After delaying the broadcast of the four videos of the beating of Tire Nichols and warning the public of the inhumane nature of the police officers’ behavior, authorities on Friday night showed images that can only shock, disappoint and choke.
Violence that cannot be justified
There is no longer any doubt about the brutality and excessive character of the police operation.
If at the moment we do not know exactly how the young driver is behaving in the pursuit, since the first exchange of words between the police representatives and Tire Nichols, we have witnessed an escalation, both in words and in gestures.
Brutally torn from his vehicle seat, the young man keeps asking why he is being arrested and, more importantly, why the police are so numerous and so brutal. If you listen to it all from start to finish, it’s even young Nichols calling for calm.
No policeman will ever intervene to restore order or some calm, not even if they hit him with a stick or kick him in the head, then pick him up and hit him several times in the face.
As unbearable as above is the attitude of the police when Nichols is lying on the ground with his back to a car: 20 minutes before the emergency services arrive, nobody cares about his condition.
Black cops and a suspect
The images released on Friday are reminiscent of those associated with the death of George Floyd. However, there are two important distinctions. Tire Nichols was not known to the authorities and tricky point, the cops brutally attacking him are all black.
The issue is sensitive, but American media or well-known black activists have raised it.
Probably the most famous of them is Van Jones, who can be seen and heard regularly on CNN. The former Obama aide claimed being black doesn’t mean police haven’t engaged in racist behavior.
Jones bases his argument on the training the police are offered and the way they approach certain neighborhoods considered “hot”.
Black cops trained with the same training biases and the same prejudices against minorities would come to reproduce the same brutality that has been denounced so often and for too long.
Once again, the United States faces violence. Unless I think we need to come back with such a counterproductive slogan as “defund the police” (cut budgets), it’s high time our neighbors started and widely implemented a national discussion about the origin of all this violence-achieving reforms in law enforcement training. I have a dream, started Luther King, I have mine too.
