In the long line of high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of U.S. police, the death of Tire Nichols in Memphis shared many of the same hallmarks: a traffic stop that turns violent, an outraged community, and a critical release of video footage.
But the case was unique in another way. All five police officers now charged with his murder are black.
How the officers’ race will affect protesters on the street — and any future jurors in the courtroom — remains to be seen. But experts, activists and lawyers told USA TODAY that the race of the officers involved is much less important than the race of the victim. They say a “historically biased police culture” puts black people at risk, regardless of an officer’s race.
“Black people and black police officers may carry the same attitudes or beliefs about black people as white police officers do,” said Ralph Richard Banks, law professor and faculty director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice. “There’s nothing immunizing them.”
What the video shows: Memphis police violently beat up Tire Nichols at the traffic stop leading to his death
‘Horrible’ images of arrest’: Tire Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump speaks after seeing the video
Nichols’ death burst into national headlines even before Friday night, when Memphis police released the January 7 graphic video footage. It shows officers trying to arrest Nichols at a red light, and again following a chase into a nearby neighborhood. In all, officers beat Nichols with pepper spray, a taser, a bat, and punches and kicks. Nichols screams for his mother when officers beat him. They then support him as he repeatedly sinks to the floor.
Nichols was hospitalized in critical condition, police said, and died three days later. Preliminary findings from an independent autopsy showed that Nichols suffered “severe bleeding as a result of a severe beating,” Nichols’ family lawyers Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a joint statement.
All five officers were fired last week and have been charged with manslaughter and other crimes related to Nichols’ death.
“The suspect’s race matters most,” Tire Nichols police officers are black
Black police officers have been accused of assaulting and killing black victims in the past. Three of the six Baltimore police officers charged in the 2015 arrest and subsequent death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray were black.
Gray’s death began days of rioting and looting and led to investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice. All six officers in that case were acquitted or eventually had their charges dropped.
“Now if you go into Baltimore’s neighborhoods and ask if the race of corrupt or inappropriate police officers matters, they would definitely say no,” said Malcom Ruff, trial attorney at Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, the Baltimore law firm that represented Gray’s family in civil lawsuits.
“Definitely, the suspect’s race is most important,” he said. “It’s the historically biased police culture that has killed people [Nichols].”
One notable difference, Ruff said, was the speed with which the five officers involved in Nichols’ arrest were fired and charged with serious crimes, while white officers in previous shootings involving police have been charged pending investigation, possibly while retaining wages are suspended.
“It seems that when the officers are black, there’s always a quick response,” he said. “That’s significant.”
The Memphis police chief downplayed the role of race
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis called the officers’ actions “incomprehensible” and “unreasonable” but downplayed the role race played in the incident, as all five officers were black.
“It takes off the table that problems and problems in law enforcement [are] about race,” she told CNN. ‘That’s not it. It is about human dignity and integrity, responsibility and the duty to protect our community. And as this video shows you, no matter who wears the uniform, we all have the same responsibility. So it takes the race off the table. But it does indicate to me that bias can also be a factor in how we engage the community.”
Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, an online race justice organization, called Davis’s comments “very unfortunate.” He said Nichols’ incident points to systemic racial bias inherent in police networks that must be eradicated, regardless of the officer’s color.
“What this illustrates is that we have a deep problem that goes beyond black and white and involves blue,” he said. “It’s about the nature and infrastructure of the police force in this country that sends out a message every day.”
More black cops alone cannot solve systemic racism, activists say
Even as police forces have diversified and added more black officers, they have failed to implement and enforce structural changes needed to eradicate racist policing, Robinson said.
Among the issues that need to be thoroughly investigated is the specialized unit that the Memphis police officers belonged to — the so-called SCORPION team — which may have acted with little oversight and targeted communities of color, said Hans Menos of the California-based Center. for police power. (That unit has been deactivated, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said Friday.)
“We don’t need to know the officers’ race to know that we have five unsupervised officers in a community who have been asked to conduct their business,” he said. “This is what’s slowly coming out here.”
Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA School of Law professor and author of the forthcoming book “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable,” said black cop involvement is taking race out of the equation and disparities in who is a victim of police brutality across the see head.
“Study after study has shown that black people are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely to be assaulted, more likely to be killed. I don’t think you can say this isn’t about race because the cops are black,” she said. “There is nothing in our country that is separate from issues of race. Nor this.”
Follow Jervis and Guynn on Twitter: @MrRJervis, @jguynn.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tire Nichols is Black, so Officers: What His Death Says About Race
