US President Joe Biden said he was “scandalized” and “deeply bruised” after the broadcast on Friday evening of images of a young black man, Tire Nichols, beaten to death by the police.
The broadcast of videos of the violent arrest of Tire Nichols, a young black motorist who died of his injuries after being beaten by Memphis police, sparked a wave of indignation and demonstrations in several American cities. The images made public on Friday evening January 27 were filmed by a surveillance camera and by individual police cameras on January 7 in Memphis, Tennessee. We see in several sequences Tire Nichols, 29, being stopped at a traffic light. Then the young man is brutally extracted from his car by the police. He struggles and manages to flee, as the police try to subdue him with a Taser and spray tear gas on him.
Arrested shortly after at another crossroads, he was thrown to the ground and beaten by the police. One kicks him in the face, another hits him with a telescopic baton, a third punches him. Beaten for several minutes, Nichols screams and calls out to his mother for help. He is then lying, handcuffed, against the car. Many police officers arrive on the scene, then two firefighters with medical equipment, but the tension seems to have subsided. The police talk to each other. An ambulance arrives after 22 minutes.
Five police officers suspended
Tire Nichols died of his injuries three days later in hospital, visibly suffering from internal injuries. Five Memphis police officers involved in the arrest have been suspended. An internal investigation has been opened, and those responsible are charged with second degree murder. Memphis Police Director Cerelyn Davis called the officers’ action hateful, reckless and inhumane. She also said police were unable to find anything to justify the arrest of Nichols driving her car.
The images sparked emotional reactions and outrage across the United States. Protesters gathered in several cities, including Memphis, where they blocked the bridge that crosses the Mississippi to Arkansas. In Washington, DC, protesters gathered in Lafayette Park, across from the White House and near the intersection renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza after the death of George Floyd in 2020. This new drama has rekindled memories of other arrests brutal, like the one where Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, or like the beating of Rodney King, whose fate sparked riots in Los Angeles in 1991.
“They really beat him to death”
Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, appealed to protesters for calm. “I don’t want us to burn down our towns, devastate the streets, because that’s not what my son stood for”she said. “If you are here for me and Tyre, then protest peacefully.” She told television that the police came to warn her shortly after the arrest asking if her son was taking drugs. At the hospital, she found her son in critical condition. “He had bruises all over his body. His head was swollen like a watermelon. His neck was broken. His nose looked like an S… They really beat him to death. When I saw that, I knew my son was gone, that was the end. Even if he had lived, he would have been a vegetable.
The question of police violence is closely linked to that of racism. But Nichols’ death is made harder to attribute solely to racial issues since the police officers like the victim are all black. The five police officers accused of fatally beating Tire Nichols were members of a special crime-fighting unit. Baptized Scorpion (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods – Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods). This unit was created in 2021, and was cited as an example by the mayor of Memphis.
The family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, who has defended several victims of police brutality, which the family of George Floyd accused American police culture. He praised the speed of justice, but suggested it was because the officers were black themselves.