New data shows that not only does traffic enforcement in Memphis seem to be ineffective in promoting a safer city, but Black residents receive four times as many traffic tickets as white residents.
Decarcerate Memphis, an organization devoted to solving systemic policing problems, published “The People’s Report 2024: Driving While BIPOC” on Monday, which includes data collected from 2017 to August 2023. The group says their findings conclude that traffic stops increased by a quarter following the death of Tyre Nichols.
“This year’s report shows racial disparities continue — 81 percent of citations are issued to people of color in Memphis, who also receive 90 percent of tickets with two or more citations per ticket,” the group says. “Furthermore, the report finds no relationship between traffic stops and reported crimes, while citations for non-moving violations are associated with an increase in traffic fatalities.”
In the aftermath of the death of Tyre Nichols, Memphis City Council passed a number of driving ordinances such as the Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols, which prohibits officers from pulling drivers over for minor violations such as broken tail lights. However, Decarcerate Memphis’ report says that the Memphis Police Department (MPD) issued more citations.
“Despite the ineffectiveness of non-moving violations on crime or road safety, MPD has significantly emphasized non-moving citations since 2020,” the report says. “After all traffic enforcement cratered in March 2020, MPD officers brought non-moving violations roaring back to pre-pandemic levels within months. Moving violations, meanwhile, are still in lockdown.”
A majority of MPD’s traffic citations (60-64 percent) since 2020 were the result of non-moving violations, the report says. The organization says this is a “weak strategy” and adds that court records proved that traffic enforcement does not help resolve serious crimes.
After pulling a random sample of 1,432 court cases in 2023, the group found that 150 of the cases were pretextual traffic stops with “minor infractions.” The data also concluded that 91 of these cases (61 percent) didn’t result in felony charges.
Discrimination was another key finding in the report, as Black people make up about 64 percent of Memphis’ population and were found to receive a majority of traffic tickets (74 percent.) This further proved the assertion that non-moving traffic violations are not only ineffective in public safety measures, but disproportionately affect people of color.
“Black residents make up 81 percent of defendants in criminal court — among pretextual traffic stop defendants, 91 percent are Black,” the report reads. “Counterintuitively, white defendants are more likely than Black defendants to be convicted of petty charges. This likely reflects a relative absence of summoning white Memphians to court for charges that aren’t worth pursuing.”
Decarcerate Memphis added that their data suggests racial disparities can be “partially explained” by the types of traffic enforcement such as the Organized Crime Unit and the now disbanded SCORPION unit. They say these officers “spend less time on safety-related citations than conventional units.”
To illustrate this, the group compared citations from the “top ticketers of uniform patrol and specialized unit.” The findings showed that 87 percent of the specialized unit officer’s citations were for non-moving violations, while the uniform patrol officer reported 22 percent. While specialized unit officers’ main goal is to “take guns and drugs off the streets,” the organization says they rarely achieve their goal by pulling over and searching “suspicious” cars.
“The burden of the fruitless detentions, searches, and petty charges falls squarely on poor people and people of color,” the report says. “This uniform patrol officer issued 73 percent of their tickets to Black drivers — still disproportionate by population, roughly in line with the overall racial disparity for MPD. “
The report concludes with a number of recommendations proposed by the group, heavily emphasizing traffic enforcement laws. They also urge the leadership of MPD to not only comply with these laws, but to provide timely updates to measure the success of their implementation.
Other suggestions include the end of specialized units as well as data transparency from these units. The group also encourages the deprioritization of non-moving violations.
“Memphis and Shelby County have, in some respects, truly become more threatening in recent years: traffic fatalities have risen, especially since 2020; fewer people are able to legally drive; and people of color face more discrimination on the road and in court. These developments occurred, not in spite of law enforcement efforts, but because of the ineffective and harmful approaches that law enforcement favors.”
Candlelight vigils on Sunday will commemorate the one-year anniversary of the killing of Trye Nichols by Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers.
A vigil will be held in Memphis on January 7 at 7 p.m. at the intersection of Castlegate Lane and Ross Road. Another vigil will take place in Nichols’ hometown of Sacramento, California at the Tyre Nichols Skate Park at 5 p.m. CST.
Credit: Google Maps
“During the vigils attendees will come together to reflect on Nichols’ life, share memories and stand united in demanding accountability and justice,” reads a statement from attorney Ben Crump’s office. “Candles will be lit in his honor, and as a symbol of hope and remembrance.”
Crump and Antonio Romanucci, attorneys for the Nichols family, also released a letter ahead of the anniversary of Nichols’ death.
“Our legal team is fiercely committed to fighting for justice for Tyre and vigorously restate our assertions that the Scorpion Unit officers involved acted at the direction of [an MPD] policy that violated the civil rights of innocent civilians and caused needless pain to many,” reads the letter.
The anniversary of Nichols’ death coincides with the release of information by former Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, where he explained that he “actively avoided signing and enforcing the Driving Equality Act in honor of Tyre Nichols that the Memphis City Council passed in Spring 2023.” The law would have required Memphis police officers to skip traffic stops for offenses like temporary tags, damaged bumpers, or lapsed car registration.
Both Crump and Romanucci said that they are “deeply disturbed” by this revelation and that this would have directed “meaningful reform in how Memphis Police should conduct and report traffic stops.” They have also vowed to hold Mayor Paul Young accountable for holding up plans to enact this reform.
“These types of commonsense changes to police policies and practices are essential to establishing trust between communities and police,” said the attorneys in a statement. “Had changes to law enforcement policies been enacted in 2020, we strongly believe Tyre Nichols would be alive today.”
Reddit user u/notanotheraibot wins the MEMernet this year with a high-quality meme featuring Hitler finding out his favorite Memphis pizza place was not treated well in a Reddit poll.
Runner up
Posted to Facebook by Richie Esquivel
Richie Esquivel posted a sad/hilarious photo of a dead raccoon painted over by a road crew laying new traffic stripes on Getwell. The Facebook post went around the world, picked up by The Guardian, the New York Post, and more.
“#notmyjob,” he wrote. “Memphis, Tennessee, baby. But Getwell Road looked real nice, tho.”
Tyre’s Memphis
Posted to Twitter by Tyre Nichols
Hundreds of thousands found the photography website for Tyre Nichols.
“My name is Tyre D. Nichols. I am an aspiring photographer,” he wrote. “Well, I mostly do this stuff for fun but I enjoy it very much. Photography helps me look at the world in a more creative way. It expresses me in ways I cannot write down for people.”
Students at Whitehaven High School in Memphis attended an assembly with the authors of “His Name Is George Floyd,” but restrictions associated with Tennessee law prevented them from hearing excerpts of the book. (Courtesy of Memphis Shelby County Schools)
Students at Memphis’ Whitehaven High School got a chance last month to hear from journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, authors of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on George Floyd — his life, his brutal killing by police in 2020, and its aftermath.
But the students didn’t get to hear any excerpts from His Name Is George Floyd, and they weren’t allowed to take home copies of the book from school. The authors had to give their presentation without going too deep into the book’s main theme of systemic racism.
Who determined the restrictions and why is unclear. The organizers of the event, a local partnership called Memphis Reads, said their instructions to the authors were based on guidance from the school district on complying with Tennessee law that requires that books used in school be “age appropriate.”
Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials disputed their account, but repeatedly declined to answer questions about what they told the organizers or how they interpreted the law. In an email to the authors after the event, district communications chief Cathryn Stout said MSCS did not run the book through its review process before the visit.
In the end, the authors told Chalkbeat, the students who gathered at Whitehaven that day were shortchanged by restricted access to the book and a censored experience.
“Neither Tolu nor I know who to cast blame on,” Samuels said. “I’m not sure we could, or we should.”
But the ambiguous restrictions in this and other Tennessee laws have caused concern at the local level about compliance, Samuels said, resulting in “messy, potentially explosive debates between entities that usually get along.”
Floyd was killed during an arrest in May 2020, when a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck for several minutes. An onlooker’s video recording of the event went public, triggering a huge outcry and calls for and policing reform. The officer was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.
Samuels and Olonnuripa’s book, written while both were reporters at the Washington Post, looks not just at the incident but also at how pervasive racism in education, criminal justice, housing, and health care systems shaped Floyd’s life. “We learned about the man himself … and much more than how he died,” Samuels said during a forum at Rhodes College.
They also wrote about what happened afterward: a season of demonstrations, dialogue, and unrest during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by what they call a “burgeoning backlash” to the racial justice movement, resulting in state laws across the country that stifled classroom discussions on race.
MSCS officials and the Memphis Reads organizers did not specifically cite this law as a factor in what ultimately happened at Whitehaven, but the law nonetheless hangs over educators’ decisions about what topics are appropriate for classroom discussion. Two Memphis teachers are among five in Tennessee challenging the law in federal court.
Tennessee’s Age Appropriate Materials Act, meanwhile, requires schools to publish a list of what’s in their library collections online and develop policies to review and remove books that aren’t appropriate — a term that the law leaves undefined.
MSCS has leeway to interpret this law, but longstanding tensions between the majority-Black, Democratic-led city and the mostly white, GOP-dominated state government mean the district can ill afford to risk a fight with the state over the nuances of race and books.
Christian Brothers University runs the Memphis Reads program in partnership with other community groups. In communication with Chalkbeat, CBU cited the Age Appropriate Materials law as the reason it understood that books and materials couldn’t be distributed at the Whitehaven event and said that the guidance came from the Memphis school district.
CBU and other Memphis Reads partners “were under the instruction of MSCS leadership when completing the formatting and regulations concerning the Age-Appropriate Materials Act,” Justin Brooks, the CBU community engagement director who heads Memphis Reads, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat.
MSCS officials wouldn’t confirm that to Chalkbeat, or explain whether Tennessee’s law regulating classroom conversations about race influenced any restrictions.
In the email to the authors after the event, shared later with Chalkbeat, Stout wrote that time constraints prevented the district from going through its own process to approve the book. Stout wrote that the district regretted that their “experience was anything less than welcoming.”
“Given the new, more detailed process, it will take some time to coordinate, but please know that ‘His Name Is George Floyd’ is now under consideration to be added to the Whitehaven High School library collection,” Stout wrote to the authors, “and we look forward to having conversations with other school communities as requests arise.”
Separately, Stout shared with Chalkbeat a copy of a description from library book distributor Baker & Taylor that categorizes the book as “adult” and among the American Library Association’s “Notable Books for Adults.”
Stout also wrote in a public social media comment explaining the district’s position that the American Library Association labeled His Name is George Floyd as “adult literature (18 and older).”
ALA spokesperson Raymond Garcia told Chalkbeat that the group “does not rate books” for age appropriateness.
Booklist, a book review magazine published by the ALA — and listed among resources for librarians in an MSCS manual — uses its “adult” label not to be restrictive but to signal that a book would be of interest primarily to adults, Garcia said.
If the label was a factor in the decision not to allow Memphis Reads to distribute the books at Whitehaven, then that’s an “inaccurate understanding” of the purpose of such book labels, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association.
“We can think of any kinds of works of literature that would have been originally rated as of interest to an adult reader that are absolutely fine for young people to read, and it’s not too controversial,” Caldwell-Stone told Chalkbeat, citing “To Kill a Mockingbird” as an example.
Nonetheless, the ambiguity in Tennessee’s standard of “appropriateness” creates gray areas and heightens the stakes for local districts concerned about avoiding a violation, Caldwell-Stone said.
If a person or district cannot risk breaking the law, “then you’re going to be very thoughtful about what books you offer,” she said, “and thereby limit the opportunities to learn and engage with all kinds of ideas, even controversial or difficult ideas.”
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Education says MSCS did not reach out to the state for guidance, and MSCS didn’t respond to a question from Chalkbeat about that issue.
Thanks to a donation from the publisher, Viking Books, students who want a free copy of the book will be able to get one from Respect the Haven, a community development group in Whitehaven that’s part of Memphis Reads.
Whitehaven High School serves some 1,500 students and is known among Memphis for its school pride and focus on students’ post-secondary scholarship achievements. Almost all of its students are Black, and about half of them are from low-income families.
“This event basically got censored out of fear of violating some law,” said Jason Sharif, head of Respect the Haven. “With us being a predominantly Black city, a predominantly Black school district, you cannot keep books like this or stories like this from being told to Black students.”
By the time Samuels and Olorunnipa arrived at Whitehaven High School for the event on Oct. 26, they knew some of the restrictions they would have to operate under. The two reporters were prepared to tell students about the journalistic work that went into writing the book, but to avoid going into depth about many of the issues it raised.
Brooks, from Memphis Reads, had told them they wouldn’t be able to read directly from the book, or talk about the book’s discussion of how systemic racism created many barriers for Floyd, long before his arrest and killing. MSCS was involved in setting these restrictions, Brooks said. The district did not comment on its role.
Instead of an open question-and-answer period, five students were pre-selected to ask Samuels and Olorunnipa prepared questions, which was different from the open conversations at the two other panels that Memphis Reads organized. This was in line with MSCS protocol for events, Brooks said.
Brooks said it was CBU’s call to keep the event closed to media, out of concern for student safety. A Chalkbeat reporter attended two similar events at the college level.
Stout said Brooks and Sharif had created a narrative about the event that is “inconsistent” with the district’s point of view and its own initiatives. She highlighted a Memphis school integration curriculum and a social emotional learning curriculum involving the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who was fatally injured by Memphis police after a traffic stop in early 2023.
MSCS told Chalkbeat that it was glad Whitehaven students had the opportunity to hear the journalists speak, as did CBU in its own communication.
And Samuels and Olorunnipa, who had early doubts about being part of an event with restrictions on their speech, said they were grateful for the opportunity, too. They were approached at the end of the event by a Whitehaven high schooler with a notebook full of questions who said he wanted to be a journalist. The authors relished the chance to expand what the student imagined for his future.
“Even through this period of backlash, we think it’s important to continue to push forward and continue to make a pathway for people who are caught up in the back and forth,” Olorunnipa said during another forum.
“A lot of these kids have nothing to do with the politics,” Olorunnipa added. “They are just trying to make it. They’re just trying to live their best lives. And sometimes they become pawns in our political fights.”
Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
One of the former Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers indicted in the January beating death of Tyre Nichols agreed to plead guilty in state court, according to Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.
Desmond Mills is one of five former officers charged in Nichols’ death. He pled guilty to the charges Thursday morning after pleading not guilty in September.
“As part of the global settlement reached between Mills, the DA’s office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mills agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of excessive force and obstruction of justice, as well as related state charges related to Nichols’ death,” reads a statement from Mulroy’s office. “He also agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully with both the state and federal investigations, including civil rights investigations by the U.S. Justice Department.”
With this, state and federal prosecutors have recommended a 15-year sentence for Desmond. Though, the final decision will be made by U.S. District Judge Mark Norris. Any time Desmond serves will be in a federal prison.
Mulroy said his office consulted with Nichols’ family, “who support the above agreement.”
“I join Tyre’s family in saying this is a fair result, given Mr. Mills’ level of involvement, and his willingness to cooperate with us,” said Mulroy. “His cooperation will help us bring to justice all those criminally responsible while also identifying needs for systemic reform within the police department.”
Attorneys for the Nichols family, Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, released a statement Thursday morning.
“Desmond Mills’ plea today is entirely consistent with our allegations in the civil lawsuit against the city of Memphis,” the said in a statement. “We stand strong in our belief that these officers, including Mills, acted at the direction of a policy that not only violated civil rights of innocent civilians but which caused needless pain to many.
“The MPD and its SCORPION unit directed, trained, and encouraged officers like Mills to commit baseless and horrific acts of violence against innocent individuals like Tyre Nichols. We vigorously restate our assertion that those policies were behind what ultimately caused Mills and four other Scorpion officers to kill Tyre Nichols.
“Mills was not an individual actor, and as our civil suit continues to unfold, that will become even more apparent.”
Many local leaders are hailing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the Memphis Police Department (MPD) as “the right course of action” to address “systemic issues” within the department.
DOJ officials announced Thursday they are opening a civil rights investigation into the city of Memphis and the MPD.
Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the DOJ’s local office said that this investigation will determine “whether there is a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or our federal civil rights law.”
Clarke said the move is not in response to a single incident or event, nor is it “confined to a specific unit or type of unit within the MPD.
Local leaders began sharing their thoughts about the investigation after a press conference on the matter Thursday afternoon.
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy
“I’m pleased the DOJ is investigating civil rights practices within the MPD. While I’m sure most officers are people of good faith, we have systemic issues we need to address. The Tyre Nichols incident was not a one-off, but suggests wider problems of culture.
Only an outside investigation can restore the public confidence we need to get the community cooperating with law enforcement, which is the most important thing to bend the curve on crime. And only DOJ can provide the kind of thorough investigation into systemic practices that we need to restore public confidence.”
Memphis mayoral candidate Michelle McKissack
“This independent investigation is the right course of action. We need transparency and truth surrounding the tragic death of Tyre Nichols and patterns of misconduct within MPD.
Our community must have trust and faith in the Memphis Police Department. As mayor, I would be committed to fully cooperating with the investigation because it will leave us with a stronger department and a safer city.”
Attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci (legal counsel for the family of Tyre Nichols)
“The family of Tyre Nichols is grateful that the Department of Justice heard their cries for accountability and are opening this investigation.
Actions such as this will continue to show that the federal government will not let corruption within police departments take the lives of innocent Americans.
It is our hope that the investigation by the DOJ, under the leadership of Attorney General Garland and Assistant Attorney General Clarke, will provide a transparent account of the abuses of power we have seen and continue to see in Memphis.”
Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis)
“My hope is that city and police officials embrace the Department of Justice’s civil rights investigation as an opportunity for systemic change.
Our families are sick and tired of crime and they need our police department to succeed. But well-meaning officers cannot build trust if the department does not holistically address the failures it has made in the past.”
Former Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer
“Let’s not forget that the last time DOJ investigated Memphis, it found that Black youth were treated unfairly in Juvenile Court, the detention center, and by MPD and SCSO. Mayors [Jim] Strickland and [then Shelby County Mayor Mark Lutrell] successfully lobbied the Trump administration to remove those DOJ monitors.”
Just City
“Just City is pleased and encouraged that the Department of Justice has answered our community’s call for a pattern or practice investigation into the city of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department. We proudly added our voice to those of lawmakers, pastors, and advocates leading this demand and provided data analysis as evidence of their claims.
Today’s announcement is evidence of the power of our collective efforts since the tragic killing of Tyre Nichols, but we are also grateful for those who have advocated for more accountability and transparency for years. The opening of this investigation is validation of a long-held understanding by many in our community that our police department is rooted in a culture of violence, racial discrimination, and resistance to accountability.
We hope that our city’s next mayor will take this evidence and investigation seriously and move toward creating meaningful accountability for police officers and enact plans to reduce the over-policing of Black communities. This is a pivotal opportunity, and we hope this investigation results in renewed trust and public safety in a community desperate for both.”
Democratic State House Minority Leader and Memphis mayoral candidate Rep. Karen Camper
“The announcement of the Department of Justice investigation into the patterns and practices of the Memphis Police Department brings us one step closer to putting an end to a culture of racism, violence and violation that has been systemic in the department.
This investigation is focused on what we know must be fixed right now, but I believe it will be a catalyst for reform so that we do not have to have to fix it again in the future.
The work to create a more just and equitable Memphis continues and I promise you that I will always be in the fight with you.”
Rev. Al Sharpton
“When I delivered the eulogy for Tyre [Nichols] this February, I made a clear call for the Justice Department to look at the policies and procedures that led to his death.
“You cannot allow a police department to continue business as usual when there’s clear video of multiple officers ripping him from his car, shoving him to the pavement, and senselessly beating him to death.”
If you commit a crime in Memphis, odds are you’re going to get away with it.
The “clearance rate” is a standard measure of police effectiveness used by the FBI. It measures the ratio of crimes reported to arrests made. Crimes cleared by “exceptional means,” such as when the perpetrator is known to police but died before they could be arrested, are also included.
In 2021, the most recent year for which numbers are available from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Statistics Unit, the Memphis Police Department’s clearance rate for all reported crimes was 22 percent — less than half the national average of 54 percent. For murder, the MPD’s clearance rate was 38 percent. For forcible rape, it was 17.8 percent. For theft from motor vehicles, the rate was 3 percent.
“I think it’s important to point out that, compared to the national average, and compared to cities of comparable size, it is abysmal,” says Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.
Mulroy emphasized that he was not “throwing shade” on MPD, which he called under-resourced. Nor did he blame Police Chief C.J. Davis. “It takes more than a year and a half to change the culture of an organization that size.” Nonetheless, the below average clearance rates were, in his view, a big problem.
Josh Spickler (Photo: Courtesy Josh Spickler)
“They don’t clear cases,” says Josh Spickler, Executive Director of Just City, a nonprofit devoted to reforming Memphis’ criminal justice system. “That’s the one thing we have to talk about — they don’t solve crime.”
As of press time, the Memphis Police Department did not respond to emailed questions about the department’s clearance rates.
Most police officers, Spickler says, “do the best job they can, even though it’s an impossible job we’ve asked them to do … This is not a critique of the individuals. They’re not put in a position to solve crime. It’s just a disaster. No one is getting justice: Victims are not getting justice, you and I are not getting justice, the taxpayers who are paying for all this are not getting justice. I think something must be done. Something real, something big, something bold and courageous.”
Indeed, the three major national news stories from Memphis in the last year (which did not involve the Memphis Grizzlies) all contained elements of police failure.
The first was the kidnapping and murder of Eliza Fletcher on September 2, 2022, which caused a national media frenzy. The alleged perpetrator, Cleotha Abston-Henderson, was accused of rape in September 2021 by Alicia Franklin, who provided police with his name, phone number, and dating app profile. She submitted to a rape kit examination, but could not conclusively identify Abston-Henderson from an old photo police showed her, and no arrest was made. The case remained one of the 273 uncleared rape reports from 2021 until the rape kit was finally processed in the wake of the Fletcher murder, and Abston-Henderson was charged for both crimes. Franklin sued the city for failing to properly investigate the rape, but the lawsuit was recently dismissed. “They had more than enough evidence that night when they interviewed me to get him off the streets, but they didn’t,” Franklin told ABC News.
The second crime was the mass shooting perpetrated by Ezekiel Kelly on September 7, 2022. Kelly killed his first victim, Dewayne Tunstall, at 12:33 a.m. The murder was immediately reported, and first responders arrived promptly. But Kelly remained at large for another 15 hours before killing his second victim, Richard Clark, at 4:35 p.m. It wasn’t until after 6 p.m., when a 911 caller tipped police to the fact that Kelly was live-streaming his mobile murder spree on Facebook, that police knew Kelly had become a mass shooter. He was finally captured at 9:15 p.m.
Then came the police murder of Tyre Nichols.
Tyre’s Legacy
On January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols was driving to have dinner at his parents’ house in Hickory Hill when he was stopped by two unmarked police cars. As Demetrius Haley and Emmet Martin III, plainclothes officers from the MPD’s SCORPION unit, were pulling Nichols from his vehicle, a third unmarked police car, driven by Preston Hemphill, arrived at the scene. As seen on Hemphill’s body cam video, Nichols offered no resistance, and tried to de-escalate the confrontation with officers, who yelled conflicting orders at him while they pinned him to the ground. One officer attempted to pepper spray Nichols, but instead sprayed the other officers, obscuring their vision. Seeing his chance to escape the assault, Nichols ran. When police caught up to him they took turns kicking and beating him as he cried out for his mother.
Amber Sherman (Photo: Brandon Dill)
Before Nichols died in the hospital on January 10, 2023, photographs of his bruised and broken body were already circulating in Memphis. “When I saw those pictures of him, I was like, this is Emmett Till-level. This is someone beaten so viciously as to be completely unrecognizable. When you look at the picture of how he looked before that incident and afterwards in the hospital, it’s two totally different people,” says Amber Sherman, community organizer and activist behind The Law According to Amber podcast.
On January 27, 2023, the day the body cam and SkyCop videos of Nichols’ murder were released to the public, Sherman led the protests that shut down the I-55 bridge. They demanded the SCORPION unit be immediately disbanded. As excerpts from the videos played on national television, Sherman spoke to Mayor Jim Strickland on the phone. “I know you have the sole authority as the mayor to shut this down,” she told him. “So if you don’t want to use that power, cool. We’ll stay on the bridge.”
The police presence at the protest was minimal. “Of course they weren’t gonna show up, because people are watching y’all literally beat somebody to death on TV right now,” Sherman says. “Within 12 hours of us doing that protest, they shut down the [SCORPION] unit.”
Violent rioting had been predicted by some media and law enforcement. “I expected folks to hit the streets and make those calls for justice,” says Sherman. “What we expected to happen, happened. I think there were folks being upset that there wasn’t a riot or something like that. I always remind people that most protests that happen are pretty peaceful. That’s how they go. They don’t get violent until the cops come.”
Steve Mulroy (Photo: Steve Mulroy | Facebook)
DA Mulroy says he was not expecting violence, either. Two days before the videos were released, he announced charges of second degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, official oppression, aggravated assault, and official misconduct against officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith, all of whom had beaten Nichols at the second crime scene. It was three weeks since the initial traffic stop, a remarkably short period in these matters. “That was always in my mind: Let’s get the video out as soon as possible. But then we started to realize the video is gonna be really incendiary and could provoke a violent response. So ideally, if we could announce charges before release of the video, that would go a long way towards calming everybody down,” he says.
“I think the primary reason we didn’t see unrest in Memphis — and really, because of that, around the world — was because the wheels of formal justice and accountability had already begun to spin with those indictments,” says Spickler.
Besides, Mulroy trusted the activists. “We have a proud tradition in Memphis, going back decades, of public protests on these issues that were non-violent. In 2016, they took over the bridge, no real violence. In 2020, the summer of George Floyd, there were all kinds of marches and sit-ins and protests. Memphis activists always kept the peace.”
Mulroy was elected in 2022 on a platform that promised reform of the criminal justice system. He says he prioritized transparency in the case not just out of a sense of fairness, but also practicality. “I had campaigned all along on the [premise that] the public lacked confidence in the fairness of our justice system, particularly in the Black community. We needed reform not only for reform’s sake — which is sufficient reason in and of itself — but also as a means to the end of restoring public confidence, so that the community would start cooperating with law enforcement again in a way that they haven’t in recent years. That would be the key thing to bend the curve on violent crime.”
The Nichols killing was a prime example of why the community doesn’t trust the police, Mulroy says. “You had a specialized unit that was supposed to be, and was billed as, focusing on violent crime, that instead tried to get some easy collars and went to regular traffic stops to try to rack up some points. But they still took that violent crime warrior mentality with them, and it led to over-aggressive policing. I think probably the evidence will indicate that young Black males were targeted. As we’ve seen over and over again when we have these specialized units, they tend to be over aggressive. They tend to target young Black males. You had a culture develop — or maybe it had already been in in place, but was put on overdrive. You had a lack of supervision, inadequate training. That perfect storm led to that [incident]. I think we can surmise from the video that this wasn’t an isolated incident. It wasn’t just five bad apples. There is a cultural problem here that needs to be addressed.”
Mulroy declined to press charges against Preston Hemphill, the officer who had been at the initial traffic stop but couldn’t keep up with the fleeing Nichols and so never made it to the second scene where Nichols was fatally beaten. Hemphill is white, and the five officers who were charged were all Black. Mulroy says he concluded that the video evidence against Hemphill was too ambiguous to obtain a conviction. “It’s possible to act in a way that brings dishonor to the uniform and rightfully results in termination from the police department and rightfully results in revocation of the person’s eligibility to ever serve in the law enforcement capacity — it’s possible to do all those things without actually violating the criminal statutes of Tennessee.”
Nichols’ family’s attorney Ben Crump supported the decision not to charge Hemphill, given that he is cooperating with the investigation. But Mulroy’s reasoning rings hollow to Sherman. “The fact that those [charged] were all Black officers, I think they wanted to remind them that, at the end of the day, you’re Black first and we’re gonna treat you just like we treat other Black folks in the street when we overcharge them or when we target and prosecute them. We’re gonna treat you the same exact way. They don’t get any special class or special privilege they thought that they would have as police officers.”
The Community Rises
The officers on the scene said they pulled Tyre Nichols over for reckless driving. On January 27th, as the videos of the stop and beating were being released, Police Chief C.J. Davis admitted there was no proof that Nichols had broken any laws. It was a pretextual traffic stop, says Chelsea Glass of Decarcerate Memphis. “A pretextual traffic stop is like a non-moving violation; for example, a brake light is out, your windshield is cracked, your bumper is missing. Another common one now is if you have drive-out tags. Even if your drive-out tags are totally legal, you’re at risk of being stopped because they’re trying to find out if the car is stolen or not. That’s what they say because the whole thing about a pretextual traffic stop is, it’s a pretext to look for other violations.”
Decarcerate Memphis’s 2022 report “Driving While BIPOC” analyzed data from 10 years of traffic stops. “We found that Black and brown communities were disproportionately overrepresented in the data. So while Memphis is a predominantly Black city, we still found that they were overrepresented out of proportion with their population.
“This is something that we’ve been working on for years,” she continues. “We’ve talked to hundreds of people across Memphis. To be quite honest with you, the campaign itself took very little education. People know what the police are doing and why they’re doing it. I think the people who are less affected by these issues are the ones that are a little bit more easily confused by what’s really at stake and what’s really happening.”
LJ Abraham (Photo: Courtesy LJ Abraham)
After the initial burst of public protests, activists like Sherman, Glass, and West Tennessee Regional Organizing Director for the Equity Alliance LJ Abraham concentrated their efforts on the City Council. “I actually think the momentum is a lot higher right now, because we’ve been able to pass some of the ordinances through City Council,” Abraham says. “That’s just a general basis of beginning actual police reform in Memphis, like ending pretextual stops, ending the use of unmarked police cars, doing data transparency, and just making sure that there is accountability on the side of police. … I think the situation around Tyre Nichols has kind of catapulted the fight for actual reform a little bit higher based on the manner in which he was killed.”
The fight has been emotional and bruising for everyone. Sherman was banned from City Council meetings (illegally, she says). “ I don’t care if they like me,” she says. “I care about being effective in getting policies put in place to keep people safer.
“I think we’ve changed public opinion on pretextual traffic stops,” Sherman continues. “I think public opinion around unmarked cars was always that they were not okay. A lot of folks are really appreciative of that, because they don’t agree with using unmarked cars for traffic enforcement.”
The pretextual traffic stop ordinance which passed the council is narrower than what Decarcerate Memphis wanted, says Glass. “It’s still considered a win, but it’s not entirely what we asked for. Ultimately, we’re pleased with the items that did pass.”
Can We Fix It?
The word that comes up over and over again when discussing police reform is “culture.” Many police, the argument goes, see the public as an enemy, and act like an army occupying a hostile land. “When I was younger, we got along with the cops,” says Abraham, who is 42. “I used to hang out with the cops, sit out on my porch and laugh and joke with them. But growing up and seeing the direction that policing has actually gone is probably one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life. It can’t be this way. I think the police officers we hire, they’re really terrified; just scared for themselves, and not scared for anything else. But how can you take that job where you’re supposed to exhibit some level of bravery?”
The so-called “elite” units, like the SCORPION unit Chief Davis founded with a promise to “take the gloves off,” are a product of the “warrior cop” mindset. “I do believe there are people that we need to take care of us, to guard us, to protect us,” says Spickler. “That’s the mission of a police officer. It is not [to be] out there to wage war, not to battle, fight, and all these words we use when we talk about crime. But that’s what it’s become.
“We were told we’re gonna do whatever it takes to make sure there’s no repeats,” he continues. “But then, we had this battle at City Council where the community was very organized and very clear on what it wanted in these ordinances about traffic stops. The mayor’s administration comes in and says, ‘We can’t do that. Here’s the reason why.’ That’s as clear evidence as you need that they’re not serious. They’re not ready to do the things that need to be done.”
Crime and policing has become the central issue in this year’s mayoral election. Defenders of the status quo maintain that insufficient incarceration is what is driving the city’s crime rate. Cleotha Abston-Henderson served 20 years of a 24-year sentence for kidnapping. Ezekiel Kelly was convicted of aggravated assault when he was 16, and tried as an adult. He was released from prison early during the pandemic. On May 12th, Mayor Jim Strickland, who is not up for re-election because of term limits, led his weekly email newsletter with the image of a Monopoly “get out of jail free” card. “Someone is giving these out,” the newsletter read. “It’s not the Memphis City Government. It is not the Memphis Police Department or the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department. It appears that it is multiple people within the criminal court system at 201 Poplar and the Juvenile Court. And what’s worse — the bad guys know it, and they are encouraged to keep committing crimes.”
DA Mulroy says, “The narrative you hear from critics of reform is, one, the cops are doing a great job bringing everybody in, but two, the liberal DA and judges are letting them right back out. Three, they immediately re-offend, and four, that’s why we’re having a high crime rate. Every one of those assertions, one through four, is false. The clearance rates indicate that they’re not bringing them in. The DA doesn’t set bail. The supposedly liberal judges are not letting them out the way the public thinks. Although I may have disagreed with some of the individual, controversial bail decisions, nonetheless, the narrative that it is just a revolving door is false. They are not re-offending when they do get out. Less than one in four re-offend at all while they’re on bail — and less than 4 percent re-offend violently. And then finally, that’s not what’s driving crime. Because if you added up all the cases in which people who were let out on bail re-offended while they were out on bail, it would be less than one eighth of the total crimes in any given year. Even if we decided to violate the constitution and deny everyone bail, we would still have an unacceptably high crime rate. So we are focused on the wrong thing.”
Simply hiring more police to enact the same policies won’t work, says Spickler. “It’s the old hammer and nail metaphor. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Sometimes you need a hammer. Sometimes that’s the right tool for the job — but not all the time.”
“The tough-on-crime approach is not working,” says Glass. “If it did work, we would see the fruits of that labor. We need a leader that is interested in investing in the communities and healing the city. People are really suffering in Memphis, suffering from trauma, suffering from poverty. There are real issues that need to be addressed, and by addressing some of those issues, like education or the housing crisis or low-wage jobs, naturally the outcome is that crime will be addressed. As long as we are able and capable of meeting people’s needs, the other stuff takes care of itself. Nobody believes that there are communities of people that are inherently bad or inherently violent. There are communities that are oppressed, and that oppression, it’s like an illness, the trauma, the sickness. Let’s start treating poverty like a public health crisis instead of treating communities like they’re just irredeemable and only worthy of punishment and punitive measures.”
*The online version of this story has been modified slightly to clarify several quotations.
Attorneys for the family of Tyre Nichols filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the city of Memphis, the Memphis Police Department (MPD), and those involved in his January traffic stop and killing by police.
The lawsuit was filed by civil rights attorneys Ben Crump, Antonio Romanucci, and local counsel. A news release issued Wednesday said it was a “landmark lawsuit” but did not give a dollar figure the family seeks in damages.
But the attorneys said Nichols, 29, was on his way home to have dinner with his parents the night of his killing at the hands of police. They said the “abhorrent and reprehensible” actions of “untrained and unsupervised” officers came via “officially sanctioned, unconstitutional MPD policies.” The actions were set in motion, the lawyers said, upon the hiring of MPD Chief Cerelyn Davis a year prior.
“The savage beating of Tyre Nichols was the direct and foreseeable product of the unconstitutional policies, practices, customs, and decisions of the city of Memphis and Chief Davis,” reads a statement from the attorneys. “Her now-disbanded police unit carried a name that will forever live in infamy for the devastation and carnage it caused: Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods (SCORPION).
”Rather than ’restore peace’ in Memphis neighborhoods, SCORPION brought terror. In reality, it was an officially sanctioned gang of inexperienced, hyper-aggressive police officers turned loose on the Memphis community without any oversight to strike without warning and, many times, without any valid constitutional basis. Consistent with the directives received from Chief Davis herself, SCORPION officers carried out untold Fourth Amendment violations with a focus on Black men living in Memphis.”
The attorneys described the scene the night Nichols was pulled over. For starters, they said the officers never gave him a reason for the stop and reasons for that stop have not yet been substantiated.
Here’s how the attorneys described the scene that night:
“As the SCORPION officers escalated the situation with harsh and disgusting profanity and hostility, Tyre attempted to de-escalate with measured communication and calmness.
“Upon recognizing these officers were operating with raging aggression and unjustified force, Tyre fled the scene toward his home where he lived with his parents. What transpired next was a relentless and brutal beating by a group of officers.
“Just feet from his parents and the safety of his home, five SCORPION officers tracked Tyre down and deployed their sting in the form of repeated punches, kicks, and pepper spray to a non-resistant, restrained young man shouting for his mother while they unleashed their physical hostility upon him.
“When Tyre fell to the ground, he was lifted back up so that officers could continue to tee-off with more punches, strikes, kicks, and chemical sprays — all of this with full knowledge that their body-worn cameras were recording every second.
“Such a ruthless and brutal beating could only be carried out by officers without any fear of discipline or intervention and with a hardened, defined shield of impunity protecting them from on high. To be sure, there was never any attempt of intervention by any officer or (MPD) official at any point as Tyre remained defenseless through the onslaught.
“When the torrential beating ended, Tyre’s body was propped up against the police car to be displayed like a battered prize of a trophy hunt for the countless Memphis officials that would arrive on the scene. Pictures would be taken, jokes would be made, and medical care would be withheld for over twenty minutes as Tyre’s body lay devastated from the beating. Indeed, he was dying, and three days later succumbed to his injuries.”
The suit was filed in United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Western Division. Defendants in the case are the “city of Memphis, MPD Chief Cerelyn Davis, Emmitt Martin III, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Desmond Mills, Jr., Tadarrius Bean, Preston Hemphill, and DeWayne Smith who were participants in individual capacities as Memphis Police Officers, and Robert Long, JaMichael Sandridge, and Michelle Whitaker for their individual roles as Memphis Fire Department employees.
The complaint states Nichols was deprived of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. It also highlights what it calls systemic issues for improper policies and procedures by the city of Memphis.
The suit also alleges that MPD lieutenant DeWayne Smith lied to Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells. Smith told her the night of the police killing that Nichols was intoxicated, the suit says. He also withheld reasons why Nichols was arrested, lied about Nichols’ medical condition, failed to say that Nichols was just around the corner from her house, and that Nichols was dying.
The suit seeks compensatory, special, and punitive damages and costs as defined under federal law in an amount to be determined by a jury.
“Tyre’s condition in the hospital can be likened to that of Emmitt Till, who was also beaten unrecognizable by a lynch mob,” said attorney Crump. “But, Tyre’s lynch mob was dressed in department sweatshirts and vests, sanctioned by the entities that supplied them. Please, Memphis. Please, America. We must hold these people accountable and create meaningful change once and for all. We can not let another 70 years go by.”
Legendary pro skater Tony Hawk announced on Twitter last week that half the sales of a photo of himself and pro BMX rider Rick Thorne will go to the Tyre Nichols Fund. The fund will build a skate park in Nichols’ memory.
“He was a talented skater among other admirable traits,” Hawk tweeted. “Let’s keep his legacy alive.”
City Clowncil
Posted to Reddit by u/12frets
Performers with the UniverSoul Circus attended last week’s Memphis City Council meeting. But u/Sho_nuff_ wondered, “Why are the city council members sitting in the back row?”
Headline h/t to Shea Flinn.
Dashiki Shake-up
Posted to Twitter by Justin Pearson
Newly elected state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) induced ulcers in Nashville last week.
“We literally just got on the state House floor and already a white supremacist has attacked my wearing of my Dashiki,” Pearson tweeted. “Resistance and subversion to the status quo ought to make some people uncomfortable. Thank you to every Black Ancestor who made this opportunity possible!”
The memory of Tyre Nichols will forever be honored in Tom Lee Park.
The Hyde Foundation, a major donor to the park’s $60 million renovation, announced Friday it will name the canopy in the park for him. “Sunset Canopy” will honor “his family’s example of leadership, healing, and love.”
Nichols was a photographer who loved watching sunsets over Shelby Farms Park, his mother has said.
A ceremony in Tom Lee Park Friday will mark the honor.
