Protesters rally against the fatal police attack on Tire Nichols, outside Coleman A. Young City Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023. – U.S. City of Memphis public released graphic video January 27, 2023 depicting a fatal police assault of a 29-year-old black man, as cities across the country prepare for a night of protests against atrocities. cop. Five Memphis officers, also all black, were charged with second-degree murder in the beating of Tire Nichols, who died in hospital on January 10, three days after being stopped on suspicion. reckless driving. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP) (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
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After officials in Memphis released graphic footage on Friday depicting the death of Tire Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, at the hands of police, members of Congress said Sunday that they efforts need to be revived through significant police reforms.
The five officers involved in the deadly encounter were charged with murder, kidnapping, assault and other charges on Thursday. All five officers were fired from the police department, and the specialized police unit they joined was disband saturday.
police reform negotiations disbanded at the National Assembly in 2021 after lawmakers failed to reach a bipartisan agreement. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Sunday that while the passage of those reforms would be “the right starting point,” it is ultimately “not enough.”
Durbin said that while he knows law enforcement officers risk their lives for Americans every day, many of these officers are engaging in “horrific behavior” that needs to be changed for the better.
“What we saw on the streets of Memphis was inhumane, horrible,” he told ABC’s “This Week”. “I don’t know what created such fury among these police officers that they would congratulate themselves for beating a man to death. But that’s really what happened.”
Durbin added that he would not rule out a federal investigation into the entire Memphis Police Department following Nichols’ death.
Representative Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he thinks while reform is possible, no legislature can account for the “evil” and “disrespect for human life”. ” that he saw in the footage. He said he did not believe those five officers represented the vast majority of law enforcement.
“We’re going to look at what we think is reasonable to support this, to make sure they’re getting the right training, but no amount of training is going to change what we’ve seen in the past. that video,” Jordan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Several policy reforms had been implemented in Memphis at the time of Nichols’ death, including requiring officers to de-escalate situations when they saw others using excessive force. Ben Crump, the attorney representing the Nichols family, said Sunday that he thinks police culture is to blame, as it normalizes the extreme use of force.
Crump told ABC’s “This Week”: “Just as those officers are responsible for the death of Tire Nichols, so does the culture of implicit bias that exists in America.
Crump said he thinks this culture will only begin to change if federal police reforms are implemented. Without them, he said, “We’ll continue to see these hashtags proliferate.”
While reform and training can have an impact, another effective deterrent to this behavior is when officers around the country see what happens to them if they engage in this kind of behavior. this violence, said Jason Armstrong, former police chief of Ferguson, Missouri. Armstrong led the Ferguson police force after it was overhauled following the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown.
Armstrong said that since five officers were fired and charged, officers have found that this behavior will not be tolerated. He said for some officers, it doesn’t matter if they have cameras on them or there are witnesses, they will still resort to violence and that culture is something that needs to be eliminated.
“Unfortunately, violence was natural for these individuals in this case,” Armstrong told ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. “And that is where we have to do a better job as law enforcement leaders, which is to identify individuals within our organization and police department and remove them from the profession before the same thing happens.”
