Five former Memphis police officers have been charged with murder following a traffic stop, and video of the incident shows them beating a driver for many minutes while he calls out for his mother.
Tyree Nichols, 29, is beaten by police in the recordings from his arrest on January 7; there are no indications that he was resisting.
***Warning Videos show graphic beatings***
So this is what European and American media and elites mean when they preach about human rights.
— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) January 28, 2023
The murder of Tyree Nichols once again exposes the true nature of hypocritical western regimes.
They rape and plunder abroad and this is what they do at home. pic.twitter.com/7WhfHfmHMr
US Vice President Joe Biden described the “horrific” video as “very painful.”
Attorneys for Mr. Nichols’ family compared the assault to the beating by Los Angeles police in 1991 of motorist Rodney King.
Some readers may find this article’s descriptions of violence upsetting.
Police initially said Mr. Nichols had been pulled over on the basis of a reckless driving suspect, but this claim has now been refuted. Three days later, on January 10, he passed away in the hospital.
Both Mr. Nichols and the five cops accused in the case are black.
The Memphis Police Department released four violent recordings, totaling more than an hour of film, showing the traffic stop and its violent aftermath on Friday.
Three days after his encounter with police at a traffic stop, Mr. Nichols passed away.
In the opening video, officers drag Mr. Nichols from his car and order him to the ground.
I did nothing, he exclaims. Officers order him to lay flat.
One officer yells, “Get on the [expletive] ground!” as another is heard, “Tase him!”
Put your hands behind your back before I break your [expletive]! an officer yells.
The officers are working quite hard right now, Mr. Nichols tells them. “I just want to get home,” you say.
Mr. Nichols is quickly shocked with a Taser by one of the officers, but he quickly stands up and tries to flee.
Officers are shown hitting Mr. Nichols in a different video taken from a CCTV camera put on a utility pole after they caught up with him in a residential neighborhood.
Mr. Nichols is shown being restrained by two officers as other officers alternately punch, kick, and strike him with an expandable baton.
He is dragged across the ground and placed up against a police cruiser. The wait for an ambulance to arrive is around 20 minutes
In the third and fourth videos, body camera footage from the police officer who attacked Mr. Nichols is shown as he is restrained, pepper-sprayed, and pummeled while constantly yelling, “Mom!”
The recordings also show Mr. Nichols slumped against the car while officers wander around discussing the incident’s specifics.
Although neither accusation is supported by the publicly available footage, some of them assert that Mr. Nichols “swung” at them or reached for their firearms.
Additionally, officers can be heard claiming that nothing was discovered in his automobile.
RowVaughn Wells, the mother of Mr. Nichols, claims that her son was barely 230 feet (70 meters) from his house when Memphis police officers “murdered him.”
According to the family’s representatives, Mr. Nichols was a dedicated skateboarder who had just started taking a photography class. He also had a four-year-old son. He was a FedEx parcel delivery employee.
Antonio Romanucci, one of the attorneys, stated: “This young man was terrorized by definition of the law in this state.”
The five cops, Justin Smith, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Tadarrius Bean, and Emmitt Martin III, were discharged last week.
Each of them is accused of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct, and official oppression. They were both arrested on Thursday.
According to jail records, four of the five secured bond and were freed from custody by Friday morning.
Martin and Mills’ attorneys have declared that their clients will enter a not-guilty plea.
Cerelyn Davis, the director of the Memphis Police Department, called the five officers’ acts “heinous, reckless, and brutal.”
She informed US media that local officials had chosen to release the footage on Friday evening in order to give schools and commuters enough time to get home because protests were expected.
Mother of Tyree Nichols on her sorrow at her son’s bedside
On Friday night, dozens of protestors blocked a bridge in the Memphis region, while smaller-scale protests also took place in other US cities like New York and Washington, DC.
One demonstrator at the Memphis demonstration, 21-year-old Kyrion, told the BBC that his childhood dream of becoming a police officer in the city had been dashed.
Shit real in Times Square tonight #nyc #NewYorkCity #memphis #protest #news #PoliceBrutality #PoliceReform #MEMPHIS #MemphisPolice #TyreNichols #TyreNicholsVideo #TyreeNichols #JusticeForTyre #JusticeforTyreNichols #tyre pic.twitter.com/EBJNHjdGJt
— That Guy Shane (@ProfanityNewz) January 28, 2023
He declared, “It’s just wicked, and the system will always be bad. “That is why I’m here today; I can’t rely on the cops to protect me at this time.
How do I know the man won’t take me down and beat me into a pulp or jam his knee into my neck?
Following the public publication of the recordings, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said that two of its deputies had also been suspended from duty until an investigation into their behavior is conducted.
