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 officers is a man named preston hemphill, nichols they say he was the one who pulled tyre nichols from his car. he can be seen tasing tyre nichols and the body cam footage that was they believe humble is the one who said i hope when tyre nichols ran away from them. because that footage was released last week, we know at this moment that the violence it shows stands in a very stark contrast to what is in the police report that officers wrote just hours after they brutalized tyre nichols. and officer wrote that police pulled tyre nichols over because he was driving too quickly. memphis police chief davis has questioned the veracity of that claim. the police report also says tyre nichols was refusing a
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.
resources. so we can give the people the things they need so they don t need to cry out in crisis in the first place. and that, at the root, is the thing that actually reduces crime. to that and, this is exposed because of the race of the officers involved. the culture of violence, the culture of anti-blackness that is embedded in the structure of policing and specifically in these anti-crime units. how do we tackle this problem? what is the conversation back inside policing units and in a city like memphis, where there is very much a dialogue about how to better involve the community about criminal justice reform might look like, about what policing should look like? excellent question. and i want to take a moment just to extend my condolences to the nichols family this evening on the eve of the funeral of tyre nichols. this does give us an opportunity to re-examine the
the most violent crime, the murder spike that we saw during the height of the pandemic, there is no justification for low level traffic enforcement. but the reason they are doing it in those neighborhoods is they know they will get enough people with enough stuff in the car, they can charge them. the mayor can be proud of the numbers. the community can feel safe. it is a pr vicious cycle. until we start actually asking questions about what the safety means. and exactly as folks in oakland have been saying and folks in chicago and philly have been saying. we need to use police for less. for the things that we could possibly train them for. and by the way, get them out of the things that they themselves have said they want out of. mental health, unhoused folks. and for sure at a low level traffic, which is most dangerous by the officer and in this case, deadly for one motorist. can i just ask you, when we talk about what safety means, there is a generational divide on this. is there
disinvestment. younger generations grew up in this disinvestment. and older generations have watched it unfold. so, folks are more scared to give up any money that is coming into those communities at all. that makes absolute sense. i need to ask you, it s not just obviously memphis that has the scorpion unit. there are similar units in new york city. they have just sort of revamped there s, it s called give, which sounds nice. there s one in georgia, fulton county, baltimore. do you think the death of tyre nichols will prompt a real surl soul searching? or does each city tell themselves a different story? it should. there it is quite disheartening to hear that governor hochul in new york it s considering expanding these types of units. that is absolutely the wrong thing to do. that is the wrong direction to go in. we should be reducing the footprint of police in our society overall, not expanding them and certainly not funding and deputizing of these