At a funeral in Memphis, hundreds of people said goodbye to African-American Tire Nichols, who was beaten to death by American police. At the ceremony at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris offered her condolences to the 29-year-old’s family. “We cry with you and the people of our country cry with you.”
The first black female vice president in U.S. history condemned the brutal beating of five black police officers against Nichols as an “act of violence” on the part of those who should be responsible for security. The Democratic Party politician also asked Congress to pass a law against police violence named after George Floyd, killed in a brutal police operation in Minneapolis in 2020.
President “Joe Biden is going to sign it and we shouldn’t delay him,” Harris said. The bill has long failed in Congress due to opposition from conservative Republicans.
Floyd’s relatives and other victims of police violence also attended the ceremony in Memphis, Tennessee. The eulogy was delivered by well-known civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who called for violent police officers to be held accountable.
Police officers brutally beat Nichols on Jan. 7 during an overnight stop in Memphis. The 29-year-old died three days later in a hospital.
Last week, five officers fired after the incident were charged with second-degree murder. In Tennessee, this corresponds to an intermediate stage between murder and manslaughter. Like the victim, the five men, who belonged to a defunct special unit of the Memphis Police Department, are African American. Authorities released video footage of the incident on Friday. However, the unrest feared by the authorities did not materialize.
In the USA, deadly police violence against black people repeatedly causes horror and outrage. Often – though not in the case of Tire Nichols – white police officers are the perpetrators.