The footage of Tyre Nichols being beaten at the hands of five Memphis police officers just a few yards from his mother’s house shocks the conscience. While videotapes sometimes do not tell the entire story of an event, and further reporting often complicates our first impressions, the 66 minutes of the event cannot be unseen.
In the evidence we have, one officer screams, “Watch out, I’m gonna baton the f*** outta ya!” Nichols offers what appears to be largely defensive resistance to the officers, who despite outnumbering Nichols — who was not a large man — couldn’t manage to cuff him for a long time. They ended up holding Nichols up like a rag doll and punching him in the head. An autopsy found that Nichols died because he “suffered excessive bleeding caused by a severe beating.”
All five officers have been fired by their department for excessive force and failure to render aid. All five have been charged with murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct, and other offenses. An appropriately aggressive investigation has already resulted in homicide charges. The facts and the law should dictate the ultimate outcome of the case.
What is not helpful is for the media class to immediately take seriously the idea that five African-American police officers’ using excessive force on a black man constitutes an act of “white supremacy.” The New York Times, in a piece stuffed with academic thumb-sucking, quoted one analyst lamenting how “it’s unfortunate that because the officers are Black, people are going to say violence against Blacks is not racially motivated.” Unfortunate, presumably because the incident demonstrates that abuse of power, cruelty, and violence are temptations that face every man in a position of authority over another man, whatever his color.
Other theories offered to explain Nichols’s death include an alleged culture of impunity among police officers. But the police officers were promptly fired and charged. They are being convicted in the court of public opinion by the cameras they were obliged to wear filming their own deeds.
Progressive prosecutors, left-wing mayors, and a sometimes-unsympathetic public opinion have all worked to demoralize police forces in recent years. Cops in many cities are less active than ever despite a surge of crime. And this has had run-on effects in the quality of officers each city can attract.
A report in the New York Post found that two of the five police officers charged in the death of Nichols only joined the force in 2020, years after the city dramatically loosened the educational requirements to become an officer. To maintain the bare minimum of police officers the city needs, the department has recently lowered physical-ability standards and offered waivers for convicted felons to join the force. It is troubling that two of the involved police officers were part of Memphis’s “elite” Scorpion unit.
The last thing a police department like Memphis’s needs is “defund the police” radicalism. Police departments like these need to offer higher salaries and benefits. And the city’s elected officials need to back up officers and departments against bogus complaints. Ideally, departments should become selective — in aptitude and character — in their recruiting again. Certainly, Memphis officers appear to need more training with their weapons — two of the charged Memphis officers sprayed themselves with pepper spray — and more training for nonviolent conflict resolution.
Memphis is a deeply troubled city. It has one of the highest rates of crime in the nation. On average, one in twelve Memphis residents is a victim of a violent crime or a property crime — a scandalous failure of the city to offer the protection of the laws to its own citizens. It needs good cops. Attracting and supporting them is consistent with, not opposed to, the need to hold bad and misbehaving cops responsible.
And it, and other cities, can only be further harmed by violent protest. We commend and join the members of Nichols’s family who have spoken up against the implicit calls for more rioting. “Violence will not bring our son back,” Tyre Nichols’s stepfather Rodney Wells said on MSNBC.
Let justice be done in Memphis.