quick and speedy firing of those five officers working with the tennessee board of investigation to make sure criminal charges were brought quickly along with our da. this disbanding of the scorpion unit was a good first step. as officials and community members, it s important that we hold chief davis, mayor strickland, and everyone else accountable to make sure these special units are disbanded and we focus on more innovative ways to reduce crime. because it can be done and certainly not without violence. extra violence does not reduce violence. it creates mistrust and misalignment in the community. we will have to leave it there. state senator akbari, councilman and chairman martavius jones. thank you both very much for your time. after the break, don t go anywhere. the bitter part is embattled over one of the most powerful house committees. also what s up with classified document investigations? we will talk about that. particularly we are talking about the former vice president p
requiring board members to take a civilian police academy course became law. and just days ago, republican state senator mark posey introduced legislation to abolish community oversight boards altogether and replace them with a so-called police advisory and review committees. how are memphis officials grappling with these efforts to undermine accountability? especially in the wake of the death of tyre nichols? also, we should note, this is an election year for the mayor in city council. joining me now to discuss is memphis city council chairman martavious jones, and the minority leader and the tennessee state senate thank you both for being here. chairman, i will start with you. can you tell us how exactly the state legislatures actions impacted the memphis review board s ability to hold police countable. ? thank you for having me. let me ask for the country to
police officers now are taught de-escalate. you see no de-escalation there. that is a full-on escalation, for what reason? for what reason? and it goes against everything that they are taught and trained to do. and they were riled up. they came in hot. they came in hot. all right. our shimon prokupecz, stand by. we have a lot to get to tonight as we watch these protests happening all across the country. so far, as we have been saying, they have been peaceful. i want to bring in now memphis city councilman, council chairman, martavious jones. mr. chairman, thank you so much. we appreciate you joining us this evening. we are all now seeing this video for the first time that you were able to see earlier today. your reaction from what you saw? look, john, it s hard to watch the video, where you know, at the end
have been saying about, about our young people being beaten and killed by police officers. why are you crying? we saw a man essentially die at the hands of police. when i sat in the room today, we all knew the fate. we all knew the fate of that young man. and it did not have to be that w way. martavious jones, i appreciate you. you don t have to apologize for being human. al of people, most people are feeling what you re feeling. and i m glad that you shared it with our audience. i really appreciate you for doing that, okay? thank you, don. thank you. our special coverage continues right after this.
what s the level of supervision within that unit? how thorough do they really investigate complaints against these individuals. you can disband the unit, but the problem is not going to go away because it s a lot deeper than that, and they need to take a real deep dive into that. i think the memphis police department admitting that today, giving the statement saying it s really not the unit. they need these types of units. it s just the training, and they need better officers. cnn s van jones with me now. van, listen, i think mr. jones spoke for all of us. you never know when those moments are going to come. he had his on cnn. he did not have to apologize for being human, but i think he spoke for a lot of people around the country. he certainly did. my father is from memphis. i spent my summers in memphis. my heart goes out to that community. one of the things that laura is about to talk about is the role of pepper spray. we haven t talked about that. we talked about the beating.