with this unit. have you heard complaints about this? has this been something that has been on people s radar screens? itth has not. while it is no secret that memphis has had a violent crime crime problem that we have been dealing with for sometime, and there has to have been different initiatives put forth in order to curb violent crime in the city, we were unaware of the scorpion unit. i was unaware of this unit. but obviously, this unit has many flaws. the police chief has called for an investigation into this unit. and i think that we need to have some sort of oversight into owe organized crime units we are creating within police forces, we are rules and policies are lax. and officers are able to execute forces that they would typically not be able to use. what i do know is, the scorpion unit was not created to do traffic stops. and for my understanding, tyre nichols was a traffic stop. so, first and foremost, the the officers who were apart of the specialized unit were out of l
them mr. tyre nichols in the first place and when he was arrested in the first place and when he asked what he was being pulled over for, they should ve explicitly told him what the issues were, and when they realized he was not someone they were after, they should have took a different route. they should not have had to use as much force as they did. and now the whole unit is under investigation at this point. so, it is flawed. and we need to re-evaluate how we are using organized crime units in order to attack the violent crime issues we have in memphis, tennessee. vi all right, tennessee state senator london lamar, from memphis, tennessee. thank you so much for your time. i m joined now by paul butler, who served as a federal prosecutor specialty was public corruption. he s a law professor who specializes in writing about law enforcement, policing. he wrote a book called chokehold about policing. let me ask you this, since we have been talking about the video in the specifics her
and i know the governor will be providing about $255 million for our ag so that they can begin setting up a task force on these grab and go retail thefts that are happening because this is, somewhat, the same thing, and only it s gotten out of hand, obviously. you feel like it s ongoing. it needs to be addressed in that matter because it s ongoing. just because this discovery was made, you don t believe that now the problem is over? no, no. and these thieves, these organized crime units know how to cut through and use cutters to break those locks. they re not that sophisticated but they can get through and they go through and rummage the material. some things i saw, as we were picking up the trash, was valuable, but they didn t bother with it perhaps because they didn t know what it was. i saw printing cartridges that cost you $30 to $40 that were lying there in packages and i saw materials for medical
in criminal activity. when you re taking on a bomber, when the s.w.a.t officers surrounded them at 2:00, 3:00 this morning. he would have flown a pipe bomb at them. could have had his car area booby trapped. they went in to get him. incredible detective work. thankfully they weren t hurt. harris: and now the williamson county sheriff. your department is sharing task force and resources. the last 12 hours have been very interesting. tell me about the apprehension, the move-in first before this guy blew himself up. let me be clear. our role as a sheriff s department was very limited. obviously thises was the primary goal for the austin police department. i received a call around 2:00 this morning from a couple members that were on the task force, the fbi task force as well as a couple of our organized crime units who were partaking in some investigation