Tyre Nichols' funeral (The New York Times)
Tyre Nichols was laid to rest yesterday in Memphis, leaving us with the hope, however faint, that something positive might come from his beating death, which was captured in horrifying images on video. In one positive sign, many Americans now know that too many cops are little more than glorified street thugs, not professional officers of the law. Here is another grim reality that could help produce much-needed change: The Nichols funeral came on the heels of a New York Times (NYT) report that videos of the beating were "starkly at odds" with the police account of what happened.
In other words, to put it charitably, the cops' report was inaccurate. To be less charitable, the Nichols case is just the latest evidence that cops tend to lie, often in concert with each other -- producing accounts that are coordinated in their falsity.
For the record, my wife, Carol, and I have seen this cop trait in a firsthand way -- and I have written about it numerous times. I've also written about the tendency of compromised and skittish judges to buy almost anything cops say.
For now, let's review what the New York Times found in its review of the police reports and the video in the Nichols case. Write reporters Jessica Jaglois, Hicholas Bogel-Burroughs, and Mitch Smith:
A police report written hours after officers beat Tyre Nichols was starkly at odds with what videos have since revealed, making no mention of the powerful kicks and punches unleashed on Mr. Nichols and instead claiming that he was violent.
The police report painted Mr. Nichols, 29, who died three days after the Jan. 7 beating, as an irate suspect who had “started to fight” with Memphis police officers, even reaching for one of their guns. The videos, which were released last week, showed nothing of the sort.Instead, they captured police officers yanking Mr. Nichols from a car, threatening to hurt him and then — after he ran away — catching up with him and inflicting the deadly beating. All the while, it appears from the videos, Mr. Nichols never struck back.. . .
Meanwhile, the city’s fire chief, Gina Sweat, fired two emergency medical technicians and a lieutenant who had responded to the scene, saying that they all had violated a range of policies.
The fire chief said that the E.M.T.s had been responding to a report of a person who had been pepper sprayed and that they had relied on information given to them at the scene, presumably by some of the police officers who had just kicked, punched and used a baton to pummel Mr. Nichols, a FedEx worker and father who had pleaded with the officers to stop.
Incompetence, violations of policy, bullying, lying. How gross does it get? Pretty gross, according to the NYT:
The official account written by a police officer early the next morning told a much different story in which Mr. Nichols was the assailant.
It was the latest instance nationwide in which video evidence — whether from body camera footage or a bystander’s cellphone — offered a starkly different account of police violence from what officers had reported themselves.
In Minneapolis, for example, the police said in May 2020 that George Floyd had died following a “medical incident,” a description that was soon challenged by a teenager’s cellphone video, leading to international protests and charges against four officers.
In Memphis, officers apparently lost touch with reality:
In Mr. Nichols’s arrest, the officer wrote that the police stopped Mr. Nichols’s car on Jan. 7 after seeing him drive quickly and into oncoming traffic, and that, once he was stopped, Mr. Nichols had been “refusing a lawful detention” and fought detectives on the scene.
Cerelyn Davis, the Memphis police chief, has said investigators have been unable to determine whether Mr. Nichols was driving recklessly. And the videos show that officers had approached his car with their guns drawn, while threatening and cursing at him, before pulling him out and pushing him to the ground.
Mr. Nichols, sounding distressed, says “You don’t do that, OK?” and then tries to follow officers’ contradictory and rapid fire commands, which included ordering him to get on the ground while he was already lying down. “All right, I’m on the ground,” he says, before responding to another demand: “Yes, sir.”
But the police continued to be aggressive, with one threatening to fire his Taser at Mr. Nichols and another threatening to “break” his hands. Mr. Nichols pleaded with them to stop, and said at one point, “You guys are really doing a lot right now.”
The cops' account then goes wildly off the rails. And police officials apparently were not prepared for the report to make it into the public realm; they certainly seem to be in no hurry to discuss it:
The police report said that, sometime around this period, Mr. Nichols had grabbed for a detective’s gun, something not shown in any of the videos. The officers then deployed pepper spray into Mr. Nichols’s face, after which he ran away, toward his mother’s house.
A photograph of the police report was first posted online over the weekend by Thaddeus Matthews, a talk-show host in Memphis who is known as The Cussing Pastor and who said he received it from a source. The local district attorney, Steven J. Mulroy, who is leading the prosecution of the officers, said on Monday that he had a copy of a police report with the same account.
Both the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and the Memphis Police Department are listed on the photograph of the report published by Mr. Matthews, which includes only the last name of the officer who wrote it, making it unclear which agency was responsible for its content. Neither would discuss the document.
When officers caught up with Mr. Nichols several minutes after he fled, they tackled him and severely beat him, with one officer delivering a series of blows to Mr. Nichols’s head while two other officers hold his hands behind his back.
Is anything about the cops' report accurate. Yes, a few things, reports The Times:
The police report does mention that the police had struck Mr. Nichols in the arm with a baton and that they had fired pepper spray and a Taser at Mr. Nichols, but it includes no further details of the beating that the officers carried out, which took place less than 100 yards from his mother’s house.
Throughout the report, cops portray Nichols as the aggressor. The video does not support that, The NYT reports:
Despite the fact that Mr. Nichols does not appear to strike back, the report lists Mr. Nichols as the suspect in an aggravated assault and said he had grabbed officers’ belts and one officer’s vest. A Memphis police officer is listed on the report as a victim. That police officer is one of five who have since been charged with second-degree murder in Mr. Nichols’s death.
Only one of the two police officers whose suspensions were announced on Monday has been identified. That officer, Preston Hemphill, had fired his Taser at Mr. Nichols as he ran away, and who also later said, while his body camera was rolling, “I hope they stomp his ass.” He was not seen on video from the second location, where the police carried out the assault on Mr. Nichols.
All five of the charged officers are Black, as was Mr. Nichols. Officer Hemphill is white.
The district attorney’s office said in a statement on Monday that prosecutors were still examining whether to bring more charges, including against Officer Hemphill, the Fire Department employees and officials who wrote reports on the episode.
Chief Sweat said on Monday that the two E.M.T.s whom she fired had “failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment” on Mr. Nichols after arriving at the scene. The lieutenant who was fired never got out of the fire engine, the chief said.
A day earlier, The Times had reported that the E.M.T.s had largely looked on as Mr. Nichols writhed in pain and, at one point, had not touched him or provided any care for nearly seven minutes.
Videos from the scene showed that as the medics were arriving, the police officers who had battered Mr. Nichols were laughing about the episode and describing it in detail, with one saying he had hit Mr. Nichols with “haymakers.” It is unclear whether the medics overheard this or how much the officers told them about the injuries they had inflicted.
They were also insisting that Mr. Nichols must be on drugs, something for which no evidence has emerged. And when another officer arrived at the scene, they described events that, if they happened, were not shown on the footage, claiming that Mr. Nichols “swung” at one officer and “literally had his hand” on that officer’s gun.
What is the public to make of "facts," from official report, that vary so radically with images captured at the scene? From The Times:
The police report is not the only official narrative of the beating that has been challenged by the videos.
The Police Department’s first public statement, issued hours after the arrest, described each of the two encounters only as “confrontations” and omitted details of the beating. “Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath,” it said, noting that state investigators had been called in.
The messaging changed after Mr. Nichols died, residents protested and his family pressed the authorities for answers. Chief Davis has since condemned the actions of the indicted officers as “a failing of basic humanity.”
Those officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — have each been charged with the same seven felonies, which, in addition to the second-degree murder charge, include kidnapping, official misconduct and aggravated assault.
This is sobering stuff for the public to absorb. Let's close, for now, with a report on the Rev. Al Sharpton's eulogy for Tyre Nichols. It's a reminder that many sacrificed so that people of color could serve in the Memphis Police Department:
In his eulogy for Tyre Nichols on Wednesday, the Rev. Al Sharpton singled out the five Black Memphis police officers indicted for their roles in Nichols's death.
Noting that the alleged crimes took place not far from the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered on April 4, 1968, while waging a protest campaign to try to ensure the safety of Black workers in the city, Sharpton drew a line connecting the legacy of the slain civil rights hero to the killing of Nichols.
“The reason why, Mr. and Mrs. Wells [Nichols’s stepfather and mother], what happened to Tyre is so personal to me is that five Black men that wouldn’t have had a job in the police department, would not ever be thought of to be in an elite squad in the city that Dr. King lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death,” Sharpton said in his address.
"There's nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors that you walk through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors," Sharpton added. "You didn’t get on the police department by yourself. The police chief didn’t get there by herself. People had to march and go to jail, and some lost their lives to open the doors for you, and how dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing!”
