Memphis Murder
By 
By request, for people who wish to discuss the release of the video footage of the brutal lynching of Tyre Nichols:
Officials in Memphis, Tennessee, released dramatic body camera footage Friday of the fatal confrontation between Tyre Nichols and five police officers.
Nichols can be heard screaming “mom” several times during the gut-wrenching clips, which appear to show officers beating and pepper-spraying him after he ran from a traffic stop arrest.
Nichols died at the age of 29 on Jan. 10, three days after the violent confrontation.
The five Memphis Police Department officers involved in his arrest — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — were fired and then charged with second-degree murder in connection with Nichols’ death.
God. Part of the horror of the Tyre Nichols video – which I’m not sharing – is how what we hear officers say is the opposite of what we see. For ex – the demand to see his hands when they are holding his arms & kicking him. It appears they’re manufacturing a pretext for the stop.— Antonia Hylton (@ahylton26) January 28, 2023
A lot of necessary reforms to policing are a very heavy political lift. But disbanding (or, better yet, not creating!) paramilitary units with threatening names within police departments — this one started in 2021 — is one that really should be doable:
1. Don’t create “elite” police units who get special privileges, less oversight, and get to take shortcuts.
2. Definitely don’t give those units names like “Scorpion.”
3. The cops who really, really want to work on those units are the last cops who should be working on them.— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) January 28, 2023