fatally beating by police on january 2nd, laid him to rest at the mississippi boulevard church. vice president kamala harris plans to attend according reverend al sharpton will deliver the eulogy. and tomorrow night, we will speak with reverend sharpton about how the nichols family and people across the country are grieving in this moment and what justice in this case looks like. but tonight, sharpton, nichols family, and their attorney, benjamin crump, are gathered at the mason temp bowl in memphis. in addition to the five police officers that were arrested on a litany of charges including some degree murder fired two medics and a lieutenant, who all failed to give tyre nichols medical attention in the immediate aftermath asked the officers who had just beaten him laughed on the sidelines. in addition to that, the memphis police department confirmed yesterday that two other memphis officers on the scene that night have been suspended since january 8th. one of those two
scorpion unit in memphis. one man was sitting with a friend getting a pizza. the other man was in his car, displaying no outward probable cause, for the police to not only come at him, but you ultimately kill him, to beat him, to do what they did that we saw well-documented on body cam footage. so, what is happening that these specialized units believe they can they have the support of local law enforcement. there s a reason we play the sound from the mayor and from the police chief. this was seen as a successful model for memphis. why what strategies where they employing and why were they seen a successful? you say, and i think rightly so, it is not a surprise that they were targeting innocent people like this? this is something that was documented, if not at the center of the national media spotlight, surely the higher ups in law enforcement had to know that this was not a unit without blemish. oh, i m sure that they did. i m sure as we have said, residents were
investments of public safety. and to think about what do we actually need police for? and if you really are logical about the question, if you think about what supposedly happened this night with tyre nichols, a alleged traffic stop, we do not need a gang, and that s what they were, a gang of officers, ripping him out of his car, tasing him, beating him, chasing him down, over an alleged traffic violation. it is not lost on me that this happened in memphis, which is the sight of a case that legal defense fund one in 1985 about fleeing felons, which establish that you cannot use deadly force against a fleeing felon if that felon is posing no danger. in this case, we had a fully innocent man, as far as we know. there is nothing to suggest that tyre nichols was engaged in anything other than an
crimes operation to restore peace in our neighborhood unit, scorpion, this addresses violent crimes that occurred throughout our city. since its inception this past october threw three days ago, the scorpion unit has had a total of 566 arrests, 390 of them for felonies. they have seized $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons. officials say the memphis police department uses crime data to determine which neighborhoods to deploy the cities scorpion teams. but activists say special units like scorpion tend to target low income communities, conducting mass pull overs in those neighborhoods. those units have proliferated and cities across the country as a kind of tough on crime strategy. but there have long been complaints about those special units and in memphis, president
lawful detention and that he, quote, swung at an officer and literally had his hand on the officers gone. none of that is shown in the videos. the police report also list martin, one of the five officers charged with second degree murder, it lists him as a victim. it s unclear from the videos house that is even possible. martin, the four other police officers charged, and president have help, we re all members of a special unit of the called the scorpion. it was a unit assembled in 2021 and in response to an increase in violent crime in memphis it was a special plainclothes unit of the police department and it was focused on reducing violent crimes and seizing cars. officials like the mayor and the new police chief praised the scorpion unit almost immediately. as if it was sort of an overnight success. at the end of last year, chief davis created the street