fired and indicted last week on second-degree murder and other charges in connection with Nichols' death.Two firefighters who treated Nichols after the beating were also relieved from duty and the city said it's actively reviewing if any additional charges will be filed against them. On Friday, officials released multiple videos of Nichols' arrest, starting from a traffic stop and ending in him slumped over next to a police cruiser in handcuffs.  In one of the videos, an officer approaching Nichols' car tells him to "get the fuck out of the fucking car." Nichols responds that he didn't do anything, and the officer pulls him out of the car and throws him to the ground, saying "I'm gonna tase your ass." After Nichols stands up and struggles with the officer, the officer deploys his Taser, and Nichols runs away. An officer can be heard saying, "I hope they stomp his ass."Another video, taken from the street, shows officers brutally beating Nichols, who was just steps away from home.The officers involved in Nichols' arrest were members of the MPD's SCORPION unit, a specialized unit formed in 2021 to fight violent street crime. On Saturday, in the wake of protests against Nichols' death, the SCORPION unit was disbanded. Nichols' death has sparked outrage in Memphis and across the country. The city braced for violent demonstrations after the footage of the incident was released on Friday, but the protests remained largely peaceful. Protests in other cities also remained overwhelmingly peaceful. In New York and Los Angeles — where police stood guard in riot gear — there were some clashes.But the scenes were nothing like those after the murder of George Floyd in police custody, which set off protests that at times escalated into looting and arson.The Memphis Police Department said Sunday its cops hadn't arrested a single demonstrator.Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Nichols' family, told the press on Friday that the way charges were handled should act as a standard for police accountability. "We have never seen swift justice like this," Crump said at a press conference in Memphis' Mount Olive CME Church. "We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for any time any officers, whether they be Black or white, will be held accountable. No longer can you tell us we got to wait six months to a year."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The Memphis Police Department released disturbing footage on Friday showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, and people protested across the US. People in Memphis gather on January 28, 2023, to protest the death of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police officers.Haven Orecchio-Egresitz/Insider Memphis police released footage of five officers beating Tyre Nichols, who died three days later. Demonstrators gathered in Memphis on Friday evening, chanting "no justice, no peace." Protests continued through the weekend, and a city councilman urged people not to give up until there is change. Content note: This story describes police brutality and death and contains graphic videos.Parents of Tyre Nichols invited to State of the Union address after public outcry following his deathRowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, is comforted at a news conference with civil rights Attorney Ben Crump in Memphis, Tenn., Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.AP Photo/Gerald HerbertThe parents of Tyre Nichols, who died earlier this month after being beaten by Memphis police officers, have been invited to next week's State of the Union address.Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, extended the invitation to Nichols' grieving parents. In an appearance PoliticsNation on MSNBC, Horsford said he spoke with the man's family "to first extend our condolences to them, to let them know that we stand with them, to ask them what they want from us in this moment."Read Full StoryGOP Rep. Jim Jordan condemned the death of Tyre Nichols but also said there aren't 'enough good people' seeking to become police officers due to the 'disparagement' of law enforcementPeople protest in Memphis following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between police and Tyre NicholsShameka Wilson for InsiderRep. Jim Jordan of Ohio on Sunday that there aren't "enough good people" seeking to become police officers due to the effects of the "defund the police" movement, which he blames for smearing law enforcement officials across the country.Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, made the comments on NBC's "Meet the Press" while discussing the death of Tyre Nichols, who was brutally beaten by five police officers in Memphis, Tenn., earlier this month."We're not getting enough good people applying because of the disparagement on police officers. They don't get enough people applying, taking the test to enter the academy to be an officer because there's been this defund the police concept out there," he said on the NBC News program."There's been this attack on law enforcement, and you're not getting the best of the best," he added.Read Full StoryThe daughter of Eric Garner, who was fatally choked by an NYPD officer in 2014, says the Tyre Nichols footage was treated like 'a public lynching'Emerald Garner, Eric Garner's daughter.(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)The daughter of Eric Garner, who an NYPD officer fatally choked in 2014, spoke out about the footage of Tyre Nichols' arrest, and sharply criticized how authorities handled the release. "The fact that we waited for this video to be released like it was an exclusive movie that needed to be premiered on a certain day, it really boils my blood," Emerald Garner told NewsNation on Friday. "It's just heart-wrenching."She told the outlet that it was a grim reminder of the fatal encounter her father had with Daniel Pantaleo, the former NYPD officer who put her father in a chokehold during an attempted arrest caught on cellphone video."It's a replay of what happened eight years ago, almost nine.... to my father," she said. "It's ridiculous."Read Full StoryMemphis Police Department says it will 'permanently deactivate' the SCORPION unit whose officers beat Tyre NicholsMemphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentThe Memphis Police Department will 'permanently deactivate' its SCORPION Unit, the department announced Saturday, as protesters gathered for a second night of demonstrations over the killing of Tyre Nichols by five of the team's officers.The city had already announced it would hire an outside firm to investigate the unit, which was launched in 2021 and stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods.Read Full StorySaturday's protest kicked off despite rain.People in Memphis gather on January 28, 2023, to protest the death of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police officers.Haven Orecchio-Egresitz/InsiderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Protesters are back in the streets Saturday evening. It's lightly raining outside city hall."We demand that each and every officer, every sheriffs officer, every EMT, be immediately fired," Memphis city council member JB Smiley Jr. told the crowd.Protesters are angry today that the mayor didn't agree to meet their demands in a call that was made from the bridge last night. They are expressing dismay, after watching the video, that there were eight people in the video and they don't know the names of the other three. Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder.Smiley is opening the protest tonight, urging people to show up to city council meetings and not give up until there's change: "As we say in Memphis, pull up."People on bikes and skateboards cruised down Manhattan streets, protesting against police brutality and celebrating Nichols' love of skating.—Scott Heins (@scottheins) January 28, 2023 Tyre Nichols' mom was mere blocks away when Memphis cops beat her son, and said she felt a pain in her gut when it happenedRowVaughn Wells is comforted at a news conference with civil rights Attorney Ben Crump in Memphis, Tenn., Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.AP Photo/Gerald HerbertMEMPHIS, Tenn — Every Saturday night, RowVaughn Wells would cook dinner for her husband and son. They would eat together.But on the evening of January 7, the Memphis mother had a strange pain in her stomach and didn't know why.It wasn't until hours later that she would learn that that pain coincided with some of what she now believes her son Tyre was experiencing mere blocks away."For me to find out that my son was calling my name, and I was only feet away, and I did not even hear him; you have no clue how I feel right now," Wells said on Friday.READ FULL STORYCivil rights attorney Ben Crump shared a video of Tyre Nichols' parents talking to President Joe BidenCrump tweeted that they "bonded over the love they share for their children."Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, told Biden that her son had her name tattooed on his arm."If I could give you a piece of advice," Biden told them, "if things get really rough, don't be afraid to ask for help. This is like if you were in a battlefield and something happened. It's called post-traumatic stress."—Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) January 28, 2023The Memphis Police Department's original report on Tyre Nichols death is full of discrepancies and outright omissions, newly released bodycam footage showsThe image from video released on Jan. 27, 2023, by the City of Memphis, shows police officers talking after a brutal attack on Tyre Nichols by five Memphis police officers on Jan. 7, 2023.City of Memphis via APOn January 8, the Memphis Police Department released a statement describing a "confrontation" with an alleged reckless driver, later identified as Tyre Nichols. But bodycam footage of the incident, released Friday, revealed a different story of the brutal beating that left the 29-year-old dead."On January 7, 2023, at approximately 8:30pm, officers in the area of Raines Road and Ross Road attempted to make a traffic stop for reckless driving," The original Memphis Police Department statement read. "As officers approached the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled the scene on foot."Read Full StoryActivists are spreading carefree videos of Tyre Nichols skateboarding to remember him as someone who 'lived in joy'A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.Brian Snyder/ReutersTyre Nichols was a gentle skateboarder who loved his family and photography. And his friends, family, and activists protesting his death want to remember him that way. A video compilation of the 29-year-old grinding rails and catching air in Sacramento, California is being shared across social media to commemorate his life.Camara Williams, a podcaster, attorney, and community organizer who advocates for abolishing the police, tweeted the video on Friday, telling Insider the video showed "he was a person who lived in life and lived in joy." Read Full StoryLegal experts agree: The videos show a complete 'breakdown' in police protocolsStill from Memphis Police body cam footage of Tyre Nichols beating.Memphis Police"What I saw was certainly police misconduct," Joshua Ritter, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor, and partner with El Dabe Ritter Trial Lawyers, told Insider of the footage. "What I saw is never the way that five fully trained officers should try to detain a person."Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said there was "no question in my mind that murder charges are appropriate.""I've prosecuted police officers. I've seen police officers imprisoned. I've seen a lot," he said. "This is probably one of the worst things I've ever seen."Read Full StoryMemphis councilman breaks down in tears over bodycam footage—Shannonnn sharpes Burner (PARODY Account) (@shannonsharpeee) January 28, 2023In an emotional interview with CNN's Don Lemon, Memphis City Council chairman Martavius Jones broke down in tears over the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, saying "this wasn't supposed to happen.""Don, we have to do something," Jones told Lemon in the clip, which has since gone viral on social media. "Not that we were immune to anything, but this wasn't supposed to happen in our community. This was a traffic stop, it wasn't supposed to end like this."Read Full Story2 Shelby County deputies placed on leave, Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Jr. says after Tyre Nichols footage released—ShelbyTNSheriff (@ShelbyTNSheriff) January 28, 2023 Two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff's office were relieved of duty pending an investigation, Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Jr. said in a Friday night statement."Having watched the videotape for the first time tonight, I have concerns about two deputies who appeared on the scene following the physical confrontation between police and Tyre Nichols," the statement reads. "I have launched an internal investigation into the conduct of these deputies to determine what occurred and if any policies were violated."On Friday evening, officials in Memphis, Tennessee, released the video footage of Memphis Police Officers beating Nichols after a January 7, 2023, traffic stop. Nichols died several days later of his injuries.Five now-former Memphis Police Officers have been charged with second-degree murder.Protesters in New York gathered in Times Square and other parts of the city to protest the death of Tyre NicholsPeople in New York take part in a protest on January 27, 2023, the day of the release of a video showing police officers beating Tyre Nichols.REUTERS/Andrew KellyProtesters gathered in New York City in Times Square and other locations on Friday night to protest the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man. A handful of arrests were made, per NYPD, but the full number would not be available until the morning.Nichols died several days after being beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee, during a January 7, 2023, traffic stop. Camera footage of the deadly police beating was released by Memphis on Friday evening at 7 p.m. ET. Protesters say they have demands for Memphis Mayor Jim StricklandProtesters in Memphis, Tennessee calling for reform after police officers beat Tyre Nichols, who died days later.Haven Orecchio/InisderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Protesters told Insider's Haven Orecchio that they called Mayor Jim Strickland with demands and will not leave the Memphis and Arkansas Bridge, where the protesters have congregated, until he returns their call.The demands include but are not limited to passing the Data Transparency Ordinance at the city and county levels, tracking law enforcement data, ending the use of unmarked cars and plainclothes officers, and dissolving the SCORPION unit along with other task forces.Biden 'outraged' after release of 'horrific' videos showing Memphis police officers beating Tyre NicholsPresident Joe Biden speaks at the White House on January 12, 2023.AP Photo/Andrew HarnikPresident Joe Biden spoke out on Friday moments after the release of several videos showing police officers brutally beating Tyre Nichols.On Friday, The City of Memphis released four separate videos related to events surrounding the arrest and beating of Nichols.Biden said in a statement that he was "outraged" by what he saw. "Like so many, I was outraged and deeply pained to see the horrific video of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols' death," Biden said. "It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day."Read Full Story'It could have been me' a truck driver tells InsiderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Speaking from the driver's seat of an 18-wheeler trying to merge onto I-55, truck driver Mark told insider he was running out of fuel.He didn't know that he'd run into the protest. If he did, he said, he would have left later.As a Black man, he said he doesn't fault the protestors and would "possibly" be out with them if he was from here. He's on his way to Oklahoma with 1,400 miles left."It could have been me," he told Insider. "It's not the first and it won't be the last."Tyre Nichols video: Body cam footage showing brutal police beating by 5 Memphis police officers releasedA portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 in Memphis, Tenn.Adrian Sainz/AP PhotoMEMPHIS, Tennessee — The Memphis Police Department released disturbing footage Friday evening showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols.The violent footage, from police body cameras and stationary cameras, was released on the department's Vimeo page."You guys are really doing a lot right now," Nichols is heard saying to the officers at the start of the videos, which were released in four parts. "I'm just trying to go home."The beating occurred during a traffic stop in Memphis' Hickory Hill neighborhood on January 7. Nichols, who was 29, died of his injuries three days later. Authorities said Nichols had been stopped by the officers and accused of reckless driving, but Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn J. Davis has since said the department has not found proof to substantiate the reckless driving allegation.Memphis officials and others with access to the video had warned the public of the gruesome nature of the footage in advance of its release on Friday. READ FULL STORYProtesters gathered in Memphis ahead of the video release saying they didn't need to see the footage because they knew 'it was murder'People in Memphis protest the death of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police officers.Haven Orecchio, InsiderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Protesters gathered at Martyrs Park in Memphis, Tennessee, around 6 p.m. local time on Friday evening as the city braced for the release of graphic body camera footage that shows several police officers fatally beating Tyre Nichols.Demonstrators said they didn't need to wait for the video — they already knew Nichols' death was murder.Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder.Approximately hundreds of protesters blocked a long line of 18-wheelers on Old Bridge, chanting "You take our lives, we'll take your money" and "no justice, no peace.Sherri, a Memphis native, told Insider her 28-year-old Black son moved to Germany, and she's glad he's out of the country and away from cops in Memphis. She said she was pulled over on Thursday night and was nervous.When an officer asked her why she was anxious, she responded: "Not all interactions end this way." Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The Memphis Police Department released disturbing footage on Friday showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, and people protested across the US. People in Memphis gather on January 28, 2023, to protest the death of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police officers.Haven Orecchio-Egresitz/Insider Memphis police released footage of five officers beating Tyre Nichols, who died three days later. Demonstrators gathered in Memphis on Friday evening, chanting "no justice, no peace." Protests resumed Saturday, and a city councilman urged people not to give up until there's change. Content note: This story describes police brutality and death and contains graphic videos.Parents of Tyre Nichols invited to State of the Union address after public outcry following his deathRowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, is comforted at a news conference with civil rights Attorney Ben Crump in Memphis, Tenn., Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.AP Photo/Gerald HerbertThe parents of Tyre Nichols, who died earlier this month after being beaten by Memphis police officers, have been invited to next week's State of the Union address.Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, extended the invitation to Nichols' grieving parents. In an appearance PoliticsNation on MSNBC, Horsford said he spoke with the man's family "to first extend our condolences to them, to let them know that we stand with them, to ask them what they want from us in this moment."Read Full StoryGOP Rep. Jim Jordan condemned the death of Tyre Nichols but also said there aren't 'enough good people' seeking to become police officers due to the 'disparagement' of law enforcementPeople protest in Memphis following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between police and Tyre NicholsShameka Wilson for InsiderRep. Jim Jordan of Ohio on Sunday that there aren't "enough good people" seeking to become police officers due to the effects of the "defund the police" movement, which he blames for smearing law enforcement officials across the country.Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, made the comments on NBC's "Meet the Press" while discussing the death of Tyre Nichols, who was brutally beaten by five police officers in Memphis, Tenn., earlier this month."We're not getting enough good people applying because of the disparagement on police officers. They don't get enough people applying, taking the test to enter the academy to be an officer because there's been this defund the police concept out there," he said on the NBC News program."There's been this attack on law enforcement, and you're not getting the best of the best," he added.Read Full StoryThe daughter of Eric Garner, who was fatally choked by an NYPD officer in 2014, says the Tyre Nichols footage was treated like 'a public lynching'Emerald Garner, Eric Garner's daughter.(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)The daughter of Eric Garner, who an NYPD officer fatally choked in 2014, spoke out about the footage of Tyre Nichols' arrest, and sharply criticized how authorities handled the release. "The fact that we waited for this video to be released like it was an exclusive movie that needed to be premiered on a certain day, it really boils my blood," Emerald Garner told NewsNation on Friday. "It's just heart-wrenching."She told the outlet that it was a grim reminder of the fatal encounter her father had with Daniel Pantaleo, the former NYPD officer who put her father in a chokehold during an attempted arrest caught on cellphone video."It's a replay of what happened eight years ago, almost nine.... to my father," she said. "It's ridiculous."Read Full StoryMemphis Police Department says it will 'permanently deactivate' the SCORPION unit whose officers beat Tyre NicholsMemphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentThe Memphis Police Department will 'permanently deactivate' its SCORPION Unit, the department announced Saturday, as protesters gathered for a second night of demonstrations over the killing of Tyre Nichols by five of the team's officers.The city had already announced it would hire an outside firm to investigate the unit, which was launched in 2021 and stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods.Read Full StorySaturday's protest kicked off despite rain.People in Memphis gather on January 28, 2023, to protest the death of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police officers.Haven Orecchio-Egresitz/InsiderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Protesters are back in the streets Saturday evening. It's lightly raining outside city hall."We demand that each and every officer, every sheriffs officer, every EMT, be immediately fired," Memphis city council member JB Smiley Jr. told the crowd.Protesters are angry today that the mayor didn't agree to meet their demands in a call that was made from the bridge last night. They are expressing dismay, after watching the video, that there were eight people in the video and they don't know the names of the other three. Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder.Smiley is opening the protest tonight, urging people to show up to city council meetings and not give up until there's change: "As we say in Memphis, pull up."People on bikes and skateboards cruised down Manhattan streets, protesting against police brutality and celebrating Nichols' love of skating.—Scott Heins (@scottheins) January 28, 2023 Tyre Nichols' mom was mere blocks away when Memphis cops beat her son, and said she felt a pain in her gut when it happenedRowVaughn Wells is comforted at a news conference with civil rights Attorney Ben Crump in Memphis, Tenn., Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.AP Photo/Gerald HerbertMEMPHIS, Tenn — Every Saturday night, RowVaughn Wells would cook dinner for her husband and son. They would eat together.But on the evening of January 7, the Memphis mother had a strange pain in her stomach and didn't know why.It wasn't until hours later that she would learn that that pain coincided with some of what she now believes her son Tyre was experiencing mere blocks away."For me to find out that my son was calling my name, and I was only feet away, and I did not even hear him; you have no clue how I feel right now," Wells said on Friday.READ FULL STORYCivil rights attorney Ben Crump shared a video of Tyre Nichols' parents talking to President Joe BidenCrump tweeted that they "bonded over the love they share for their children."Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, told Biden that her son had her name tattooed on his arm."If I could give you a piece of advice," Biden told them, "if things get really rough, don't be afraid to ask for help. This is like if you were in a battlefield and something happened. It's called post-traumatic stress."—Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) January 28, 2023The Memphis Police Department's original report on Tyre Nichols death is full of discrepancies and outright omissions, newly released bodycam footage showsThe image from video released on Jan. 27, 2023, by the City of Memphis, shows police officers talking after a brutal attack on Tyre Nichols by five Memphis police officers on Jan. 7, 2023.City of Memphis via APOn January 8, the Memphis Police Department released a statement describing a "confrontation" with an alleged reckless driver, later identified as Tyre Nichols. But bodycam footage of the incident, released Friday, revealed a different story of the brutal beating that left the 29-year-old dead."On January 7, 2023, at approximately 8:30pm, officers in the area of Raines Road and Ross Road attempted to make a traffic stop for reckless driving," The original Memphis Police Department statement read. "As officers approached the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled the scene on foot."Read Full StoryActivists are spreading carefree videos of Tyre Nichols skateboarding to remember him as someone who 'lived in joy'A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.Brian Snyder/ReutersTyre Nichols was a gentle skateboarder who loved his family and photography. And his friends, family, and activists protesting his death want to remember him that way. A video compilation of the 29-year-old grinding rails and catching air in Sacramento, California is being shared across social media to commemorate his life.Camara Williams, a podcaster, attorney, and community organizer who advocates for abolishing the police, tweeted the video on Friday, telling Insider the video showed "he was a person who lived in life and lived in joy." Read Full StoryLegal experts agree: The videos show a complete 'breakdown' in police protocolsStill from Memphis Police body cam footage of Tyre Nichols beating.Memphis Police"What I saw was certainly police misconduct," Joshua Ritter, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor, and partner with El Dabe Ritter Trial Lawyers, told Insider of the footage. "What I saw is never the way that five fully trained officers should try to detain a person."Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said there was "no question in my mind that murder charges are appropriate.""I've prosecuted police officers. I've seen police officers imprisoned. I've seen a lot," he said. "This is probably one of the worst things I've ever seen."Read Full StoryMemphis councilman breaks down in tears over bodycam footage—Shannonnn sharpes Burner (PARODY Account) (@shannonsharpeee) January 28, 2023In an emotional interview with CNN's Don Lemon, Memphis City Council chairman Martavius Jones broke down in tears over the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, saying "this wasn't supposed to happen.""Don, we have to do something," Jones told Lemon in the clip, which has since gone viral on social media. "Not that we were immune to anything, but this wasn't supposed to happen in our community. This was a traffic stop, it wasn't supposed to end like this."Read Full Story2 Shelby County deputies placed on leave, Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Jr. says after Tyre Nichols footage released—ShelbyTNSheriff (@ShelbyTNSheriff) January 28, 2023 Two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff's office were relieved of duty pending an investigation, Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Jr. said in a Friday night statement."Having watched the videotape for the first time tonight, I have concerns about two deputies who appeared on the scene following the physical confrontation between police and Tyre Nichols," the statement reads. "I have launched an internal investigation into the conduct of these deputies to determine what occurred and if any policies were violated."On Friday evening, officials in Memphis, Tennessee, released the video footage of Memphis Police Officers beating Nichols after a January 7, 2023, traffic stop. Nichols died several days later of his injuries.Five now-former Memphis Police Officers have been charged with second-degree murder.Protesters in New York gathered in Times Square and other parts of the city to protest the death of Tyre NicholsPeople in New York take part in a protest on January 27, 2023, the day of the release of a video showing police officers beating Tyre Nichols.REUTERS/Andrew KellyProtesters gathered in New York City in Times Square and other locations on Friday night to protest the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man. A handful of arrests were made, per NYPD, but the full number would not be available until the morning.Nichols died several days after being beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee, during a January 7, 2023, traffic stop. Camera footage of the deadly police beating was released by Memphis on Friday evening at 7 p.m. ET. Protesters say they have demands for Memphis Mayor Jim StricklandProtesters in Memphis, Tennessee calling for reform after police officers beat Tyre Nichols, who died days later.Haven Orecchio/InisderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Protesters told Insider's Haven Orecchio that they called Mayor Jim Strickland with demands and will not leave the Memphis and Arkansas Bridge, where the protesters have congregated, until he returns their call.The demands include but are not limited to passing the Data Transparency Ordinance at the city and county levels, tracking law enforcement data, ending the use of unmarked cars and plainclothes officers, and dissolving the SCORPION unit along with other task forces.Biden 'outraged' after release of 'horrific' videos showing Memphis police officers beating Tyre NicholsPresident Joe Biden speaks at the White House on January 12, 2023.AP Photo/Andrew HarnikPresident Joe Biden spoke out on Friday moments after the release of several videos showing police officers brutally beating Tyre Nichols.On Friday, The City of Memphis released four separate videos related to events surrounding the arrest and beating of Nichols.Biden said in a statement that he was "outraged" by what he saw. "Like so many, I was outraged and deeply pained to see the horrific video of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols' death," Biden said. "It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day."Read Full Story'It could have been me' a truck driver tells InsiderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Speaking from the driver's seat of an 18-wheeler trying to merge onto I-55, truck driver Mark told insider he was running out of fuel.He didn't know that he'd run into the protest. If he did, he said, he would have left later.As a Black man, he said he doesn't fault the protestors and would "possibly" be out with them if he was from here. He's on his way to Oklahoma with 1,400 miles left."It could have been me," he told Insider. "It's not the first and it won't be the last."Tyre Nichols video: Body cam footage showing brutal police beating by 5 Memphis police officers releasedA portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 in Memphis, Tenn.Adrian Sainz/AP PhotoMEMPHIS, Tennessee — The Memphis Police Department released disturbing footage Friday evening showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols.The violent footage, from police body cameras and stationary cameras, was released on the department's Vimeo page."You guys are really doing a lot right now," Nichols is heard saying to the officers at the start of the videos, which were released in four parts. "I'm just trying to go home."The beating occurred during a traffic stop in Memphis' Hickory Hill neighborhood on January 7. Nichols, who was 29, died of his injuries three days later. Authorities said Nichols had been stopped by the officers and accused of reckless driving, but Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn J. Davis has since said the department has not found proof to substantiate the reckless driving allegation.Memphis officials and others with access to the video had warned the public of the gruesome nature of the footage in advance of its release on Friday. READ FULL STORYProtesters gathered in Memphis ahead of the video release saying they didn't need to see the footage because they knew 'it was murder'People in Memphis protest the death of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally beaten by police officers.Haven Orecchio, InsiderMEMPHIS, Tennessee — Protesters gathered at Martyrs Park in Memphis, Tennessee, around 6 p.m. local time on Friday evening as the city braced for the release of graphic body camera footage that shows several police officers fatally beating Tyre Nichols.Demonstrators said they didn't need to wait for the video — they already knew Nichols' death was murder.Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder.Approximately hundreds of protesters blocked a long line of 18-wheelers on Old Bridge, chanting "You take our lives, we'll take your money" and "no justice, no peace.Sherri, a Memphis native, told Insider her 28-year-old Black son moved to Germany, and she's glad he's out of the country and away from cops in Memphis. She said she was pulled over on Thursday night and was nervous.When an officer asked her why she was anxious, she responded: "Not all interactions end this way." Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»