” A good person “ whose “a violent act” of the police took his life too soon. At the funeral of Tire Nichols, a young African-American whose fatal beating by black police officers shocked the United States, the speakers, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, rose up against police violence.
After having taken in his arms the mother of Tire Nichols for a long time in the church of Memphis where this tribute was organized, Mme Harris had harsh words for the officers who beat him up as he shouted that he had done nothing and called for help.
“Didn’t he have the right to be safe?” »launched the vice-president. “Here is a family who lost their son and brother to an act of violence” perpetrated by “persons responsible for protecting them”and “This violent act was not intended to ensure public safety”she stated in front of the crowd.
“We will eventually win”
Tire Nichols was “someone good, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being gone too soon”said at the opening of the service the Reverend J. Lawrence Turner at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. “Today, as we celebrate Tyre’s life and comfort his family, we inform this nation that the rerun of this episode, which hashtag Black Lives Matter, has been canceled and will not be renewed for a new season. »he launched. “We will eventually win. »
The Reverend Al Sharpton, a figure in the civil rights struggle, gave the funeral oration. A strong symbol, a brother of George Floyd, a black man in his forties whose death in 2020 under the knee of a white police officer had triggered massive anti-racism demonstrations, was present, as was the mother of Breonna Taylor. This 26-year-old African-American was shot dead by police in her Kentucky apartment in 2020 and has become an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement (“black lives matter”).
On January 7, 29-year-old Tyre Nichols was arrested by Memphis Special Unit officers on charges of a traffic violation. Beaten up, he died three days later in hospital.
Three firefighters and two new police officers are facing disciplinary investigations for the homicide, for which five black officers have already been fired and charged with murder, Memphis police and firefighters said Jan. 30. Preston Hemphill, a white police officer on duty in this major southern US city since 2018, “was suspended from the start of the investigations (…)at the same time as the other agents”local police spokeswoman Kim Elder said in a statement.
Horror and misunderstanding
The city’s fire department also announced that it had fired two paramedics and a lieutenant. “Our investigation concluded that the paramedics responded based on the initial nature of the call (a person who had been pepper sprayed) and the information they received at the scene, and that they did not carried out appropriate examination » of Tire Nichols, Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat explained. The three dismissed individuals are accused of having violated “many rules and protocols” from the Memphis Fire Department, she added.
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The images of the tragedy, captured by the on-board cameras of the agents and the surveillance cameras, were made public on Friday. We see the police brutally pull the young man out of his vehicle. Pinned to the ground, he is sprayed with tear gas and targeted by an electric pulse gun. He then fled on foot to his mother’s home. Caught, he is beaten with kicks, fists and truncheons.
The ordeal of Tire Nichols aroused horror and incomprehension in the United States. Several demonstrations in his honor took place this weekend in the country, without taking on the scale of the exceptional mobilization which followed the death of George Floyd, suffocated by a white police officer in 2020.