Nichols’ death sparks demands for change

Pass the Floyd policing law, attorney urges

A day after Memphis police moved to disband the unit responsible for fielding the five officers charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of Tyre Nichols, the attorney for Nichols’ family called on Congress to pass stalled legislation aimed at combating police misconduct.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed in the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but failed in the Senate, would limit qualified immunity policies that protect officers accused of misconduct, create a national registry of sustained disciplinary actions against officers, ban chokeholds and limit no-knock warrants, among other measures.

“Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Ben Crump said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Videos released Friday evening show Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, being repeatedly shocked, pepper-sprayed, kicked and

beaten by Memphis police. Nichols died three days later, prompting a Justice Department investigation and local charges of second-degree murder for the five officers, all of whom are Black.

Crump said the family hoped Nichols’ death would be a watershed moment in forcing changes in regulations and laws. Paraphrasing a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., he said: “I can’t stop a man from hating me, but the law can stop a man from killing a man.”

Others across Memphis and the surrounding area of the county echoed Crump’s words, pushing for some sort of change to come from the past days’ events.

“We need public safety, right? We need law enforcement to combat pervasive crime,” said Jason Turner, senior pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. “Also, we don’t want the people who are sworn to protect and serve us brutalizing us for a simple traffic stop, or any offense.”

From police brass and the district attorney’s office to the White House, officials said Nichols’ killing points to a need for bolder measures that go beyond simply diversifying the ranks, changing use-of-force rules and encouraging citizens to file complaints.

“The world is watching us,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said. “If there is any silver lining to be drawn from this very dark cloud, it’s that perhaps this incident can open a broader conversation about the need for police reform.”

President Joe Biden joined national civil rights leaders in similar calls to action.

“To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between law enforcement, the vast majority of whom wear the badge honorably, and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect,” the president said.

Tommy Daniels, President of the NAACP Arkansas State Conference, emphasized the conference’s push for change while addressing the death of Nichols.

“The Oath taken by law enforcement is to serve and protect the citizens and maintain the public trust without betraying integrity; character and upholding the highest ethical standards in the community. Especially to the communities they serve. Police officers should not deny anyone the right to due process, by becoming judge, jury, and executioner,” Daniels said in a statement sent to the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette on Sunday.

“Black and brown citizens are more adversely affected by police brutality than any other group of people. Congress, instead of offering your thoughts and prayers; draft legislation to hold officers accountable for their actions. We will continue to protest for the rights of all until the change comes and our brothers and sisters are confident that they can go home safely after an interaction with law enforcement.”

CALLS FOR LEGISLATION

States approved nearly 300 bills on overhauling policing after Floyd’s murder, creating civilian oversight of police, more anti-bias training, stricter use-of-force limits and alternatives to arrests in cases involving people with mental illnesses, according to a recent analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland.

Despite calls to “defund the police,” an Associated Press review of police funding nationwide found only modest cuts, driven largely by shrinking revenue related to the coronavirus pandemic. Budgets increased and more officers were hired for some large departments, including New York City’s.

The 2021 measure was named for George Floyd, who died in 2020 after then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knees into Floyd’s neck and back for nearly 9½ minutes, as seen on a video captured by a bystander. The legislation was sponsored by Democrats including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey but faced opposition in the Senate from Republicans. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., offered a narrower version of the bill, but that didn’t pass either.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” that police overhaul efforts needed to go beyond the stalled bill, but that passing it would be a good start. He called on Booker and Scott to redouble their efforts to work through the legislation.

“It had many elements in it that are important,” Durbin said. “It’s necessary that we do all these things, but not sufficient. It’s the right starting point. We need a national conversation about policing in a responsible, constitutional and humane way.”

But even if a new version gets through the Senate, it would have to be taken up again by the House, now controlled by Republicans.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he didn’t think a federal law would have made a difference in the death of Nichols.

“I don’t know that there’s any law that can stop that evil that we saw,” Jordan said. He said that such regulations would be better left to state and local governments.

“The Democrats always think that it’s a new law that’s going to fix something that terrible,” Jordan said. “These five individuals did not have any respect for life.”

He also warned that the conversation around policing in the wake of high-profile police killings is having a chilling effect on police recruiting at a time when law enforcement agencies across the country face staffing shortages.

“There’s been this attack on law enforcement,” Jordan said. “And you’re not getting the best of the best.”

Crump, however, called for more accountability in the wake of Nichols’ death.

Communities of color “often have different types of policing than many of our white brothers and sisters have in their community,” Crump said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And this video illustrates that it’s this culture that says it doesn’t matter whether the police officers are Black, Hispanic or white, that it is somehow allowed for you to trample on the constitutional rights of certain citizens from certain ethnicities in certain communities.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton said his eulogy at Nichols’ funeral on Wednesday will include a call for new laws. NAACP President Derrick Johnson also took Congress to task.

“By failing to write a piece of legislation, you’re writing another obituary,” Johnson said. “Tell us what you’re going to do to honor Tyre Nichols. … We can name all the victims of police violence, but we can’t name a single law you have passed to address it.”

Advocates want state and federal legislation because local changes vary widely in scope and effect and can be undone by a single election after years of grassroots activism. But some say strict regulations are just the start — and the video of Nichols’ agony proves it.

“Changing a rule doesn’t change a behavior,” said Katie Ryan, chief of staff for Campaign Zero, a group of academics, policing experts and activists working to end police violence. “The culture of a police department has to shift into actually implementing the policies, not just saying there’s a rule in place.”

MEMPHIS’ RESPONSE

Memphis, whose 628,000 residents celebrate barbecue and blues music and lament its being the place where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, has seen this before. The city took steps advocates called for in a “Reimagine Policing” initiative in 2021, and mirrored a set of policy changes reformers want all departments to implement immediately, known as “8 Can’t Wait.”

De-escalation training is now required. Officers are told to limit uses of force, exhaust all alternatives before resorting to deadly force and report all uses of force. Tennessee also took action: State law now requires officers to intervene to stop abuse and report excessive force by their colleagues.

Showing unusual transparency for a police department, the Memphis Police Department now publishes accountability reports that include the race of people subjected to use of force each year. They show Black men and women were overwhelmingly targeted for rougher treatment in 2019, 2020 and 2021. They were subject to nearly 86% of the recorded uses of guns, batons, pepper spray, physical beatings and other force in 2021, the total nearly doubling that year to 1,700 cases.

The five officers charged — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — were part of the socalled Scorpion unit. Scorpion stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in our Neighborhoods.

The Memphis police chief, Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, disbanded the unit on Saturday.

“It is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the Scorpion unit,” she said in a statement.

Prior to the move by Davis, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said it was clear that the officers involved in the attack on Nichols violated the department’s policies and training.

“I want to assure you we are doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again,” Strickland said in a statement. “We are initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units.”

The Memphis police union extended condolences to Nichols’ family, saying it “is committed to the administration of justice and NEVER condones the mistreatment of ANY citizen nor ANY abuse of power.” The statement also expressed faith that the justice system would reveal “the totality of circumstances” in the case.

Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, pushed back against the conclusion that policing must change. This was not “legitimate police work or a traffic stop gone wrong,” Yoes said. “This is a criminal assault under the pretext of law.”

Protesters turned out again Friday night after the city released the video footage. Turner, the Memphis pastor, called the images “further proof that our city’s and our nation’s criminal justice systems are in dire need of change.”

“It’s not like we’re short on concrete, reasonable recommendations,” said the Rev. Earle Fisher, senior pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. “What we’re short on is the political will and the commitment to making the structural changes.”

Information for this article was contributed by Robert Klemko, Azi Paybarah and Laurie McGinley of The Washington Post; Aaron Morrison, Claudia Lauer, Adrian Sainz and Noreen Nasir of The Associated Press; and William Ingram II of the Arkansas State NAACP.