America faces its demons. The city of Memphis has released video showing the beating of Tire Nichols, a young African American man who died January 10, three days after he was beaten by five police officers, also black, who were charged with murder. Joe Biden said he was “outraged” and “deeply hurt” while Tire Nichols’ mother urged protesters “not to burn our city down”. The protesters quietly moved towards the police station on Friday evening.
The video is available on the City of Memphis Vimeo page. Due to the violence of the images, 20 Minutes has chosen not to broadcast them directly in this article. Two officers hold Tire Nichols to the ground while a third officer kicks him hard and another hits him with his baton. The young man shouts “Mama”, “Mama”. The police officers pick him up and one of them hits him on the head four times.
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“reduced to a pulp”
“When my husband and I got to the hospital and I saw my son, he was already dead. They had turned him to a pulp. He was bruised all over, his head was swollen like a watermelon,” Tire Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, tearfully said in an interview aired by CNN on Friday. She told the press that she did not see the pictures of the beating but was told it was “really horrible”.
Memphis Police Commissioner Cerelyn Davis has warned that video showing the man’s arrest for a simple traffic violation is “comparable, if not worse” than that showing Rodney King’s violent arrest by police in 1991 indicates. The acquittal of the four police officers involved a year later sparked unprecedented riots in Los Angeles.
“Don’t burn our city down”
The five fired officers are African American themselves. Police on horseback patrolled the streets of downtown Memphis on Friday. Tire Nichols’ family themselves have called for calm. “Please demonstrate, but be sure to demonstrate,” her father-in-law Rodney Wells said. “
Elsewhere in the country, the police were also preparing for possible riots. Two of Joe Biden’s advisers have spoken to the mayors of 16 US cities about the protests. In the early evening, protesters began gathering in Washington, even before the video was released.
“In short, it’s absolutely appalling,” said David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the arrest. FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “appalled,” and Attorney General Merrick Garland said a federal investigation had been launched.