US: deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols ignites riots

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Family urges calm

The family of a Memphis man who died after police officers beat him is calling for calm ahead of the release of video of the traffic stop

Tyre Nichols, 29, died days after the 7 January encounter with five ex-police officers who now face murder charges.

Family members and officials say body camera footage of the incident shows Mr Nichols was brutally beaten.

His family say they don't "want any type of disturbance" when it is made public.

"We want peaceful protests," stepfather Rodney Wells said during a press conference on Friday afternoon. "That's what the family wants. That's what the community wants.

RowVaughn Wells, Mr Nichols' mother, said she felt despair when she learned her child had called out to her that day.

"No mother should go through what I'm going through right now," she said through tears.

She told CNN earlier on Friday her son was beaten "to a pulp" by the officers.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family, thanked Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis for her "swift" action in charging the officers and called the response a "blueprint for America".

All five of the officers face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith were booked into jail on Thursday. They all joined the Memphis Police Department in the last six years, and were fired last week

Ms Davis told CNN earlier on Friday that she was horrified by the incident and that the officers' actions "defy humanity".

She likened the video to 1991 footage of Los Angeles police officers beating black motorist Rodney King, an event that caused outrage around the world and forced reforms in the LAPD.

The video of the Nichols' incident is scheduled to be released in four separate clips on Friday evening, local time.

The Tennessee city is said to be on edge since the incident and police there have increased patrols.

What happened during the traffic stop?

Mr Nichols, a black man, was stopped by five police officers, who are also black, on his way home after taking photos of a sunset at a local park, an attorney for the family said.

Officials say he was suspected of reckless driving, though Ms Davis said on Friday that has not been substantiated.

A first confrontation occurred as Mr Nichols attempted to flee on foot when officers approached his car, the local authorities said.

They said a second confrontation happened when officers tried to arrest him.

Mr Nichols later complained of shortness of breath and was taken to hospital, police said, where he was listed in a critical condition.

Officials said Mr Nichols "succumbed to his injuries" on 10 January, but provided no further details. An official cause of death has not yet been disclosed.

A lawyer for his family said the bodycam footage showed Mr Nichols being pepper-sprayed, struck with a stun gun, restrained and kicked.

The family and their legal team on Friday said police culture in America was to blame for Mr Nichols' death and that they wanted to see police reform, including a "Tyre law" in the state of Tennessee that would urge officers to intervene if crimes are being committed by their colleagues.

"We have to talk about this institutionalised police culture that has this unwritten law that you can engage in extensive use of force against black and brown people," Mr Crump added.

The Nichols family and their legal team privately reviewed the video footage of the arrest earlier this week.

His relatives say he will be remembered as a "good kid" who enjoyed photography and skateboarding.

The father-of-one, who worked at the parcel delivery company FedEx, had Crohn's disease and suffered severe weight loss, family members say.

In a news conference on Thursday, lawyers for two of the ex-officers said their clients planned to fight the charges.

Reverend Al Sharpton, a US civil rights leader, told the BBC the alleged crime was particularly painful because of the officers' race.

"We fought to put blacks on the police force," he said. "For them to act in such a brutal way is more egregious than I can tell you."

The FBI and the Department of Justice have opened a civil rights investigation into Mr Nichols' death.

The officers involved are members of a special team known as Scorpion - short for "Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods".

The unit, which was created to police high-crime areas, is now under review.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64421704

State of emergency declared in many parts of US

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Police unit disband

The Memphis Police Department decided on Saturday to deactivate the special unit where five police officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death had served

"In the process of listening intently to the family of Tyre Nichols, community leaders, and the uninvolved officers who have done quality work in their assignments, it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit," the Department announced in a statement.

It added that "the officers currently assigned to the unit agree unreservedly with this next step."

Memphis authorities released four graphic videos on Friday night, showing five Black Memphis police officers brutally beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, after a traffic stop.

Nichols died on January 10, three days after the incident. All five officers were arrested and charged on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Nichols' mother said Tyre was only two minutes away from home when he was murdered.

According to Shelby County Jail records, all five former Memphis police officers indicted in connection to Nichols' death were released on bond late Thursday night and into Friday morning.

Hundreds march in New York streets to protest Nichols' beating

In a related context, several hundred people in New York City have participated in a demonstration in rejection of police brutality, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

A wave of protests swept across the United States after Memphis authorities released video footage showing the beating of Nichols.

Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Manhattan on Saturday, according to a Sputnik correspondent. The protest was peaceful and no detentions were made.

People were holding banners saying, "The World Would Be Better if Police Didn’t Abuse Power," "Jail Killer Cops!," and "Justice for Tyre Nichols."

On Friday, police arrested three people at a demonstration held in New York.

US #police brutality hit a new record in 2022 as it killed 1,183 people, with data showing that there were killings on 353 days last year.

However, weirdly enough, reports about police brutality and inhumane treatment don't seem to flood the internet and news channels.#USA pic.twitter.com/YL11GbO5au
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) January 10, 2023

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/mis ... nichols-se

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Click Photo to Enlarge:

Black man strangled by police

Broward County Sheriff's office handcuffed, beat, punched, restrained, tasered, pepper sprayed, and eventually strangled Kevin Desir to death

A newly released autopsy report reveals that a 43-year-old father-of-two Florida man's cause of death was a homicide by strangulation, a case that will once again expose the racist violence and police brutality that characterizes American society.

Kevin Desir became unresponsive on January 17, 2021, after a fight with six deputies at the North Broward Bureau facility, a jail in the south of Florida operated by the Broward County Sheriff's office (BSO) and designed to manage mentally ill jail inmates.

He was arrested for marijuana possession.

Broward County Sheriff's office handcuffed, beat, punched, restrained, tasered, pepper sprayed, and eventually strangled him to death.

Ten days later, Kevin passed away in the hospital due to massive brain injuries sustained in the beating.

The six deputies claimed they were all trying to strap Kevin to a restraint chair.

An initial autopsy conducted by the Broward county medical examiner’s office on January 28, 2021, said that Desir's cause and manner of death were undetermined.

Another autopsy, which was conducted on January 31, 2021, by Dr. Daniel Schultz of Hillsborough county, who was hired by the family of the deceased, found that the cause of death was precisely strangulation

We are asking for support in our fight to get Justice for Kevin Desir.

The report stated that Desir died from “manual strangulation” and that his death was the result of homicide after “neck and carotid arteries [were] compressed” during a “law enforcement restraint attempt."

"A completely healthy individual under no prerequisite stress could succumb to that," the report concluded.

Before the private autopsy report was issued, the state attorney's office said it was declining to prosecute the six deputies connected to Desir's death.

Desir's family has been fighting to bring justice to their late loved one.

They are also asking for videos of Kevin's murder to be released to the public.

"They [need] to release the tapes, so I can see how they killed my son," said Kevin’s mother, 73-year-old Sercilia Desir, as quoted by The Guardian.

Black people are nearly three times more likely to be killed at the hands of the police than white people in the United States

Making up 12.8% of the population, black people, through data collected between 2013-2022, endured 61 killings per one million people in the United States, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

As the murder and systemic injustices toward black people continue to be carried out on a daily basis in the US, the White House is pursuing efforts to wreak havoc across the global south, including Iran where it seeks to implement regime change.

It seeks to do so by instrumenting the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died under natural conditions while under police custody, but her death provided the US with a window of opportunity to trigger nationwide riots.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/mis ... under-poli