Don’t misunderstand the quiet in Memphis


The Black Police Experience: In support of the late-time death of G. Nichols, the Memphis Police Department is urging police reform

Editor’s Note: Sonia Pruitt is a retired Montgomery County, Maryland, police captain. She is the founder of The Black Police Experience, which promotes the education of the intersection of law enforcement and the Black community. She is also a professor of criminal justice at Howard University in Washington, DC, and at Montgomery College in Maryland. The opinions that she expresses are her own. CNN has more opinion.

The culture needs to be changed. We have to hold people accountable. We have to let the legacy of Mr. Nichols be that there is going to be police reform not only here in Memphis but in this country.”

Police said that an ambulance was called to the scene after a man complained of having trouble breathing. He was taken to a hospital in a critical condition. Three days later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced Nichols had died from injuries sustained in the “use-of-force incident” with officers, according to the statement.

The officers did not help in the critical minutes after the beating. According to preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for his family, it took an ambulance more than 20 minutes to reach the scene where he was attacked and died three days later.

Based on my 28 years of service in the police department, I could see that the officers lacked supervision, showed little professional maturity and had a complete disregard for human life as they stepped into what would eventually become a deadly encounter.

Some names and faces of black police officers came across our screens as we waited. Betrayal was added to the anger and grief we were already feeling. Betrayal, but not surprise. As Black and brown people, we have plenty of experience with our people becoming instruments of White supremacist culture.

The association’s current stance is unusual. It did not say that the arrested officers were doing a difficult job that required them to make split-second decisions, just that they were doing a great job. These are responses we have come to expect from police unions that often help shield cops from accountability.

Efforts to push for police reform in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020 have been largely replaced with calls to address the fear of rising crime, partially through hiring more police officers. The president proposed 100,000 new police officers as part of his plan, which included $324 million in funding to hire more police officers.

The Memphis Police Department must take proactive steps in the healing of those impacted by the heinous actions of a few. The Memphis Police Department is committed to serving our community and taking every measure possible to rebuild the trust that has been negatively affected by the death of Mr.

I Can’t Get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act Done, but I Can Do It (Stop and Suppress)

And, in some cases, local governments have taken their own steps. In the year after Floyd was killed, at least 25 states had considered some form of qualified immunity reform. In California, the new law created a system that will decertify law enforcement officers who have been found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing.

Training or a patchwork of local policies will not be enough to save the lives of these people. The transformation will look like dedication to change as federal legislation addresses use of no-knock warrants, duty to intervene, use of excessive force, and other dangerous policing issues; the placement of Strong political change-makers in office through voting and a commitment by the criminal justice system to hold.

The writer has experience in law enforcement, not just as a captain, and that has been reflected in the article.

“Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Ben Crump said on CNN’s “State of Union.”

The failed legislation was mentioned by President Joe Biden in his statement about the event, as was the fact that many leaders, from the chairs of the committees, are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.

The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting a meeting with Biden this week to push for negotiations. The Chair of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wrote a statement on Sunday saying that their colleagues in the House and Senate should start negotiations and work with them to address police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities.

The Tennessee State Conference NAACP president called on Congress to take action during a news conference in Memphis. You are writing another black mans obituary by failing to pass bills to stop police brutality. You are the owner of the blood of Black America. So stand up and do something.”

The State of the Art: The Failure of State-level Law Enforcement in the Age of a Superconformal Criminal Justice Act (SEC2021)

The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

It would ban discrimination by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would change the doctrine of qualified immunity that critics claim shields law enforcement from accountability.

The legislation would save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, according to the fact sheet.

The two senators from New Jersey and South Carolina spent six months trying to find a way to get 60 votes for the bill in the Senate.

Booker said at the time that we were not making progress at the negotiating table. The paper showed that we were moving away from it. The negotiations we were in stopped. But the work will continue.”

With the legislation stuck, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. Efforts to ban chokeholds, expansion of body-worn cameras, and restrictions on no-knock warrants can be applied to federal officers.

The executive action lays out levers the federal government can use in order to incentivize local law enforcement to get on board with the measures in the president’s order.

Here’s the reality: the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.

State officials have begun investigating local police departments because the federal government can’t take on all cases nationwide.

Memphis is a New Era of Accountability: A Case Study of Nichols’ Black Man Shooting Before the Memphis Police Collision

Five former Memphis police officers are accused of attacking a young black man three days before the fatal police encounter, it was claimed in a federal lawsuit.

After the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, Johnson helped restore order in Ferguson, Missouri.

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

The swift filing of charges and release of video contrasts with what happened in some previous instances of deadly police violence – including the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky, police in 2020 and the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police the same year.

Law enforcement and legal analysts think Memphis is a good example of how to maintain trust in the community after fatal police encounters.

“We’re in a new era of accountability,” said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson, noting the proliferation of police body cameras and cell phone and surveillance video that capture violence by officers. “The more we have these instances that are caught on camera, the more public is outraged, the more there is demand for accountability.”

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

One of the family attorneys said that the video was so bad that it was akin to a human piata.

The police department learned from other high-profile cases when the district attorneys were not transparent and didn’t act quickly.

The decision to charge the officers in this case was right because they convened a grand jury, investigated the case quickly, and brought them into custody.

Crump, in a news conference Friday, called Memphis’ rapid criminal charges – compared to other cities that have waited months or years in brutality cases – a “blueprint” for police departments, prosecutors and political leaders in future cases.

CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers said the swiftness of the charges reminded him of the case involving the April 2015 death of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot in the back after officers pulled him over for a broken brake light in South Carolina.

Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager was arrested days after the shooting and indicted on a murder charge two months later. The wrongful death trial of the officer ended in a mistrial but he pleaded guilty to violating his civil rights in the killing of Scott. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

They waited until Friday to release the footage because they wanted time for the community to make pleas for calm.

“The last thing you want to do is take a high tension event and then add that thing that’s going to increase tension … on a Friday night knowing that people don’t have to be at work in the morning and they have the whole weekend ahead of them,” said CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller.

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

SCORPION: A New Unit for Investigating I-55, Memphis, and the Arkansas River Road Bridge, Violations and Ostructions

Police departments in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Nashville, and New York all said that they were monitoring protests or already had plans in place to deal with them.

“We’ve watched so many of these cases over the last several years,” Martin said. “And when (law enforcement authorities) come forward and when they’re transparent and they provide information to the community, we typically see a very peaceful response.”

Protesters in Memphis shut down I-55 on Friday night after the videos went online, blocking the highway bridge over the Arkansas River. There were no arrests.

The paramedics showed up minutes after the officers left, but not before Nichols was left multiple times on the pavement without assistance.

The footage stunned hardened law enforcement experts. President Joe Biden said that it wasyet another painful reminder of the fear and trauma that Black and Brown Americans go through every day.

The SCORPION unit was alleged to operate like a “gang of vigilantes” without adequate training or supervision. The police did not comment on the lawsuit.

Memphis PD Detached after Tyre Nichols: Is Someone Failing to Serve or Protect Your Own Police? Or Does Someone Want to Shut Down the Police?

On Saturday, Memphis PD said it had permanently deactivated the unit after “listening intently to the family of Tyre Nichols, community leaders and the uninvolved officers who have done quality work in their assignments.

“All of this was preventable,” she told CNN Saturday. “You have officers who are young on the job, unsupervised out there doing what they do on a regular basis. It was not something that they are used to doing.

The chairman of the Memphis City Council cried while telling CNN that despite the change in handling of brutality cases, much more needs to be done.

Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video depicting the violent Memphis police beating of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, and more gatherings and vigils are planned for Sunday.

“All of these officers failed their oath,” Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. They failed to protect and serve. Is anyone trying to protect or serve Tyre Nichols?

Demonstrators marched through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, among other cities across the nation on Saturday, raising signs bearing Nichols’ name and calling for an end to abuses of authority.

“We have to fight the bad players in our community, and now we’ve got to fight our own police officers. That is deplorable,” Robinson said. We will have to do something.

The officers, identified as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., are expected to be arraigned February 17.

The attorney for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., put out a statement Friday night saying that he didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation.

Putting lipstick on a pig: The Tennessee State Lawmaker wants to reform police officers’ mental health care, discipline and disciplining practices

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

The two Democratic state lawmaker plan to file police reform legislation before the Tennessee General Assembly adjourns on Tuesday.

The bills will seek to address mental health care for law enforcement officers, hiring, training, discipline practices and other topics, said Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who represents a portion of Memphis and Shelby County.

The bill is not partisan and should be approved by both sides of the legislature, according to Towns.

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

As for national legislation, Crump called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but not the evenly split Senate.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, who is a Democrat, called for Congress to revive national police reform legislation and said it was a good starting point.

It is the right starting point and the chairman of the crime subcommittee has been working on it for years. I do not think it is enough for him and Sen. Scott to sit down and see if they can revive that effort. We need a national conversation about policing in a responsible, constitutional, and humane way,” he said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/us/tyre-nichols-protests-sunday/index.html

A Memorial Skeepark for Tyre and a Black and Brown Man, Timing the Rest of His Families. It isn’t Happening Again

The 29-year-old was a father and also the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. His mother said he was a good boy, who spent Sundays doing laundry and preparing for the week.

As of Sunday afternoon, the mother of Nichols had raised over $1 million on the GoFundMe. Wells and her husband will be able to afford mental health services, as well as their time off from their jobs, according to the page. They want to build a memorial skate park in honor of Tyre because he loved skating and sunsets.

We have been there before, as a city, as a country and as black and brown people. We keep hoping it doesn’t happen again — and then it does. Tyre was just trying to escape a traffic stop and get home to his mom. And he knew, just as well as the rest of us with Black and brown skin, that getting home was not guaranteed.

Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope – The Violation of Tyre Nichols in the Media After the Video of his Death by Law Enforcement

The president of the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope is Reverend Dr.Rosalyn R. Nichols. The leader of the organizing group is Rev. Ayanna Watkins. The views are not those of the authors. Read more opinion on CNN.

Even though he no longer is with us in the physical sense, his story is not over. In our faith traditions, we trust that Tyre will live on as we continue to fight for change in his memory.

In the days leading up to the release of the video, Memphis felt unnaturally quiet. A tense, uneasy quiet that wrapped around us like a fog. Yes, our community had seen the effects of police violence all over the country, and here at home as well – Darrius Stewart was shot and killed in 2015, Martavious Banks survived being shot in 2018 – and the list goes on. But this time was different. It felt heavier, ominous…and the eyes of the nation were on us.

The image of a swollen, battered young man in his hospital bed was the one we saw even though we had not yet seen the video. We heard from his family’s lawyers the horrific descriptions of what had happened to him at the hands of law enforcement. We understood that his mother could barely watch the first minute of it. Without seeing, we knew.

The city was entering a tense pause. Waiting to see: Would this time be different? Would this death-by-policing case give rise to meaningful accountability or change in law enforcement? Do we dare hope that there might actually be true justice for Tyre when there hadn’t been true justice before him?

When the videos were released, they confirmed what we already knew: that it was time, again, to fight for our lives. We continued to do that in the days after.

Here in Memphis, we’re not going to stop pushing, along with our community partners, for data transparency, for better training, for more accountability. As we continue to grieve, we are also in building mode, looking to continue sharing demands from the families of those victimized by police violence even as we sharpen our own calls to MPD and local government here for the resources to promote cultural transformation around policing and truly reimagine public safety.

It’s been reported that the MPD has dramatically lowered its recruitment standards for new officers. A former lieutenant told the Associated Press, “They would allow pretty much anybody to be a police officer.” MPD did not respond to requests for comment about hiring standards, but multiple news outlets quoted police Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, who took over in June 2021, as saying supervision of less experienced officers is crucial. She said, “Culture eats policy for lunch in police departments.”

We have been calling for the Memphis Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board to have subpoena power for a long time. The only body that should have community oversight in police conduct has been stripped of its power and is left to make recommendations to the MPD. An ordinance was recently proposed that would require reporting on what happens to CLERB recommendations received by MPD – as a step toward greater accountability from MPD and authority for CLERB.

The death of the 29-year-old Black man comes at a critical juncture in American law enforcement, as departments across the country – including the Memphis PD – struggle to recruit qualified officers and fill shifts, lure candidates with signing bonuses worth thousands of dollars, and at times curtail standards and training in a desperate bid to strengthen patrols amid rising gun violence, according to law enforcement experts.

Kenneth Corey was a retired NYPD chief who used to run the training division. We have seen it before. You couldn’t fill seats. You lowered standards. And now you’ve got scandal and use of force. We would never have hired this guy again, because of the individuals involved.

Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said Nichols’ killing raises questions about “how those officers were trained and supervised and selected.”

You want to look at the background of those officers over time. The hiring process – that will be important,” he said. We do not know enough yet.

Haley was hired as an officer in January 2021, according to the records. He worked as a correctional officer. His attorney has not respond to requests for comment.

Martin, 30, joined the department in 2018, according to the records. “No one out there that night wanted to see this guy die,” said his attorney, who said he would plead not guilty.

The records show that Mills joined the department in March of last year. He will also plead not guilty, said Ballin, who described Mills as “remorseful.”

The Case of Tyre Nichols, a Police Officer, Is It Really Important to Retrain or Train? A Quasi-Doctor’s Perspective

“We train and we retrain these officers, just like specialized units around the country,” she said. You should always supervise officers working in specialized units.

Davis said training was not an issue with the unit. She said that the killing was caused byegos and awolf pack mentality.

Culture isn’t something that changes overnight. You know, there is a saying in law enforcement that ‘culture eats policy for lunch.’ She said that policies could be “agile” and that they did not want to have good policies. We want to make sure our culture is moving in the right direction.

“The pandemic impacted recruiting and then George Floyd’s murder really was a moment in time that made prospective police applicants think twice – Is this a job for me?” Wexler said.

“And now, unfortunately, with the Tyre Nichols killing you simply compounded what was already arguably a challenging environment to hire a police officer.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/tyre-nichols-memphis-police-law-enforcement/index.html

What Happens When Police Officers Lose Their Supervision? Alvin Davis, the Memphis Police Department Chief, and Greg Umbach, an Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

The department was budgeted for 2,300 officers last year, CNN affiliate WMC reported. In 2015, nearly 200 Memphis police officers quit over pension and benefit changes, according to WMC.

“It had gotten to the point that we were having sergeants as acting lieutenants,” said Alvin Davis, a former Memphis police lieutenant and recruiter who retired last year. “Hundreds of people did it over a period of time because we didn’t have enough supervisors. So many people were running out the door.”

In order to give their employees a taste of what the department would be like in the future, the Memphis Police Department offered signing bonuses and relocation assistance. Additionally, requirements on college credits, military experience and employment history have been loosened, WMC reported.

Greg Umbach, associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said there is a direct correlation between higher standards for new recruits and lower incidents of bad behavior.

“We know from decades of research that the number of cops meeting higher qualifications, most notably a college degree, matters far more than anything else, for the number of civilian complaints a department gets,” Umbach said.

The quality of supervision is a problem that plagues the Memphis Police Department and other agencies nationwide if the pool of good officers is low.

Police sergeants watch a video and the first thing they think of is where was the supervision and why they thought the video was okay.

“If you pepper-spray someone or you tase someone, you’re supposed to call a supervisor,” said Davis, who spent 22 years on the job. “That’s just policy. I cannot say why they didn’t.

Davis said he didn’t surprise him by the behavior of the former officers who beat Nichols, given the shortage of skilled supervisors and the increasing number of officers recruited by monetary incentives and without the experience they need on the streets.

“The standards kept dropping and dropping to bring people in.” said Davis who was in charge of recruiting. “And then they start throwing money out to lure people in and this is what you got.”

He said that the first thing that they asked was how much money they had. How much time did they have to work? I don’t know if I have to do a year. Two years? Nobody is trying to make a career out of it. It was the money.”

“It’s not the job that it used to be, when you felt like you’re the ‘best in blue’ and you have your head up because you really feel like you accomplished something,” said Davis, referring to the Memphis Police Department’s longtime “Join the best in blue” recruitment campaign. It isn’t that kind of job anymore.

In the 1980’s nearly 10% of the officers in the Miami Police Department were suspended or fired for their role in the “River Cops” corruption scandal. Nearly 20 former officers were convicted on various state and federal charges, including using their police powers as a racketeering enterprise to commit murder.

In 2002, the GOA, the investigative arm of Congress, investigated drug-related police corruption and said a combination of rapid recruitment and loosened education requirements may have allowed untrained recruits to be hired.

We pay the cops as common laborers, because they look like lawyers, speaklike psychologists, and perform like athletes, but they think differently. In New York City, a starting officer gets $42,000 a year, which is about $20 dollars an hour. It also means that at McDonald’s they could be making $15 dollars an hour with none of the stress, trauma or risk.”