If you can’t figure out how five black officers might have killed a young black man out of racial animus against young black men, welcome to the club.
This first sentence of the New York Times’ coverage is textbook promotion of the hidebound narrative sprung from the progressive obsession with race: “Five fired Memphis police officers have been charged with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man hospitalized after a traffic stop early this month.”
The story elaborates that the Biden Justice Department, at the agitation of “activists,” is opening a civil-rights investigation into the matter. Prosecutors are apparently scrutinizing it under Section 242 of the federal penal code. That civil-rights provision makes it a crime for people acting willfully and under color of law (e.g., on-duty police officers) to deprive others of their federal rights or subject them to discriminatory treatment by reason of their “color, or race.” Hence the Times’ emphasis on the fact that Nichols was a “Black man.” Section 242 further instructs that if death results, as it did in Nichols’s case, the offending police officers “may be sentenced to death” or to life imprisonment.
What is the basis for believing that the police beat Nichols to his death because he was a black man?
Below is a photograph of the five fired cops who have been charged with second-degree murder by state prosecutors in Memphis. From the left, they are Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Tadarrius Bean. See if you notice anything:
Memphis Police officers who were terminated after their involvement in a traffic stop that ended with the death of Tyre Nichols, pose in a combination of undated photographs in Memphis, Tenn., From left: Officers Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Tadarrius Bean. (Memphis Police Department/Handout via Reuters)
If you are having a hard time understanding how these five young black men might have killed another young black man out of racial animus against young black men, welcome to the club.
Had this been an incident involving young black gang members’ killing another young black man on a random night in the streets of, say, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or St. Louis, the homicide would have not even made a news story. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Biden Justice Department, far from opening a civil-rights investigation, would have been turning the blindest of eyes (even if the execution had been carried out by something they could portray as an “assault weapon”).
The knee-jerk presumption of a civil-rights violation is explainable solely because these five alleged killers arepolice — or, at least, were police at the time of the killing. The profession of policing, of serving and protecting the communities in which the cops themselves live, is now stigmatized as racist. The stigma is so indelible that it makes no difference that the cops in question are all — every one of them — of the same race as the victim.
Memphis has a majority-black police department. Its chief, Cerelyn J. Davis, is a black woman and mother who has been president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. She full-throatedly condemned as a “failing of basic humanity” the brutal treatment to which Nichols was allegedly subjected by the five black officers after he had provoked a “confrontation” upon being stopped for a suspected traffic violation. Chief Davis decried the conduct of the fired officers as a departure from her department’s practices. The Memphis PD investigated the homicide and is working with the state’s prosecutors.
There is no reason to believe that the department is racist, or that racism played the slightest part in what happened to Nichols. Nor is there any litigation advantage in pretending that it did. Under Tennessee law, as relevant here, second-degree murder is simply the “knowing killing of another.” There is no racial component to the offense. It is not a so-called hate crime. There is no requirement of malice aforethought as there is for first-degree murder. All the prosecutors need prove is that the defendants engaged in actions that they realized could cause death or serious bodily injury, and that death resulted.
This is a very early stage. We don’t know some of the essential facts of the case. The (now former) police officers allegedly used excessive force against Nichols in one or both of the two confrontations after the traffic stop. The authorities are saying that police–body-camera footage will be released Friday evening (apparently at 6 p.m. central time), so perhaps we’ll know more soon. For now, we are unable to say why and how, if at all, the decedent provoked a forcible response from the cops.
However, we know enough to be confident that this was not a racially motivated killing. There is nothing to suggest that federal investigatory involvement is necessary, much less that it would be helpful. For the Biden Justice Department to leap immediately to the conclusion that a civil-rights probe is called for does not indicate a purpose to safeguard federal privileges and immunities. It indicates a purpose to sustain the defamatory narrative that the nation’s police are on the hunt for young black men. . . . Even when the police themselves are young black men.
