FILE – Members of the Memphis Police Department work a crime scene in Memphis, Tenn., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Updated 9:27 PM EST, December 4, 2024The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people, according to the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation launched after the beating death of Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.
A report released Wednesday marked the conclusion of the investigation that began six months after Nichols was kicked, punched and hit with a police baton as five officers tried to arrest him after he fled a traffic stop.
The report says that “Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve.”
“The people of Memphis deserve a police department and city that protects their civil and constitutional rights, garners trust and keeps them safe,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in an emailed statement.
The city said in a letter released earlier Wednesday that it would not agree to negotiate federal oversight of its police department until it could review and challenge results of the investigation.
City officials had no immediate comment on the report but said they plan to hold a news conference Thursday after Justice Department officials hold their own news conference in Memphis on Thursday morning to address the findings.
Police video showed officers pepper spraying Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he ran away from a traffic stop. Five officers chased down Nichols and kicked, punched and hit him with a police baton just steps from his home as he called out for his mother. The video showed the officers milling about, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.
Nichols died on Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating. The five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — were fired, charged in state court with murder, and indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges.
Nichols was Black, as are the former officers. His death led to national protests, raised the volume on calls for police reforms in the U.S., and directed intense scrutiny towards the police department in Memphis, a majority Black city. The Memphis Police Department is more than 50 percent Black, and police chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis is also Black.
The report specifically mentions the Nichols case, and it addresses the police department’s practice of using traffic stops to address violent crime. The police department has encouraged officers in specialized units, task forces, and on patrol to prioritize street enforcement, and officers and community members have described this approach as “saturation,” or flooding neighborhoods with traffic stops, the report said.
“This strategy involves frequent contact with the public and gives wide discretion to officers, which requires close supervision and clear rules to direct officers’ activity,” the report said. “But MPD does not ensure that officers conduct themselves in a lawful manner.”
The report said prosecutors and judges told federal investigators that officers do not understand the constitutional limits on their authority. Officers stop and detain people without adequate justification, and they conduct invasive searches of people and cars, the report said.
“Black people in Memphis disproportionately experience these violations,” the report said. “MPD has never assessed its practices for evidence of discrimination. We found that officers treat Black people more harshly than white people who engage in similar conduct.”
The investigation found that Memphis officers resort to force likely to cause pain or injury “almost immediately in response to low-level, nonviolent offenses, even when people are not aggressive.”
The report says officers pepper sprayed, kicked and fired a Taser at an unarmed man with a mental illness who tried to take a $2 soda from 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 it to “negotiate a consent decree aimed at institutional police and emergency services.”
A consent decree is an agreement requiring reforms that are overseen by an independent monitor and are approved by a federal judge. The federal oversight can continue 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 department leadership. The Justice Department under the first Trump administration curtailed the use of consent decrees, and the Republican president-elect is expected to again radically reshape the department’s priorities around civil rights.
“Until the City has had the opportunity to review, analyze, and challenge the specific allegations that support your forthcoming findings report, the City cannot — and will not — agree to work toward or enter into a consent decree that will likely be in place for years to come and will cost the residents of Memphis hundreds of millions of dollars,” the letter said.
The officers in the Nichols case were part of a crime suppression team called the Scorpion Unit, which was disbanded after Nichols’ death. The team targeted drugs, illegal guns and violent offenders, with the goal of amassing arrest numbers, while sometimes using force against unarmed people.
Memphis police never adopted policies and procedures to direct the unit, despite alarms that it was minimally supervised, according to the Justice Department report. Some prosecutors told department investigators that there were some “outrageous” inconsistences between body camera footage and arrest reports, and if the cases went to trial, they would be “laughed out of court.” The report found that the unit’s misconduct led to dozens of criminal cases being dismissed.
In court proceedings dealing with Nichols’ death, Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to the federal charges under deals with prosecutors. The other three officers were convicted in early October of witness tampering related to the cover-up of the beating. Bean and Smith were acquitted of civil rights charges of using excessive force and being indifferent to Nichols’ serious injuries.
Haley was acquitted of violating Nichols’ civil rights causing death, but he was convicted of two lesser charges of violating his civil rights causing bodily injury. The five men face sentencing by a federal judge in the coming months.
Martin and Mills also are expected to change their not guilty pleas in state court, according to lawyers involved in the case. Bean, Haley and Smith have also pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder. A trial in the state 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 prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.
In its letter, the city of Memphis said the DOJ’s investigation “only took 17 months to complete, compared to an average of 2-3 years in almost every other instance, implying a rush to judgment.”
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Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee, and Durkin Richer reported from Washington.
Tag: Beatings
Since Thursday I have been in a downward emotional spiral. I am holding on. Here is why.
Hi everyone. Maybe people are getting tired of hearing my daily struggles that break through my normal defenses sometimes and bring me to not a cliff, but a steep hill almost impossible to not fall down, with things to hit and bounce off of hurting more but very few things to grab on to that I can use to stop the falling. Two of those things together stopped my fall Friday night, hopefully giving me something I can hold on to that will stop the falling long enough to get off the mountain slope. I reached close enough to the bottom once in 2014. I don’t want to fall that far again nor see what is below that at the very bottom of that long fall.
I also need to explain that for a week I was running on 4 hours sleep and last night I only got 2 hours and 23 minutes (Friday night Saturday morning). This morning (Saturday) on our walk Ron who also struggled to sleep noticed I was sluggish, slow for me, not talking much. When we got back home my body couldn’t do more. Barely able to take off my jacket and getting Ron’s help taking off a heavy long sleeved sweatshirt that was too small for me, after I put on a tee shirt I fell into bed. I slept all day. Ron also had not slept so came to bed for 3 or so hours. During that time I had a nightmare of my childhood abuse and woke him by crying out for my abuser to please stop, to not hurt me more. Ron woke me as gently as he could. I again felt shame and sorrow over waking him from his slumber over my own trauma. It had slowed down greatly but this last week the nightmares and crying outburst while sleeping, and while awake in my Pink Place, which Ron has tried hard to make a safe space for me. I go through a lot of facial tissues in here.
On Thursday after not sleeping well and having other issues I watched two videos which later was followed by a third A few days later while still trying to recover. I just realized over half of my current tabs open on YouTube are of PSAs on child abuse or testimonies of victims trying to find resolution. I get them in my feed because when I am in a triggered emotional set back I tend to watch these and of course Google / YouTube fills my recommendations with a constant feed of more of them. And I fall down that mountain slope reaching out and read more and more and more of others abuse making the slope steeper with the things to hit that hurt harder, bigger, and the helpful handholds so less. The very same reason I had to stop participating on the Male Survivor site. Once I fall down that mountain slope the more I read / hear of others abuse so much of what happened to me the faster I fall with few things to grab on to that will slow my falling, which seems to get faster the longer I fall.
The first video was the one that set it off. I cut it off after the movie went to “Jesus saved my life from my abusive father who was killing me part” when I watched it. If that saved him I am glad, but Jesus nor religion never stopped my abuse nor were any of my abuser anymore into religion than for a brief period when they got a lot of attention from being involved in the Sunday School teachings they so loved the attention as new members and maybe thought that would wash away all their sins. They soon got disinterested and left, and I was still being abused. Abused before it, during it, and after it. Sometimes I would be abused before we got ready for church and if not before then I knew I would be when we got back home. In my case the power of the lord had no help for me.
So the first video was the worst. It talked about how the father hated the kid because he was another man’s son. In the video the wife had an affair and that left the husband forever taking his violence on the kid. In my case I never thought my adoptive mother was my mother, and from the few records I could find after her death it seems my mother’s father paid for me to be adopted and paid the biological father a large sum of money. But sadly my birth certificate list both of them as my parents. But that was the feeling of my adoptive father, he was not raising another man’s kid. He took that anger out on me and made clear his own kids could also to retain his favor. In the video the other kids snuck him food and comforted him, not mine. Mine denied the food unless I either humiliated myself or sexual pleased them. For a few years the daily abuse was less when the adopting mother was around, which was rare, because I was still her adorable little toddler toy to parade around, yet she explained the bruising and lack of normal interaction I had as I was shy and clumsy falling often into things. The dead eyes and lack of interest in things she explained as being tired because I fought to not go to bed. As I have said before by the time I was 6 years old in first grade she had stopped protecting me and slowly became a participant in my abuse as I aged rather than just turning away ignoring it. It took my school getting involved to change a lot in my life.
But as in the short video, shorter if you don’t watch the Jesus intervention part at the last third, I became aware of the sound of every abuser. Their footsteps with shoes or bare feet, their breathing when hurting me or using me sexually, both oral and anal, and feared being around them or the sound of them getting closer. I also wondered if this was the time they did not stop. I am not sure if I understood if they did not it would be death, I just feared this time they wouldn’t stop and it would keep going on forever. As a child we had no religious beliefs so I had no idea that the abuse might stop in heaven or continue in hell, I knew nothing of death. I just knew I wanted them not to hurt me, I wanted to have food and eat like they did, I wanted someone to hold me and tell me I did a good thing like they got. I wanted affection. I wanted to be able to go to the bathroom without conditions or being told to pee in a glass that as it filled I would have to drink all of it before being able to continue peeing in the glass until finishing, humiliated, crying, sad, hurt, while the hell spawn and their friends gloated over being able to make me do it. The friends may not have understood the punishments if I peed my clothing or on the floor being reported to my adopting parents by the hell spawn, as my view wouldn’t be heard. If they said I just peed myself rather than tell them I needed to go or they made me pee on the floor and said I did it before they could stop me … they would be believed and nothing I said would be heard. Many times I remember them holding me forcing me to pee on something knowing I would take a nude beating with them looking on gloating. It was a way to make me willing to accept what they demanded and willingly give them what they wanted from me.
Sadly the only kind affection I got between late 3 to nearly 7 years old was from a little boy lover pedophile across the street. His abuse I have never seen as traumatic. Yes he used my body for his own needs, but he was kind, gentle, his touch and hugs were warm with good feelings. Even when inside me he was kind, gentle, and constantly praising me as a wonderful boy. It made me want even more to try to make him happy. He told me over and over what a good boy I was, he really seemed to care for me which I never saw from the young hell spawn who hurt me for their enjoyment, nor from either adoptive parents.
One punishment the hell spawn would do when they were home with no adult was to tie a wide belt or rope around my neck and then attach it to the stair banister in a way that my head was jerked into looking up at a painful angle, my hands would be tied to or through the stair rails so I couldn’t use them to defend myself. I would always be nude. I would sometimes be blindfolded, that was when I knew that more than them hitting me, hurting me, other kids would also be there to hurt and rape me. I couldn’t tell where the blows might be coming from, who was grasping me grabbing my hips, who was …, everyone must get the idea. So yes I learned to hear them, to fear them, and the child diddler across the street never seem bad or a threat to me. He was the only bright kind light in my life. Then he killed himself and that kindness when away forever. But it did set me up for looking for kind abusers in my life. Such as the principle at my 1st to 6th grade school. He quickly realized the kid I was and made a friendship with my adoptive mother. Even as he was facilitated a place and way for me to leave class to laydown behind the library shelves along with letting me go with a police officer questions deflected, he was also using me sexually. Only once he was he hurtful, that was when I insulted a female teacher so before he raped me he made me with a bare bottom bend over his knees and spanked me hard as a lesson. Then when I stood up, kissed me, hugged me, told me sternly to always obey my teachers. And then turned me around, lubing my butt hole, and inserted himself inside me to finish … planting his seed there. I was then given an abnormal instruction to pull my pants up, go back to my classroom. That time I was not offered the option to go laydown, nor go to the bathroom to expel his cum. I understood I was being punished. I worried about it leaking and the pain of sitting. Thankfully my teacher never called me out for fidgeting and constant movements in my hard no cushion chair, maybe knowing what was going on with me at home and in school.
Now it is Sunday morning. I couldn’t finish this post last night. I was getting too upset and was too tired. I got another 3 and half hours of sleep before I got up again. So here is the rest of the story hopefully with less emotional upset from me.
Wow just rereading correcting my errors now has me worn out emotionally already. I can not imagine how it must be for everyone reading who don’t know what the life I lived is like. It must be stories from a strange foreign world or harmful different government on earth somewhere far away. Sorry it happened to me here, in New England. But let me continue to get this out before it consumes me again. I have so much unresolved pain from the past. Some want me to ignore it, some want to reveled in it seeing my survival as overcoming it but they lose the point, it still haunts / hurts me. Left undealt with I will be the one left falling down that steep mountain slope with no way of stopping hitting the bottom … which might be death.
So you have read all of the above, no reason not to provide you with the videos. The first was the beatings of a defenseless child, making him the other in the family simply because he was the product of another man’s seed he resented having responsibility to feed or care for. You have read all of the above so here is the video, and again I ask you to make sure you are in a good place to understand that was my daily life so do not take that pain on yourself because I have already done that for all of us. Here it is.
The second video that continued my downward spiral and the steeping of the mountain slope I was trying to find footing and keep from falling further down that slope to the hell I knew to be at the end. This is the one being raped at school. I was by adults but not students, but the older boys were sexually aware enough to act out on me. Not physically hurtful but emotionally building that idea that was my place in life, to serve the more aggressive, more developed male. Lucky for me what they wanted was so silly and quick it meant nothing. And the teachers caught on quicly that if I asked to use the bathroom and other male kids asked right after … they were told to wait until I was back. Which was very frustrating to them and made several to try to be my out of school friend. One night If I could plead for it using my body as currency they never wanted to come back again. No one came to our home and I was not allowed to go to theirs. I have no idea what scared the older kids in grade school from wanting wanting to stay over night again. I was willing to please, but the adopting parents were not willing for me to develop friendships. One of the prices of the “school friend” leaving the next day was instant abuse to make me avoid asking anyone else to stay over again.
The last video that I watched a day or two after trying to absorb / deal with the abuse was again one that religious overtones. But even with that the ending was so shocking / revealing I want to include it. See if I had understood any religion, if I have thought that there was a way to stop the abuse … I would do what so many other kids did. I would have taken my life. That is why this post is so hard to make. It shows how stupid I was at that age, it shows how clueless I was. If I thought there was a way to move beyond my life at that stage I would have gladly let them go all the way and kill me. Sorry for all this. This has been a many day post as I struggled to first write it, reread it and edit it again, then fall some more down the mountain slope to briefly grab something to try to write again. Side note. On the other computer I have 10 videos cued up ready to play about child abuse. Some are PSAs and some are personal survival videos from abuse victims. Mostly male but a few female. YouTuber dumps them into my feed and I open them / watch them or save them … all now send me to the mountain making the slope steeper. There was a time when the slope was not so steep and much easier to walk away from. The force drawing me to the bottom so small. Yet now it is returning to like 2014 and I am no longer having the flat stable land before the slope that I lived on so long. Now I am right at the edge of that slope and far too often I am struggling as I fall down it unable to resist the pull with few handholds and the hurtful things getting ever more / harder as I fall.
This is what I have been fighting for months, I forget how long. I am dealing with my own needing to leave the Male Survivor site, Kamk’s abuse and his now being in the hospital afraid and triggered. I struggle to balance his needs that right now are far more immediate than mine. He feels he is looking at death or worse, life with no way to ever be who he was or wants to be. I want so badly to reach out and hug him, to hold him, to help him … but I again am that child who was forced to ask to be allowed to drink a 14 year old boys urine so I wouldn’t be beaten in the morning. Here is the last video I watched. I wont be sharing the others in my cue … maybe just as links but no commentary, but maybe I will grant myself mercy and not include them at all. I am going to post this and go get a shower I have put off for three days. Much love and warm comforting hugs for those that want them but also simple heartfelt thanks to those that follow and don’t want that physical touch. Trust me I understand how disrupting and jarring unwanted touch can be. I love you even if you don’t want hugs. Here is the last video which was while Rand and Ron were with me providing the handles to grab on to and the way to make the mountain slope less steep. Hugs / best wishes.
This is what happened to me.
The below is my response to a thread on the Male Survivor site where people were talking about intervening if they saw something suspicious but not outright abuse with a child. One guy commented that what if the adult later took it out on the child. Sorry but these are the memories and never seeming to stop thoughts I am dealing with right now. Hugs. Scottie
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Hi. That is what happened to me. I was driving my snowmobile to a basket making shop to cut up cardboard for the owner. It was a job a kid could do and earn a little money. The owner was friends with my parents. I hit ice, couldn’t completely stop in time, bumped the bumper of a large car. No damage to the car but the cowling / hood of the snowmobile was broken badly. That meant I had to call my AF (the male of the couple who adopted me, the woman is AM, their children are the hell spawn) who showed up at the place while I was inside cutting the cardboard in a separate area of the shop. He came in and started to beat me. My AF is a large man with huge arms and shoulders who was a barroom brawler when younger. The man who owned the shop was a former Marine and taller than the AF but maybe as strong. He heard my cries and AF swearing at me, rushed in to the area I was being beaten, grabbed the AF and pushed him to the wall away from me. It might have got worse but the other workers were now watching. I never saw what happened as very quickly someone grabbed me and took me to the other part of the shop and got me calmed down. I was so relieved. The owner came to tell me that the AF had left and they were going to fix my machine at the shop, so someone would drop me off at home. Then came the time I had to go home.
There was no one there to protect me. I walked through the door and closed it, and the fist smashed into my face throwing me back into the door. He picked me up and slammed me into the door, then turned around still holding me and threw me down on the floor. He was furious raging about me embarrassing him, and he would teach me not to go crying to others. Had I not learned it before never to tell, take like the … I was. The beating was bad with slaps, punches, and kicks, the sexual torture horrible starting with oral and going to hurt rape anal, and the humiliating thing he made me do after he finished in me was just more salt in my wounds. At least after he finished I knew it would be over, he had spent his rage but his anger would simmer until the next time. I was in bed in my little tiny room hardly big enough for a small bunk bed having been warned to keep my sniveling quiet so the AM wouldn’t be upset when she got home. I was told not to come out or let him see me again that day / night. I heard him yelling telling the AM that I was grounded and wouldn’t get supper for smashing the snowmobile and disobeying him. He told her only that he punished me. She never checked on me. The next day trying to move and get up was horrible. The AM seen me and told me to stay home from school. I was terrified because the AF would be home from work soon as he worked nights. As soon as she left I took a small pack with water / soda and stole snacks from the pantry and went into the woods to hide for the day. After the weekend I went back to school. Same story, I got hurt fighting with other kids, or fell off my bike going very fast, or one of the other ones I was practiced at telling such as fell down the stairs in a home that had no stairs. I was terrified to touch the snowmobile after that.
Unless you can get the child or abused person away from the abuser intervening might make it much worse for them when no one is there to stand up for them. Best wishes. Scottie
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Scottiesplaytime.com
Scottie's Playtime 