The officers responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols were promptly fired. Will it be a plan for other cities?

Will the Memphis Police Department’s subsequent response to Nichols’ death be a model for the movement of cities and police departments?

DALLAS. The death of Tyre Nichols after being repeatedly beaten by Memphis cops continues to echo around the country.

A few days after the 29-year-old man’s funeral, his parents attended an address to the US Congress and received thunderous applause from members of Congress. President Biden also told the American public that “equal protection under the law is an agreement we made with each other in America.” And he called on police departments to hold officers accountable when they “breach the public trust.”

And the Memphis City Council is now debating several proposals for public safety and police department reform. Among the 11 proposals is a regulation that would create guidelines for independent review of police training.

But will Nichols’ death at the hands of the police — and the Memphis Police Department’s subsequent response — be a model for cities and police departments to move forward?

“I can’t remember the last time we saw officers get fired or charged so quickly,” David Henderson said in the latest issue of Y’all-itics.

Henderson is a former prosecutor turned civil rights attorney in Dallas. He even helped train the police while working as a prosecutor.

Henderson says the Nichols case should be a plan to move forward, and he hopes it is, but he says there’s one big problem.

“It’s great that you have this plan, but it’s a plan without any specific plan or funding for actually building the house,” Henderson said. “And I think that brings me back to what we discussed earlier, which is that the Memphis police are doing this not just out of the goodness of their hearts. He also does this to avoid future liability for the feds to come in and investigate.”

Tyre Nichols was pulled over by Memphis police on January 7 and beaten continuously after stopping near the family’s home. He died three days later.

The original reason for the stoppage, which unfolded in two places, remains unknown to this day. The video of the violent interaction contradicts what was reported in the police’s initial public statements.

The department immediately fired the five officers involved in Nichols’ death, all black. They face numerous charges, including second-degree murder.

And in the following weeks, two more police officers, including one white, and two sheriff’s deputies were relieved of their posts. Three members of the Memphis Fire Department were also laid off, including two paramedics. These were people who also arrived at the scene or filed documents related to the incident. No charges have been filed against any of them, but prosecutors say those investigations are ongoing.

Henderson says the fact that most of the officers were black should make a difference, but it won’t because he says America is so bad at discussing race.

“I feel like, to some extent, I almost breathed a sigh of relief when people saw, oh, these officers are black. This means that all these problems with the police are not specifically based on race, but they are absolutely and definitely so, ”he said.

Henderson went on to say that black motorists do not necessarily feel safer when they are pulled over by a black police officer.

“You won’t breathe a sigh of relief. None of us thinks there’s no problem here because the officer turned out to be black. You are talking about a system in which racism plays a structural role in the long run,” the lawyer said.

After the public learned about the death of Nichols, we did not see mass protests. This may be partly due to the fact that five officers were quickly fired from their jobs and charged with murder even before the video of the violent altercation was seen by the public.

Henderson says that while some things have changed since a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in May 2020, race remains a factor in police engagement across the country.

“These officers would never have beaten a young white man the way they beat Tyre Nichols. But you also have to remember that we are operating in a post-George Floyd world and now the rules on policing and activity have changed,” Henderson said. “And what makes the situation unique now is that so many ordinary people took to the streets after the killing of George Floyd and demanded change. And that’s one of the reasons why we saw such a quick response.”

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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