(Memphis and Washington) A long beating at night, with punches, kicks, truncheons: the Americans discovered Friday evening with horror the extremely shocking videos of the fatal arrest of Tire Nichols, an African-American who died in the age of 29.
The images show the violence inflicted for long moments by the five black police officers, in the wake of a banal traffic check in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 7.
Tire Nichols, sprayed with tear gas and targeted by a Taser with electric shocks, tries to flee, but is caught by the agents, who are unleashed, apparently insensitive to the pleas of the motorist.
Reacting some 30 minutes after the explosive video was made public, President Joe Biden said he was “outraged” and “deeply hurt”.
PHOTO FROM DEANDRE NICHOLS’ FACEBOOK PAGE, PROVIDED BY REUTERS
Tire Nichols
” Mom ! Mom ! Mom ! shouts Tire Nichols in one of the excerpts. In another, we see him on the ground, beaten for long seconds.
On Friday, early protests took place in various cities across the country, including Washington and Memphis. In New York, more than 200 people marched chanting “No justice, no peace”.
In a sign that the case is potentially explosive, Mr Biden has previously urged protesters to be “peaceful” and he spoke on the phone in the afternoon with the mother and father-in-law of Tyre Nichols.
Because his death recalls that of the African-American George Floyd, killed by a police officer in May 2020. Demonstrations against racism and police violence then set the country ablaze, federated around the slogan Black Lives Matter (“Black Lives Matter”).
“When my husband and I arrived at the hospital and I saw my son, he was already dead. They had reduced him to mush. He had bruises everywhere, his head was swollen like a watermelon,” RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols’ mother, said in tears in an interview broadcast by CNN.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis warned that video showing man being pulled over for simple traffic violation was ‘comparable, if not worse’, to video showing Rodney’s violent police arrest King in 1991. The acquittal a year later of the four police officers involved sparked unprecedented riots in Los Angeles.
Events
The authorities have been calling for calm for several days, anticipating demonstrations after the publication of a video deemed “appalling” by those who saw it.
Tire Nichols’ family have themselves called for the gatherings to be peaceful. “Please demonstrate, but demonstrate safely,” said her father-in-law, Rodney Wells.
In Memphis, protesters marched as the video was released, chanting, “Say his name! Tire Nichols! »
“You didn’t want to listen to us”, proclaimed the procession in this city where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.
Elsewhere in the country, the police were preparing for possible overflows. Two Joe Biden advisers have spoken to the mayors of 16 US cities about the protests.
“All Violence”
Tire Nichols, hospitalized, died three days after his arrest. The five African-American police officers, since dismissed, were charged with murder and imprisoned. Four of them were later released on bail.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “horrified,” and Attorney General Merrick Garland said a federal investigation had been opened.
The leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, denounced him as an “unacceptable” murder, while the left-wing senator Bernie Sanders called for “do everything to end police violence against people of color”.
While expressing their horror, the family’s lawyers as well as the parents of the young man wanted to salute the “speed” of the measures taken against the police.
Reverend Al Sharpton, a famous figure in the civil rights struggle who will deliver the funeral oration for Tire Nichols, said that the fact that the police were black made “the event even more shocking”.
“We are against all police brutality, not just police brutality by white people,” he said.
Police violence does not relent
PHOTO ANGELA WEISS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
A mural in New York honoring George Floyd, an African American choked under the knee of a white police officer in 2020.
Shocked by the death of Tire Nichols, the United States has once again reopened the debate on police violence, with the feeling that the major demonstrations of 2020 have not solved the problem.
The 29-year-old African-American died in hospital three days after being fatally beaten by black Memphis police officers, who have since been charged with murder.
“It’s sad we’re still here in America, I can’t believe it,” said Lora King, daughter of Rodney King, whose beating by police in 1991 inflamed CNN. Los Angeles.
“We have to do better, it’s unacceptable. »
The murder of African-American George Floyd, suffocated under the knee of a white police officer, had nevertheless sparked historic mobilization in the spring of 2020, and, under pressure from the street, promises of reform had flourished in all states. -United.
Two years later, the number of people who died during interactions with the police has yet broken a record, with 1,186 dead for the year 2022, the highest in ten years, according to the site “Mapping Police Violence”. Among them were 26% of African-Americans, while they represent only 13% of the population.
By way of comparison, less than 20 people die each year in France during police interventions, a difference linked in particular to the large quantity of firearms in circulation, increasing the feeling of insecurity of American police officers and making them more prompt. to draw their own weapon. In fact, 66 officers were shot on duty last year, according to the fund created in their memory.
But for lawyer Ben Crump, who represented the family of George Floyd and now supports that of Tire Nichols, there is also “an institutionalized culture in the police which tolerates excessive use of force, especially against minorities” .
“We’re going to have to have this (discussion) again and have it again, and again, until it stops,” he told a conference on Friday. Press.
“Useless and aggressive”
Among the 2020 promises was plans to tackle the broad immunity enjoyed by police officers in the United States or create a registry of officers who have used excessive force.
A federal bill initially backed by both parties, however, flopped in Congress amid a sharp rise in homicides that caused Republicans to retreat to their classic ‘law and order’ rhetoric. .
In the absence of federal progress, the debate continued locally, in small steps and in the greatest cacophony.
In fact, there are nearly 18,000 autonomous police entities in the United States (municipal police, county sheriffs, state patrols, etc.) that have their own rules for recruitment, training and authorized practices.
A number of them have reviewed their intervention rules, in particular prohibiting strangulation, generalizing the use of on-board cameras or increasing penalties for violent officers.
Memphis police have banned their officers from entering homes unannounced, insisted on their “duty to intervene” in the face of violent colleagues, and reviewed their training in de-escalation techniques.
Still, “officers directly escalated the tension” when they attempted to arrest Tire Nichols for a simple traffic violation, local police chief Cerelyn Davis said.
For activists, the heart of the problem is that the American police have broad powers of arrest, even for minor offenses.
“We must stop relying on the police to manage problems related to poverty or underinvestment in certain neighborhoods,” said Kathy Sinback, director of the local branch of the powerful civil rights organization ACLU. “This leads to more frequent, unnecessary and aggressive actions. »
According to Human Rights Watch, US police have killed nearly 600 people in roadside checks since 2017.