The death of Tire Nichols (2023)

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From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Diary.

What really happened today to Tire Nichols, who died after being brutally beaten by Memphis police? An encounter that was captured in a series of videos released over the weekend. My fellow Southern Bureau Chief Rick Rojas is in Memphis preparing the story.

It's Monday, January 30th.

Rick, tell us about Tire Nichols, the man at the center of this story.

So, Tire Nichols was a 29 year old man living in Memphis. He was black and his mother described him as having a simple and comfortable life. Every day he would wake up like clockwork at 8:30 am and go to the same Starbucks and have the same drink. He worked at a FedEx office in that city for about nine months. And he looked good in every way.

He loved to skate and regularly frequented Shelby Farms, a really big park outside Memphis. He went almost every day, whether it was ice skating or photographing the sunset. He was an amateur photographer. And he had a four-year-old son. And he looked like a typical 29-year-old, finding his way and making a life for himself.

And I think that's even more amazing for his family. They didn't see him as someone who would have any kind of encounter with the police.

To the right. Well, I want to talk about this date. Of course we now have a video of him. But we didn't do that for a few weeks. And there was a big mystery about what exactly happened. So I was wondering, Rick, if you could take us back to what happened with Tire Nichols first and explain how that all played out as we experienced it in real time.

Yes. This case was shrouded in many mysteries before the video came out. What we know first came from a police statement.

For example, on January 7, Tire Nichols was stopped by police in the southeast corner of the city. It was around 8:30 pm. And it was about suspected reckless driving.

OK.

And at that point there was sort of a physical confrontation between Tire Nichols and these officers. Then he fled on foot. The police caught up with them and there was a second confrontation. And at some point during these clashes he suffered injuries so severe that he had to be hospitalized. He was unconscious for three days and then died on 10 January.

Then, immediately afterwards, all we know is that a seemingly routine traffic stop ended in Tire Nichols' death. And then the question naturally arises: did these officers use excessive force? So what will happen in the next few days?

Therefore, several investigations are initiated. First, there is an internal investigation by the Memphis Police Department. And so the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was called in to look into the substance of the case and try to understand whether or not the officers had used excessive force and whether that use of force reached criminal levels. And after that, the Federal Public Ministry also said that it would open a civil investigation to find out what happened.

got it So everyone in law enforcement takes this very seriously.

Yes. And in recognition of this, city officials announced early on that they wanted to be transparent and plan to release all the video footage they collected as part of their investigation to show the public what happened during this traffic stop.

On January 20, ten days after Tire Nichols's death, the city announced that the Memphis Police Department's internal investigation was complete and fired five officers who were on the scene that night. They said they used excessive force. They said they had failed in their duty to intervene and their duty to provide assistance.

And now, Rick, when these five officers are fired, what do we learn about them?

So we learned a lot. We learn that they are all black. We learned that they are all in their 20s to 30s. Therefore, they are all relatively new to the force, having only spent a few years in the department. All joined between 2017 and 2020. And we also found out that they are part of a specialized group of officers called the Scorpion Unit. And it's a group that patrols the city's high-crime areas, where there are ongoing battles with violence.

And it was created in 2021, at a time when homicide rates were rising and public safety concerns were rising. And it was kind of an occupation to fight against that by sending these police out into the streets of those neighborhoods.

So what we do know at this point is that these five officers are part of an elite unit that seems somehow uniquely suited to dealing with crime in Memphis. And what we know, remarkably, is that all five are black and are accused of taking the life of a black man.

Yes. And that's where the family started this effort to really push for how they see it, to get justice for Tyre. And the first part of that is watching this video and understanding how this traffic incident went from what seemed like a routine traffic incident to something much worse. And so, last Monday, Tire Nichols' family and their attorneys finally got a chance to see the footage for themselves.

And after that they had a press conference. And there we could hear some of the first descriptions of what the cameras were able to capture.

Family attorney Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney who has represented the family of George Floyd, was speaking about how disturbing the footage was.

And then one of the other family lawyers described Tire Nichols.

And meanwhile, in the background, only his mother could be heard crying.

She couldn't make it past the first minute of the video because it was so painful to witness this happen to her son.

So at this point, Memphis found out about this video through the filter of a horrified family.

Yes. And then, last Thursday, just days after the family was able to view the video, local prosecutors announced that the five officers had been charged with second-degree murder.

Wow.

Among other crimes. And with this announcement, we hear just this outpouring of condemnation.

From the attorney.

From the Memphis Chief of Police.

Do chefe do Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

And we heard from them that this was a violation of human rights and a crime.

And yet, despite all these descriptions, we still don't know exactly what happened. We don't know why Tire Nichols was stopped in the first place? How did he react when the cops pulled him over? Why did he run away on foot? And what did the officers do with Tyre? I mean, we hear that excessive force was used, but what does that really mean? And so we don't know how long it takes the medical staff to treat him and we don't know how long it takes to get him to a hospital. There are so many questions that remain unanswered at this point.

To the right. Because so far what's in this video is just filtering through, first the family, now these city officials saying they're shocked. But the public has yet to see the video itself.

Exactly. And so, on the same day that the charges against the officers are announced, the city says the video will finally be released to the public on Friday night.

And it's not just these employees who come out and say they're appalled by the video's content. They also express a very deep concern about the kind of reaction this will provoke in the city.

The police chief, several elected officials, activists and even Mr. Nichols come and plead with the community not to allow the anger or outrage that worries them after seeing this, they don't want this to turn into something destructive.

The sense of anticipation and really the sense of dread is really building in Memphis right now. Extracurricular activities were shut down across the city. Additional law enforcement agencies from across the state were called to Memphis to stand by. So are you ready to see what happens when the people of this town finally get the chance to see it for themselves.

And on Friday night, as promised, the video was released.

We'll be back.

So Rick, tell us what we'll see when this video is finally released on Friday night.

So, in the end, it's actually four separate videos, all posted online, and it adds up to about an hour of footage. It is a combination of footage from body cameras and stationary footage from police cameras installed in the neighborhood. And so there's only one feed from one of these cameras. And it starts in the middle when Tire Nichols is stopped. Therefore, we never see the start of the parade.

God. Although the police said this was a case of reckless driving, we're not actually seeing this or hearing the police say Get off Nichols, are they pulling you over for this?

To the right. Exactly. The reason this all unfolded is that we still don't have an answer to this question. And then the body camera is on. And suddenly the sound starts.

And now we see his car in the middle of an intersection at a traffic light. And we can see the officers. They run towards his car. Your weapons are drawn. They scold her, tell him to get out and fall to the ground.

And eventually he just lays down on the floor and begs. Like I was just trying to go home. A police officer tries to spray him with pepper spray. And at that point he is running.

The policeman tried to grab him, but he escaped. And about 8 minutes later,

The cops catch up with him in a residential area. And he fell to the ground.

The officers sprayed him with pepper spray. They punched and kicked him. You can see him getting kicked in the head.

And you can see him being beaten with batons. Part of the reason we can see this isn't just because it's shaky, close-up body camera footage. We actually have this panoramic street camera view that can capture everything as it happens from above.

To the right.

Once they set it up. And an officer repeatedly hits him. Beating takes about 3 minutes. And meanwhile, all you can hear are their screams of pain. At one point, he can be heard screaming for his mother. He says mother, mother, mother. And their house is about 100 meters away.

To the right. It's very difficult to watch the footage.

That's it. It's a lot to process. Finally, the cops back him up against the police car. He passes out.

And you can hear the cops say he picked up or tried to hit one of their guns. But those are things we don't see in the video. I mean, except he runs behind the stop like we don't see any real resistance. There is really no evidence that we can see in the videos of him fighting.

So the cops seem to be trying to justify their actions at various points in time here, even though the footage doesn't really support the actions.

To the right. And then, a few minutes later, rescuers arrive at the crime scene. There are two paramedics from the fire department. You look at Nichols but you can see they don't care about him.

To the right. I remember seeing it and counting the number of people there. There are more than 10. None of them seem to be doing anything to take care of Tire Nichols.

To the right. He just sits next to that car more than 24 minutes before an ambulance arrives. And occasionally Nichols will drop beside the car and they'll back him up.

So if we think about these questions, Rick, that we all had before the footage was released, a lot of them seem to have been answered in these videos because we see these officers approaching Tire Nichols' vehicle very aggressively and dragging him to the ground. . He runs. We don't know why, but he never fights like you said.

At one point, we hear the officers express intent to harm him. So we clearly see that they use an enormous amount of violence against that person who doesn't fight back. And later we hear the officers offer a justification, or set of justifications, for their actions after the fact, in a way that doesn't really match what we see in the videos.

Finally, we see that the police and these doctors have very little regard for Tire Nichols' injuries or his well-being, even if he is in visible and audible pain.

To the right. Exactly. And that's why so many people I spoke to said they found the video as disturbing and upsetting as the family portrayed it. And not just the brutality and beatings displayed, but what they saw was the callousness of waiting afterwards.

So I want to talk about the reaction of the people of Memphis to this footage, given all the concerns expressed by city officials and Tire Nichols' family about what the reaction would be.

There was pain. Because your anger. Many people in Memphis attended the filming, but others did not, who could not. They felt that what they would learn would not be outweighed by the trauma they would inflict by seeing something like this. And there were protests in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington DC. And in Memphis too. Dozens of you went out on Friday night. They blocked a highway and a bridge. But it wasn't long before things ended peacefully. And it was similar on Saturday, where it was a modest performance, but there were people demanding justice.

Is there a sense that the way the City of Memphis has handled this case so far, and what appears to be a genuine determination to get the wheels of justice moving so quickly, might explain why the response has been as it has been? that is, peaceful and, to some extent, a little low-key.

I think yes. I mean, Ben Crump, the family lawyer, said at a press conference before the tape came out on Friday that he said this should be America's blueprint. He talked about how quickly officers got here to fire officers, how quickly they moved to file criminal charges, all in less than a month.

To the right. I'm curious. If we think about how people react to all of that, how people think about what was really a central part of what happened to Tyree Nichols. And something that differs in this case from many cases of alleged police brutality that we focus on in this country is that this is a black man who was allegedly killed by five black police officers.

And as painfully familiar as we've become with black men dying at the hands of the police, in those cases that get a lot of attention, it was typically at the hands of white police officers. So we're a little less prepared for all officers to be black. How do people think about it and how do they understand it?

It is very complicated. One of the overriding sentiments I hear in Memphis is just this feeling of sadness about it all. One of my colleagues was talking to a woman who had just seen pictures of the cops on TV and she was disappointed. How could you do that, she asked. Memphis is a majority black city and has a majority black police force. And the idea was that a police force whose demographics matched the city's could make a difference. That the police could do this more effectively. This could really ease the tensions that exist between the community and law enforcement.

To the right. And possibly prevent such things from happening, which is what happened in this case.

To the right. To the right. So this was a case where that way of thinking really didn't apply. And what I'm hearing from a lot of people that you're talking to here is, yes, there's a lot of anger and frustration directed at these five officers. But they see this as an indictment of a system and culture that surrounds the police force, so that the race of the officers doesn't matter so much that the divisions between the police force and the community remain the same.

To the right. The question I think a lot of people are asking after what happened with Tire Nichols is whether there's something about policing, something fundamental that happens when officers wear that uniform given the nature of modern policing, that somehow encourages brutality, especially against blacks, but not only in relation to them, and regardless of the officer's race.

Exactly. And that really made everything a lot more complicated.

So Rick, what's going on in Memphis right now? In that case, how do we expect the next few weeks?

The mayor, the chief of police, they all committed to really digging in and seeing how to prevent something like this and how to build something better. And one of the first steps towards that was on Saturday, when the police chief said that she had dissolved the Scorpion Unit, the specialized group of which those five police officers were part.

And so there is still the investigation into what actually happened at the crime scene. The two paramedics who responded to the call and weren't doing much in the video have been let go by the fire department and an investigation is being conducted as to whether they should be let go or face further consequences. Tire Nichols' family believes they should be prosecuted.

Two deputy sheriffs have also been removed from duty as the sheriff's department tries to figure out what they did at the scene. There is a separate federal civil rights investigation taking place. And then there's the case against the five officers charged with second-degree murder. The prosecution is going ahead with them and could very well go to court.

Rick, did the five police officers or lawyers say anything in your defense?

Well, the main thing is that they were just asking the public to avoid snap judgments. And they argued that the video does not say it all and that the public should not base their opinion solely on what they see in the video. Just as we don't know what triggered the shutdown, there could be other factors, these lawyers say, that are simply not reflected in the footage we've seen.

To the right. It seems to me that Memphis is going to go through what many US cities like Minneapolis, Ferguson and Baltimore went through after such a case, which is trauma first, right? A kind of collective trauma around an alleged case of police brutality that ends with the death of a black man. And then an exam, which passes very painfully.

To the right. It's going to be a long road. So when I talk to people in the community, that skepticism still remains because yes, there have been allegations. There were shots. There have been changes in police department policy. As Crump said, now there is such a project. It has plans, but it is as if the house had not been built.

That's the feeling. What happens to the process? What finally happens to the police? And from what I'm hearing, especially from people who are really invested in this case, they know it's going to require vigilance because it's a really long road to where they want the city to be. And with a better police and with the accountability of these police.

Well, Rick, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

We'll be back.

Here's what you need to know today. Violence erupted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, where Israeli settlers carried out dozens of attacks against Palestinians and their property. It was the latest in a series of deadly clashes that began last Thursday, when the Israeli military carried out an attack that killed 10 people.

Israel said the attack was a counterterrorism operation aimed at Islamic jihadists planning attacks against Israeli targets. The following day, a Palestinian gunman killed seven people outside a synagogue in a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem. In total, at least 20 people have died in the last four days.

Tonight's episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Mooj Zadie and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Anita Badejo with assistance from John Ketchum, Lisa Chow and Paige Cowett. Contains original music by Marion Lozano and Elisheba Ittoop and engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme song is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly.

That's all for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you in the morning.