Death by 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 posted over the weekend. My colleague, South Office manager Rick Rojas is in Memphis, where he compiled 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. Like clockwork, he woke up at 8:30 am every day, went to the same Starbucks and drank the same. I worked at a FedEx office in this 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 building a life.

And I think for his family that made it even more amazing. They didn't see him as someone who would have some kind of run-in with the police.

Good. Well, I want to talk about this meeting. Of course we now have a video of it. But we didn't do that for several weeks. And it was a bit of a mystery what exactly happened. So I was wondering, Rick, if you could take us back to what happened with Tire Nichols first and explain how it all happened as we experience it in real time.

Yes, this case was shrouded in mystery before the video came out. What we know comes first from a police statement.

Then, on January 7, police stopped at Tire Nichols, in the southeast corner of the city. It was around 8:30 pm. M. E was on suspicion of reckless driving.

OK.

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

So shortly thereafter, all we know is that a traffic stop that seemed pretty routine ended in Tire Nichols' death. And of course the question arises: did these officers use excessive force? So what will happen in the next few days?

Therefore, several investigations are launched. 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 had reached a criminal level. And after that, federal prosecutors also said they would open a civil investigation into the incident.

I understand. So everyone in law enforcement takes this very seriously.

Yes, and to recognize this, city officials announced early on that they wanted to be transparent and planned to release all the videos they collected as part of their investigation to show the public what happened during this traffic stop.

On January 20, 10 days after Tire Nichols' 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 violated their duty to intervene and violated their duty to help.

And now, Rick, if these five officers are fired, what do we know about them?

So we learned a lot. We learn that they are all black. We learned that they are all in their 20s and 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 the homicide rate was rising as concerns about public safety grew. And this was presented as a way to fight this head on by taking these employees to the streets of these neighborhoods.

So what we know at this point is that these five officers are part of an elite force that appears to have unique powers to deal 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 when the family started this effort to really get justice for Tire. And the first part of that is just watching this video and understanding how this traffic incident went from what seemed like a routine traffic incident to something much worse. Ultimately, Tire Nichols' family and their attorneys were given the opportunity to view the footage for themselves last Monday.

And then they had a press conference. And that's when we got some of the first descriptions of what cameras could capture.

Family attorney Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights lawyer representing the family of George Floyd, was speaking about how disturbing the video was.

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

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

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

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

Yes, and last Thursday, just days after the family saw 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 hear from them that this is 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 arrested in the first place? How did you react when the cops stopped you? 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 are currently unanswered.

Good. Because so far what you see in this video is really leaking out, first the family, now these city officials all saying they're horrified. But the public has yet to see the video itself.

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

And then these employees don't come out and say they're shocked by the content of the video. They also express 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 they are worried about after seeing this, they don't want it, that this is something destructive.

The sense of anticipation and really the sense of dread is really building in Memphis right now. Extracurricular activities have been suspended across the city. Additional police 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 posted.

We'll be back.

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

So in the end it's four separate videos that are posted online, and that adds up to about an hour of footage. It is a combination of body camera footage and police camera photos posted in the neighborhood. So there is only one feed from one of these cameras. And it starts in the middle of Tire Nichols Prison. So we never really see the start of the parade.

God. Although the police said this was a case of reckless driving, we don't actually see or hear the police say that Tire Nichols is being pulled over.

Good. Exactly. The reason all this happened 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 we only 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 curse them, tell them to get out and throw themselves on the ground.

And eventually he just lays down on the floor and begs. As if he wanted to go home. A police officer tries to spray him with pepper spray. And run at that moment.

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

The officers caught up with him in a residential area. And he is thrown 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 sticks. Part of the reason we're seeing this isn't just because it's kind of shaky close-up body camera footage. In fact, we have this aerial view of the street camera, which is able to capture everything that is happening from above.

INTESTINE.

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

Good. It's very difficult footage to watch.

It's a lot to process. Finally, the officers push him against the police car. separation.

And officers can be heard saying he grabbed one of their weapons or tried to hit them. But those are things we don't really see in the video. I mean, other than him running after the pit stop like we saw no real resistance. There's really no evidence that we can see him fighting in the videos.

So the officers show up here at a few different times to try and justify their actions, even though the footage doesn't really support the actions.

Good. And then, a few minutes later, emergency services arrive on the scene. There are two doctors from the fire department. You look at Nichols but you can see they don't care about him.

Good. I remember seeing it and counting the number of people in the room. There are over 10. Nobody seems to care about Tire Nichols.

Good. He sits next to this car more than 24 minutes before an ambulance arrives. And every now and then Nichols passes out next to the car and they hold him down.

Rick, when I think about the questions that we all had before the video came out, a lot of them seem to have been answered in these videos because we see these officers approach Tire Nichols' vehicle very aggressively and throw him to the ground. . He runs. We don't know why, but he never defended himself like you said.

We hear officials at one point expressing their intent to harm him. So we clearly see that they use an enormous amount of violence against this person who doesn't fight back. And then we hear the authorities offer a justification, or set of justifications, for their actions after the fact, in a way that doesn't match what we see in the videos.

And 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.

Good. Exactly. And because of that, many of the people I spoke to said they found the video as disturbing and angry as the family made it out to be. And not only the brutality shown and the beatings, but what they saw was also the callousness in the waiting that followed.

So I want to address how the people of Memphis reacted to this video given all the concerns that were expressed by city officials and Tire Nichols' family about what the reaction would be.

There was pain. There's your anger. Many people in Memphis saw the photos, but others did not, who could not. They felt that anything they learned would not be outweighed by the trauma they would inflict upon 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 a Friday night. They blocked a highway and closed a bridge. But things ended peacefully before long. And on Saturday it was more or less the same where it was a modest performance but there were people coming out 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 bring justice to justice so quickly, might help explain why the response has been the way it has been? i.e. peaceful and sometimes a little reserved.

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

Good. I'm curious. When we think about how people are reacting to all of this, how people are feeling about what was really a central part of what happened to Tyree Nichols. And something that differs in this case from many of the alleged cases of 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 cases that get a lot of attention, it's usually at the hands of white 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 this feeling of sadness about it all. A colleague of mine spoke to a woman who had seen pictures of the officers on TV and 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. What could make monitoring more effective. This could really ease the tensions that exist between the community and law enforcement.

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

Good. Good. So this was a case where that mentality really didn't hold up. So what I'm hearing from a lot of people that you talk to here is that 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 the race of officers doesn't make that much of a difference that the divide between police and community remains the same. .

Good. The question I think a lot of people are asking after what happened with Tire Nichols is whether there's something about surveillance, something fundamental that happens when police officers don that uniform, given the nature of modern surveillance, 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 are engaged in investigating and investigating 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 she had dismantled the Escorpião Unit, a specialized group to which those five police officers belonged.

And what really happened at the crime scene is still being investigated. The two paramedics who responded to the call and weren't doing much in the video were taken away by firefighters and an investigation is underway as to whether they should be fired 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. A separate federal civil rights investigation is ongoing. 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 officers or your 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 opinions solely on what they see in the video. Just as we don't know what prompted the arrest, there could be other factors, these lawyers say, that are simply not reflected in the footage we've seen.

Good. It seems to me that Memphis is going to go through what many American cities like Minneapolis, Ferguson and Baltimore went through after a case like this, which is first and foremost traumatic, isn't it? A kind of collective trauma around an alleged case of police brutality that ends with the death of a black man. And then a process that relives everything very painfully.

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

That's the feeling. Is that what's going on with the process? Finally, what about the police? And from what I'm hearing, particularly from the people who are really involved in this case, know that it's going to take vigilance because it really is a 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.

Thanks.

We'll be back.

You need to know this 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 army 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 past 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 designed 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.