Tyre Nichols was killed after he was brutally beaten by Memphis police officers on the evening of January 7. Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was pulled over for what police said was reckless driving. Three days later, he died from his injuries.
It’s not the first time that police have turned a traffic stop into a deadly altercation. Five police officers, all of whom are Black, have been fired for their actions toward Nichols. They have each been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct, and one charge of official oppression. (At least two other police officers have been suspended in connection to the case.) If found guilty, the five former officers each face up to 60 years in prison for the murder charge alone.
The city of Memphis released footage from police body cameras and street cameras that showed the officers repeatedly punching, kicking, and hitting Nichols with a baton — sometimes while he was restrained on the ground.
The fatal beating has sparked nationwide protests and revived calls for police reform in Congress.
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Ellen Ioanes, Sean Collins and 1 more
The fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, explained
People attend a candlelight vigil in memory of Tyre Nichols at the Tobey Skate Park on January 26, 2023, in Memphis, Tennessee. Scott Olson/Getty ImagesTyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died in January after he was pulled over by Memphis police who violently beat him for three minutes, an incident shown in footage that was released on January 27.
Lawyers for the Nichols family said in a press conference on January 30 that Nichols had been treated like a “human piñata.” Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said in a video statement that the attack was “heinous, reckless, and inhumane.” Protests, most of them peaceful, sprang up across the country after the city of Memphis released video footage of Nichols’s brutal assault.
Read Article >What do we want police body cams to do?
Fullerton Police Sgt. Jon Radus wears his body camera high on his chest attached with a magnetic device while on patrol in Fullerton, California, on February 16, 2017. Leonard Ortiz/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty ImagesNot even the Memphis police chief could dismiss the video footage of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols being fatally beaten by cops in early January. On the day before its public release, police chief Cerelyn Davis declared the attack “heinous, reckless and inhumane.”
Friday night, the rest of the country saw what she meant. Officials released four videos — three from officers’ body cameras and one from SkyCop surveillance footage — that showed Memphis police punching, kicking, and clubbing Nichols, who did not fight back. The videos showed Nichols crying out for his mom, captured a police officer saying, “I hope they stomp his ass,” and showed that it took over 25 minutes for him to receive medical attention. The Shelby County district attorney ultimately brought charges including murder, assault, and kidnapping against the five police responsible.
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Nicole Narea and Li Zhou
Lawmakers won’t compromise on police reform. Will Tyre Nichols’s killing change that?
Demonstrators protest the death of Tyre Nichols on January 28, 2023, in Memphis, Tennessee. Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesThe release of footage on Friday of Memphis police violently beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died from his injuries three days later, has renewed calls to pass federal police reform. But with the House of Representatives now in Republican hands and a closely divided Senate, the prospect for any such reform remains unlikely.
Chief among the existing proposals is Democrats’ George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the then-Democratic controlled House in 2021 without a single Republican vote, but failed in the Senate.
Read Article >What we learned from the Tyre Nichols video
Demonstrators protest the death of Tyre Nichols on January 27, 2023, in Memphis, Tennessee. Scott Olson/Getty ImagesVideo of five Memphis police officers punching and kicking Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man who died after police escalated a traffic stop on January 7 into a brutal beating, was released on Friday by the city of Memphis. Multiple video clips show police kicking Nichols in the head, beating him with a baton, and punching him while restraining him — ultimately resulting in his death at St. Francis Hospital on January 10.
The city released the video — more than an hour of total footage between four clips — at 7 pm Eastern time on Friday. Three of the clips are taken from body cameras and include sound, while one silent clip comes from a light pole camera.
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