Status: 01/28/2023 05:39 a.m
After the death of Black Tire Nichols in a traffic stop in Memphis, the authorities released videos of the operation. Officers can be seen punching and kicking Nichols. US President Biden reacted “outraged” and called for calm.
The images, which were seen on all American TV channels during prime time, are difficult to bear. They show how police officers tried to bring a man to the ground with tear gas and a Taser gun on January 7th. Your victim can flee first, the officers run following them. They continue to show the five officers uninhibitedly beating the man for many minutes. They thrash him with a baton and step on the man lying on the ground. They pull him up only to keep hitting him in the face with their fist.
The Memphis police had released the footage: images lasting regarding an hour from the officers’ body cams and video from a surveillance camera. At times, only the sound can be heard, and the 29-year-old victim screams for his mother. Three days later, Tire Nichols died in hospital.
Lawyers for the dead man’s family compared the recordings to the Rodney King case: the black driver was beaten with sticks and kicked by police officers in Los Angeles in 1991. Unlike Nichols, he survived.
Fired, arrested and charged
The five police officers who brutally bludgeoned Nichols have already been dismissed from duty and imprisoned. They were charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault and kidnapping, among other charges.
Second-degree murder is an intermediate stage between murder and manslaughter in the state of Tennessee, where Memphis is located, and is roughly equivalent to manslaughter under German law. Kidnapping in this case refers to the illegal detention of a human being.
Biden calls for peaceful protests
US President Joe Biden was shocked by the footage of Nichols’ brutal arrest. They would “rightfully outrage” people. He himself was “full of pain”. At the same time, the President appealed: “Those who want justice should not resort to violence or destruction.” In view of the expected demonstrations in many cities in the country, he called for “peaceful protests”.
Biden had previously expressed “very concern” regarding the prospect of possible riots and reported in the White House regarding a phone call with the dead man’s mother, RowVaughn Wells. She’s obviously suffering a lot, he said.
Nichols’ death has been causing outrage in the United States for days – another case of police violence once morest blacks. After the video was released, dozens of people protested police violence in Memphis. Among other things, they chanted “No peace without justice” and “Say his name! Tire Nichols!”. Protesters blocked one of two main bridge links across the Mississippi River that connect Arkansas and Tennessee. People also gathered in other US cities to commemorate the black family man.
Colleagues condemn actions of the accused
The national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Patrick Yoes, said in a statement the police’s handling of Nichols did not constitute legitimate police work or a traffic stop gone awry, but a “criminal assault under the guise of the law.” .
Police unions in California and Hawaii issued a joint statement calling the police officers’ actions revolting. It is the complete opposite of how venerable law enforcement officers should behave.
With information from Sebastian Hesse, ARD Studio Washington
