Memphis Cops Kill Motorist After Traffic Stop

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It’s on Vimeo. The cops came in hot. Not sure if he didn’t pull over immediately but they were clearly angry and dragged him from the car. He was calm and trying to talk to them. He got scared and ran. They got angry that they had to chase him. Looks like one cop maybe got sprayed in his eye.

They find him and kick him in the head multiple times. They hold him while others near him.

How can anyone feel safe around police no matter your color or their color? These men beat him to death.

I’m so heartbroken for his family. I can’t imagine dying like that. Feeling so helpless and terrified.

So sickening.

Being enraged to riot is understandable but it’s not the cops who will suffer.

I know the job messes with your head.

I wish we weren’t such a violent country/culture.

What a $hitty world we’ve created for our children.

There's something really wrong with many, many, many men. They have these fragile little egos and when something doesn't go their way, they react to an insane level. Is it right to run from a cop? No, but it should never be a death sentence or result in straight up violence.

I generally advocate for doing what cops say and dealing with any wring doing in court. But after watching the video, how hot they came in, dragging him from the car, screaming and oepoer spraying him while he tried to de-escalate...at a certain point, if I think my life is in danger, I'm going to try to get away. I can't really blame him for that. Maybe they killed him because he ran, but Tyre ran because he thought they were going to kill him. And they did.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Great strategy! Fight the police because they will kill you if you don't. ha

I mean he could have laid there and let them suffocate him against the ground or beat him to death on the spot. I’d at least give myself the chance to live by running. He’s seen all the same videos and court cases of these scenarios to know, he’s likely going to die. I mean hell at this point being in your home and eating ice cream or sleeping can get you killed by cops with zero liability from the cops. Reckless driving/DUI does not justify beating a person to death, but I guess if you are black that’s the reason it is. He pulled over and stopped for Christ sake.

+1. Tyre Nichols did not die because he failed to follow directions. He died because these pigs wanted to kill him. That’s it.

Cops murder people all the time who comply with their directions.

You think this never happens? A cop in Florida shot a Black behavioral therapist who was complying when the autistic boy who was supposed to comply wasn’t. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna745716

Nobody said that. It rarely happens. Do you realize that you aren't privy to what over a million police officers do on a daily basis? You only know what pops up on your phone, and that's a big difference.

DP. You think the fact that not every cop brutalizes people excuses the ones who do? WTF is wrong with you?

DP. Nowhere in the PP’s post did they say that the officers should be excused for their behavior. Nothing is wrong with that PP. They simply posted that incidents are actually rare, despite what social media shows. Statistics prove this. Over 99% of police interactions (per FBI statistics) involve no use of force. That doesn’t mean there aren’t horrific uses of force, but it does demonstrate that this is rare. Of the uses of force that do occur, most are deemed justified. (Keep in mind that merely putting on handcuffs can be a use of force.)

I’m sure the PP would appreciate if you don’t jump to conclusions.

I would suggest you go back and reread the exchange, because pp absolutely was trying to deflect from the brutality of Nichols’ murder by citing to the fact that not all cops do this.

Are you suggesting that all cops do this? Really?
The PP said nothing wrong.

One bad apple spoils the bunch, and there is a lot more than one bad apple in the police forces in the United States.

This is a stupid view. There are bad apples in every single profession. Should we just get rid of everything?

DP

Agree - we should not throw the baby out with the dirty bath water. We need to invest much more in police training … they have a difficult and risky but important job.

Do you know what happens if you as a cop intervene and stop your fellow officers once they start abusing a person? The officer just put a target on his back. He’s now an officer who can’t be trusted. At any time he can be hung out to dry, left on an island when he’s supposed to have backup.

When you’re an officer, you’re a member of the gang. What happens when a gang member turns on his gang? Exactly.

And if cops cannot police themselves, then they have to be policed by third parties. (So to speak.)

Take away qualified immunity. Not turning on body cam means you lose your job and pension. If we don't have enough candidates with this kind of oversight, then shift tasks (spend funding on medical/social work crisis response teams and not military weapons for the police department; separate traffic enforcement from regular police force, etc). Offer different incentives.

I don't care how many nie guys you know as cops. This isn't working. American police cannot be trusted to police themselves. Other developed countries don't have this problem. Whatever they are doing needs to be started here, because we are failing. We are killing our own citizens.

That's really not true. The police chief immediately fired all five of these guys and the state brought charges against them. The system is working as it should.

Other developed countries don't have this problem because they have a much higher police-to-citizen ratio and they don't have the most heavily armed civilian population in the world.

Take away cops (which is de facto happening now as police forces shrink) and you replace it with vigilante justice. Because America's underlying violence problem isn't just police. It's all of us.

This!

Taking away qualified immunity is not something that will help. At all.
Qualified immunity does NOT protect LE when they break the law.... like they did here.

These 5 officers not only brought shame to themselves - they have also put another black eye on LE everywhere.

The actions these officers took are not representative of 95%+ of officers we have. LE have thousands of encounters with the public every day that end as routine encounters.
Please don't allow yourself to believe that this horrific incident is representative of most LE.

They’ve been criminally charged, but they should also be civilly liable for violating the victim’s Constitutional rights and they should pay through the nose for it, as should any officer who violates a suspect’s Constitutional rights without actually murdering him (as was done here). If it were possible, a lot more of the bad apples would think twice before doing what they do. Good apples should have no problems with it. There is no reason on Earth why police should be any more protected from the operation of civil law than the rest of us. End qualified immunity.

Good luck collecting on that judgment.

You don’t have to get millions. Once the first few violent cops lost their houses, an insurance market would arise that would charge on the basis of training and experience. All of that would be progress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other day I was watching a Carol Burnett show skit from the 1970s about police brutality toward college students protesting the Vietnam War.

And then in the 1980s, we have rappers who sang about police brutality. Ice T summed it up. "Our wars won't end until all wars cease." Ice T the poet.

I am afraid it's true.

I see more clearly now in my early 50s, this isn't something that will ever change.

There will always be violent men. My 8th grade teacher used to tell the boys they would end up dead or in jail. One of those boys is now an electrician with a beautiful family with two college aged daughters. He didn't go to college but learned a trade, how to be an electrician.

There is a certain controlling personality type who will choose law enforcement as a career. No amount of empathy training or de-escalation training is going to change their behavior. They must be held accountable for their actions with the threat of prison. But most of these boys and men aren't afraid of the police, the law, or threat of prison. So here we are.

The problem are guns. Police are a symptom. Cops would not be on edge all time, wouldn’t have an us vs them attitude, and wouldn’t be militarized if there were no guns. For starters, cops wouldn’t even need to carry guns if there were never 300+ million guns on the streets in the US. That’d at least reduce the risk of deadly police shootings and mass shootings by a lot.

Agreed.

Cops in the UK don’t carry guns…because they don’t need to.

There are armed police in the UK and they carry machine guns. Not terribly long ago some British plainclothes cops shot a suspect in the back of the head while he was face down on the floor of a bus.

They aren’t the rank and file cops who are the first responders.

I was in London during the austerity protests, and I was shocked that none of the police had weapons. None. There were police vans/trucks strategically parked around the area—presumably with armed coppers—but the police on the streets mixing with protesters were not armed. And when you call the cops or get pulled over, they aren’t armed.

But that’s because the citizens aren’t armed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fact: if the person isn’t brandishing a gun or knife, they simply are not a threat—particularly when confronted by multiple police officers. Therefore, there is no need to throw punches, hit, or otherwise use violence to subdue.

I know some police officers get scared and overreact. But they must be held accountable.

Suggestion: the military is trained to deescalate, and they are also trained to be courageous. There are news accounts where police are former military and they handled the precarious situation flawlessly precisely because of their courage and military training. Let’s see if there are lessons to be learned.

The military is most decidedly not trained to deescalate. They kill people. That’s their job.

As for appropriate force techniques, there are lots of things police are taught, but too many of them go out the window under stress. That’s a training issue. But in depth physical restraint training with constant refreshers is extremely expensive. Punching and kicking people seldom seems to accomplish much. “Piling on” works better, but risks smothering the suspect. There are leverage techniques with batons that can help get a person handcuffed, but in the midst of a melee they can be hard to remember and apply, particularly since police usually no longer carry sticks but instead have to deploy a collapsible baton.

Tasers and pepper spray are intended to get people under control without impact. The taser seems to have failed in this case. Tasers and pepper spray also get used as punishment and even torture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can there just be an understanding that you should never resist arrest? Regardless of race, gender, criminal record - just do not resist arrest.

Are you asking this in full awareness that the outcomes of that perspective are nonetheless very different for some groups of people than others?

Citation please? Show me the video or story of a white male/female resisting arrest violently and repeatedly and the outcome of their final arrest. I’ll wait….

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I have to say it’s good that it’s a bunch of black officers who tuned this guy up. It’s also pretty clear that for all this guy’s supposed calmness, he took off and ran. He ran. If he just shuts up and stays on the ground, and takes a few kicks, he’s showing up at a cop protest sometime this year. But now he’s not.

Have you ever been beaten down by an armed goon squad?! No? Then who are you to judge?

How easily people forget. George Floyd didn’t run. That didn’t work out for him either.

lol. Honest question; did you watch the George Floyd video? He spent 10+ minutes resisting getting put in the cruiser. While it is true that George Floyd didn't physically try to evade the police he clearly resisted.

He completely resisted very aggressively

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can there just be an understanding that you should never resist arrest? Regardless of race, gender, criminal record - just do not resist arrest.

So that’s your excuse for summary executions?

Not relevant. Stop resisting.

[Anonymous]

An important policy point is whether and to what extent the police are going to be trained and/or required to just give up in the face of resistance, depending on the offense involved. Many departments have already moved in this direction, prohibiting certain restraint techniques and limiting vehicle chases. In most places, however, the rule is still that the police are going to win, even if it kills somebody. That’s not right, but drawing an alternative bright line that police can implement in the rough and tumble of daily work is not easy. Deterrence is a large part of policing. If suspects know that the police will give up in the face of a little resistance, police effectiveness can deteriorate very rapidly.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can there just be an understanding that you should never resist arrest? Regardless of race, gender, criminal record - just do not resist arrest.

Brilliant! You found the solution.

It really honestly is that simple

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can there just be an understanding that you should never resist arrest? Regardless of race, gender, criminal record - just do not resist arrest.

So that’s your excuse for summary executions?

Not relevant. Stop resisting.

This was not a “summary execution.” The police did not intend to kill this man. They may have been recklessly indifferent but his death was not purposeful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other day I was watching a Carol Burnett show skit from the 1970s about police brutality toward college students protesting the Vietnam War.

And then in the 1980s, we have rappers who sang about police brutality. Ice T summed it up. "Our wars won't end until all wars cease." Ice T the poet.

I am afraid it's true.

I see more clearly now in my early 50s, this isn't something that will ever change.

There will always be violent men. My 8th grade teacher used to tell the boys they would end up dead or in jail. One of those boys is now an electrician with a beautiful family with two college aged daughters. He didn't go to college but learned a trade, how to be an electrician.

There is a certain controlling personality type who will choose law enforcement as a career. No amount of empathy training or de-escalation training is going to change their behavior. They must be held accountable for their actions with the threat of prison. But most of these boys and men aren't afraid of the police, the law, or threat of prison. So here we are.

The problem are guns. Police are a symptom. Cops would not be on edge all time, wouldn’t have an us vs them attitude, and wouldn’t be militarized if there were no guns. For starters, cops wouldn’t even need to carry guns if there were never 300+ million guns on the streets in the US. That’d at least reduce the risk of deadly police shootings and mass shootings by a lot.

Agreed.

Cops in the UK don’t carry guns…because they don’t need to.

There are armed police in the UK and they carry machine guns. Not terribly long ago some British plainclothes cops shot a suspect in the back of the head while he was face down on the floor of a bus.

They aren’t the rank and file cops who are the first responders.

I was in London during the austerity protests, and I was shocked that none of the police had weapons. None. There were police vans/trucks strategically parked around the area—presumably with armed coppers—but the police on the streets mixing with protesters were not armed. And when you call the cops or get pulled over, they aren’t armed.

But that’s because the citizens aren’t armed.

The UK also has surveillance video cameras everywhere. I am sensing a pattern.

https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/cctv/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other day I was watching a Carol Burnett show skit from the 1970s about police brutality toward college students protesting the Vietnam War.

And then in the 1980s, we have rappers who sang about police brutality. Ice T summed it up. "Our wars won't end until all wars cease." Ice T the poet.

I am afraid it's true.

I see more clearly now in my early 50s, this isn't something that will ever change.

There will always be violent men. My 8th grade teacher used to tell the boys they would end up dead or in jail. One of those boys is now an electrician with a beautiful family with two college aged daughters. He didn't go to college but learned a trade, how to be an electrician.

There is a certain controlling personality type who will choose law enforcement as a career. No amount of empathy training or de-escalation training is going to change their behavior. They must be held accountable for their actions with the threat of prison. But most of these boys and men aren't afraid of the police, the law, or threat of prison. So here we are.

The problem are guns. Police are a symptom. Cops would not be on edge all time, wouldn’t have an us vs them attitude, and wouldn’t be militarized if there were no guns. For starters, cops wouldn’t even need to carry guns if there were never 300+ million guns on the streets in the US. That’d at least reduce the risk of deadly police shootings and mass shootings by a lot.

Agreed.

Cops in the UK don’t carry guns…because they don’t need to.

There are armed police in the UK and they carry machine guns. Not terribly long ago some British plainclothes cops shot a suspect in the back of the head while he was face down on the floor of a bus.

They aren’t the rank and file cops who are the first responders.

I was in London during the austerity protests, and I was shocked that none of the police had weapons. None. There were police vans/trucks strategically parked around the area—presumably with armed coppers—but the police on the streets mixing with protesters were not armed. And when you call the cops or get pulled over, they aren’t armed.

But that’s because the citizens aren’t armed.

The UK also has surveillance video cameras everywhere. I am sensing a pattern.

https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/cctv/

I’d rather have cameras than crime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can there just be an understanding that you should never resist arrest? Regardless of race, gender, criminal record - just do not resist arrest.

Are you asking this in full awareness that the outcomes of that perspective are nonetheless very different for some groups of people than others?

Citation please? Show me the video or story of a white male/female resisting arrest violently and repeatedly and the outcome of their final arrest. I’ll wait….

You'll wait? Fabulous. Which is is, "never" or "violently and repeatedly?" (I'll wait, now. )

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^PS: and the fact that there are people in this very thread who cannot acknowledge there is a problem that needs to be addressed means something, too.

I suspect the vast majority of people recognize there are major problems in the ways police use force throughout the US. Many of us understand they have an extremely difficult job and would like them better supported with longer training and mental health resources while on the job.

There is at least one person in every thread on unjustified police killings that becomes extremely defensive about all police work and accuses the victims of police violence of being on drugs and resisting arrest. It is not helping the police though he thinks he is.

Don't you think that a critical way to support LEOs in their very difficult jobs would be to set in place oversight over what happens to the "bad apple" colleagues, so they are not passed from site to site, too? Can't that be mentioned whenever we mention other supports for them, even though it means bringing in the same level of state legislative oversight that other professions are burdened with (not fun, but necessary)?

I'm always happy to include mental health supports and longer training whenever I have the discussion about career level licensure for this kind of job. I think all of this is important, but only one leg of that would be relatively quick to implement with the least amount of infrastructure and funding burden, and that's tracking with teeth.

Yes I do think that is important as well.

[Anonymous]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/16/maybe-u-s-police-arent-militarized-enough-soldiers-are-better-trained-to-deescalate/

Yes, the US military is trained in deescalation, and there are lessons to be learned.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^PS: and the fact that there are people in this very thread who cannot acknowledge there is a problem that needs to be addressed means something, too.

I suspect the vast majority of people recognize there are major problems in the ways police use force throughout the US. Many of us understand they have an extremely difficult job and would like them better supported with longer training and mental health resources while on the job.

There is at least one person in every thread on unjustified police killings that becomes extremely defensive about all police work and accuses the victims of police violence of being on drugs and resisting arrest. It is not helping the police though he thinks he is.

Don't you think that a critical way to support LEOs in their very difficult jobs would be to set in place oversight over what happens to the "bad apple" colleagues, so they are not passed from site to site, too? Can't that be mentioned whenever we mention other supports for them, even though it means bringing in the same level of state legislative oversight that other professions are burdened with (not fun, but necessary)?

I'm always happy to include mental health supports and longer training whenever I have the discussion about career level licensure for this kind of job. I think all of this is important, but only one leg of that would be relatively quick to implement with the least amount of infrastructure and funding burden, and that's tracking with teeth.

Yes I do think that is important as well.

I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you sharing your perspective.

I suspect that there are not many viable paths for individual police officers to do what they believe to be the right thing sometimes. We need to make it much easier to ask for help and to get help, bot for oneself and for others who are concerning.