Last night, I sat down and watched over 60 minutes of footage of Tyre Nichols from January 7. I did it because I wanted to know exactly what happened. “I hope they stomp his ass,” Preston Hemphill said in the first video when Tyre ran from being unexplainably tasered and dragged out of his car. This was just the beginning of a brutal beating that would end with Tyre dying just days later.

I sat there, watching five police officers punch, knee, and wrestle Tyre on the ground. I grimaced as I watched them wind up and forcefully kick him in the face. I groaned seeing them simultaneously pepper spray, tase, and mercilessly beat this man without remorse, to the point where he screamed for his mom who reportedly lived just a few houses down. They pepper sprayed him so much that it even got into their eyes at some points. What struck me when this happened was that they would stop and moan in discomfort as they tried to catch their breath, not thinking that Tyre would need the same with the conjunction of attacks they used.

I watched them yell contradictory commands at him during this beating—screaming at him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. I wondered why they thought tasing and kicking someone in the face repeatedly wouldn’t cause them to instinctively use their hands to protect the pain-point. At no point did anyone try to stop what was happening. And when they were done, they seemingly began fabricating stories of how Tyre reached for their gun and was on drugs—stories contradicted by the video and investigatory findings. They can also be seen on video sharing how they were throwing “haymakers” at Tyre.

I was disgusted by what I saw. Soon I found myself searching for more information, only to feel antagonized by the reaction on social media. I heard excuses about the police officers being relatively “new” to the police force as they all joined between 2017 and 2020. This was odd to me; in no other industry would someone with 3-6 years in the field be considered new or inexperienced. If this were to be the case with policing, am I to expect this behaviour from all new police officers? I also saw responses where people saw it fit to question why Black people and Black organizations weren’t offering swift responses to condemn the incident being that it was Black officers that killed this Black man. I saw statements like, “But Black lives matter, right?” and “This isn’t racism because the people that did it were Black.” The thing is, I’m never surprised at this point. Each and every time a Black person dies by the hands of the police we find ourselves in this odd cycle of where people, politicians, and organizations conjure performative statements without true intention to address policing culture and processes, especially in relation to our low-income communities. Each and every time the media creates irrelevant and unnecessary debates about Black families to vilify how the deceased behaved for clicks and public spectacles. We do this toxic rhythmic dance where we seek to assign blame to individual cops instead of looking at how the institution has capacitated the individual’s behaviour.

What does surprise me, however, is that after all this time BLM (the phrase not the organization) is still treated as an abstract statement. People seem to think it’s just about this dichotomous relationship between white and Black people, not realizing injustice in any form, but particularly police brutality has always been at the core. What also seems to be consistently lost as people seek to undermine and divert conversations about the death of Black people by police is that some of our most powerful institutions were built on the bedrock of racism, meaning that without reform, individuals in that system can unconsciously be indoctrinated to perpetuate racist stereotypes and behaviours towards Black and racialized people. People will say that not all police officers are bad, and I agree. But we need to strongly interrogate the system if five police officers can recklessly beat someone to death, thinking that they can merely corroborate their stories to avoid punishment. The system allows this. The system allowed these people to be police officers. And the system disproportionately targets Black people. Is this not racism?

Three weeks after the incident, five police officers were fired and subsequently charged with second-degree murder. With these charges, I believe there are some key takeaways to consider. The first is how quickly the Memphis Police Department moved to fire and charge these police officers without the need of political pressure, public protests, or lengthy investigations that may lead to charges. Given what we have seen in the past, we can say that this is rare. So, ask yourselves, why? Why was the task force so quickly disbanded? Why were only five police officers charged when there was a white police officer engaged in combat at the beginning of the video? And where appropriate (given the correct context), why is this not the rule as opposed to the exception?

The second thing to consider is what this conveys about body worn cameras (BWCs). I have long heard classed debates about the efficacy of BWCs. In a piece I wrote last year titled “Discussing the Problems with Policing and Bettering Policing Practices” I discussed how recent literature suggests that BWCs have no real effect on reducing the use of force. A major study in this area, conducted by Barak Ariel in Denver’s largest police departments, found that complaints for misconduct and use of force actually increased by 37 percent when BWCs were implemented. A second study by Ariel found that there was no difference whether officers wore BWCs or not. This is exactly demonstrated with Tyre Nichols. The fact that they were wearing BWCs may have ensured that they are accountable with respect to being charged, but it didn’t prevent them from beating Tyre, fabricating stories, or Blocking their BWCs while on duty. And for me, accountability after the fact only brings closure. It doesn’t bring the dead back. So, if BWCs—with how they’re currently used—are not stopping police brutality, then why are we pushing for their implementation universally?

What also bothers me about this idea of accountability is that it’s selective. If Tyre had not died, but had still been violently beaten, I want you to ask yourselves, would the footage have been released to the public? Question yourselves, how often have we seen the footage from BWCs after someone has been brutally beaten, but never died? Why do we primarily see situations that lead to death, and not overarching brutality? Footage in this regard has rarely reached the public and has largely not made headlines. Considering this, I must admit that I believe that these officers, and ones like them have continually beat people down in the street and gotten away with it because the victim didn’t die. I’ve personally heard stories of police using tactics such as phone books to beat victims so that there is limited scarring. But on the empirical side, research from Lorie Fridell and Hyeyoung Lim suggest that police use higher levels of non-lethal force against Black people. Roland Fryer corroborated this point, finding that Black people are 50 percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with the police. He further found that as police officers escalate the type of force they use (for example, from punching to pepper spraying or using a baton), the racial difference remains constant. Again, this suggests that what we are doing is not working, and these situations are not uncommon.

The last point to consider is the idea that increasing Black police officers will improve the police force. Studies in this area show that at best, the results are mixed. Some studies suggest an increase in Black officers actually increased discrimination and the use of force, while others have suggested that it decreased these things. With respect to the increase of discrimination, the idea was that Black officers felt pressure from their predominantly white police departments and fellow officers, leading them to act more aggressively towards Black people and increasing the use of force. It was also found that in the case of arrest behaviour, Black officers may treat Black people more harshly, and that they are more likely to stop Black motorists. In another analysis of shootings in 2015, they found that the percentage of Black officers and police-involved homicides of Black people are positively correlated until the percent of Black officers reaches 26 percent. When the number of Black police officers gets to 42 percent, then the relationship turns negative, but this estimate isn’t firm. These findings are largely at odds with the public perception that increasing the number of Black police officers increases representation, thereby allowing Black officers and Black people to feel more comfortable and less susceptible to discrimination. In the context of Memphis, which is a predominantly Black city with a predominantly Black police force, we see the materialization of this negative impact. Consider how the police who were charged were a part of a specialized unit called the “Scorpion Unit” which patrols high crime areas of Memphis where there have been ongoing challenges with violence. It’s reported that the unit was created in 2021 when the murder rate was rising. Often, these type of units are used in high-crime, low-income areas. The problem is that they rigorously police poverty and Black people, at times brutalizing both the guilty and innocent alike because the policies allow them to subjectively use as much force as deemed reasonably necessary. Here, the problem is that in some circumstances, police officers take advantage of the system knowing that their actions will not reach the media if no one is killed. More specifically, they know that these people (particularly the ones involved in crimes such as drug dealing) will not go to the media or legal aid when they are beaten down. There’s a history to this. So this isn’t about the colour of the police officer. To me, this is about the law enforcement institution.

I know we talk about police reform. We talk about reimagining our communities; but the processes that have always allowed police to act in this way, ways that led to the death of Tyre, are still in place. We can debate and dance as much as we want. We can talk about the relevance of race all we want. But if this happened to someone you knew, what would your response be?

Rest in peace Tyre Nichols.

Suggested Readings:

• Racism and Police Brutality in America: Cassandra Chaney and Ray C. Robertson
• A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011-2014
• Race and Reasonableness in Police Killings: Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis D. Campbell
• An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force: Roland G. Fryer, Jr
• Discussing the Problems with Policing and Bettering Policing Practices by Shaquille Morgan
• Assessing the Use of Force Against Black People by Shaquille Morgan