The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against black people, according to the findings of a US Department of Justice investigation launched after the brutal death of Tire Nichols after a roadside inspection in 2023.
A report released Wednesday marks the conclusion of the investigation that began six months after Nichols was kicked, punched and beaten with a police baton. like five officers tried to arrest him after he fled a traffic stop.
The report states that “Memphis police officers routinely violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve.”
“Memphis residents deserve a police department and a city that protects their civil and constitutional rights, earns trust and keeps them safe,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division , in a press release sent by email.
Courtesy of the Nichols family via AP
The city said in a letter released earlier Wednesday that it would not agree to negotiate federal oversight of its police department until it can review and challenge the results of the investigation.
City officials had no immediate comment on the report, but said they planned to hold a news conference Thursday after Justice Department officials held their own news conference in Memphis Thursday morning to discuss the findings.
Police video showed officers pepper-spraying Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he fled a traffic stop. Five officers chased Nichols and kicked, punched and hit him with a police baton just steps from his home as he called for his mother. The video showed the officers moving around, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.
Nichols died on January 10, 2023, three days after being beaten. The five officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith – were fired, charged with murder in state court and indicted by federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges.
Nichols was black, as were the former officers. His death sparked national protests, raised the volume of calls for police reforms in the United States and directed scrutiny toward the police department in Memphis, a majority-black city.
The report specifically mentions the Nichols case and addresses the police department’s practice of using traffic stops to combat violent crime. The police department has encouraged officers in specialty units, task forces, and patrols to prioritize street enforcement, and officers and community members have described this approach as “saturation,” or a flooding neighborhoods with traffic stops, according to the report.
“This strategy involves frequent contact with the public and gives broad discretion to officers, requiring close supervision and clear rules to direct officer activity,” the report said. “But MPD does not ensure that officers conduct themselves lawfully.”
The report said prosecutors and judges told federal investigators that officers did not understand the constitutional limits of their authority. Officers arrest and detain people without adequate justification, and conduct invasive searches of people and cars, the report says.
“Black people in Memphis disproportionately experience these violations,” the report said. “MPD has never evaluated its practices for evidence of discrimination. We have found that officers treat Black people more harshly than white people who engage in similar behavior.”
The investigation found that Memphis officers used force likely to cause pain or injury “almost immediately in response to low-level, nonviolent offenses, even when people are not being aggressive.”
The report says officers pepper-sprayed, kicked and Tasered an unarmed man with mental illness who was trying to get a $2 soda at a gas station. By the end of an encounter outside the gas station, at least nine police cars and 12 officers had responded to the incident, for which the man served two days in jail for theft and disorderly conduct.
In a letter to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released earlier Wednesday, Memphis City Attorney Tannera George Gibson said the city had received a request from the DOJ to enter into an agreement that would require “negotiating a consent decree targeting institutional policing and emergency services.” »
A consent decree is an agreement requiring reforms overseen by an independent monitor and approved by a federal judge. Federal oversight can last for years, and violations could result in fines paid by the city.
It remains to be seen what will happen to attempts to reach such agreements between cities and the Justice Department once President-elect Donald Trump returns to office and installs new leadership at the department. The Justice Department under the first Trump administration reduced the use of consent decrees, and the Republican president-elect is expected to once again radically reshape the department’s civil rights priorities.
“Until the City has had the opportunity to review, analyze and challenge the specific allegations that support your upcoming Report of Findings, the City cannot – and will not – agree to work on the “drafting or entering into a consent decree that will likely be in place for years to come and cost Memphis residents hundreds of millions of dollars,” the letter states.
The officers involved in the Nichols case were part of a crime-fighting team called the Scorpion Unit, which was disbanded after Nichols’ death. The team targeted drugs, illegal weapons and violent offenders, aiming to rack up the number of arrests, while sometimes using force against unarmed people.
Memphis police never adopted policies and procedures to run the unit, despite concerns that it had little supervision, according to the Justice Department report. Some prosecutors told department investigators that there were ‘outrageous’ inconsistencies between body camera footage and arrest reports, and that if the cases went to court they would be ‘ridiculed out of court’ . The report reveals that the unit’s misconduct led to the dismissal of dozens of criminal cases.
During court proceedings in Nichols’ death, Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to federal charges as part of deals with prosecutors. The three other police officers were found guilty in early October of witness tampering linked to the cover-up of the violence. Bean and Smith were acquitted of civil rights charges of excessive force and indifference to Nichols’ serious injuries.
Haley was acquitted of the violation of Nichols’ civil rights resulting in death, but he was convicted of two lesser charges of violating his civil rights resulting in bodily injury. The five men face being sentenced by a federal judge in the coming months.
Martin and Mills are also expected to change their pleas to not guilty in state court, according to attorneys involved in the case. Bean, Haley and Smith also pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges. The trial in this case has been set for April 28.
Justice Department investigators have targeted other cities with similar probes in recent years, including Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, and Louisville, Kentucky, following an investigation sparked by the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by the police.
In its letter, the city of Memphis said the DOJ investigation “took only 17 months, compared to an average of 2 to 3 years in almost all other cases, implying a rush to judgment.”
