The Memphis police chief on Saturday disbanded the city’s Scorpion unit after some of her officers beat Tire Nichols to death, reversing an earlier statement that she would keep the unit intact.
Police Director Cerelyn J. Davis said she listened to those close to Mr. Nichols, community leaders and officers not involved in the decision-making.
“It is in everyone’s interest to permanently disband the Scorpion unit,” she said in a statement. She said the officers currently assigned to the unit “are wholeheartedly in agreement” with the move.
The unit is made up of three teams of approximately 30 officers who target violent offenders in areas struggling with high crime. She had been inactive since Mr Nichols’ arrest on January 7.
In a Friday interview with theAssociated PressMs. Davis said she would not shut down a unit if a few officers did something heinous and because she needed that unit to keep working.
“The idea that the Scorpion unit is a bad unit, I just have a problem with that,” Ms. Davis argued.
The disbandment was announced as the nation and city struggle to come to terms with video showing police hitting a black motorist.
Footage released on Friday left many questions unanswered about the traffic stop involving Mr Nichols and other law enforcement officers standing by as he lay motionless on the sidewalk.
The five former Memphis police officers, also black, were fired and charged with murder and other crimes in Mr Nichols’ death, three days after the arrest.
Tape shows police savagely beating Mr. Nichols, a 29-year-old Fedex employee, for three minutes while shouting swear words at him in an assault that the Mr. Nichols family’s legal team has likened to the infamous police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King in 1991.
Mr Nichols called his mother before his limp body was pressed against a police car and officers punched into fists.
The five police officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith – face up to 60 years in prison if convicted of second degree murder.
Ms Davis said other officers were being investigated, and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said two deputies were relieved of their duties without pay while their driving made the subject of an investigation.
Cities across the country had prepared for protests, but they were scattered and nonviolent. Several dozen protesters in Memphis blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that carries traffic over the Mississippi River toward Arkansas. Protesters also blocked traffic in New York, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.
Blake Ballin, Mr Mills’ lawyer, told theAssociated Press in a statement that the videos “produced as many questions as they had answers”.
Some of the questions will focus on what Mr. Mills “knew and could see” and whether his actions “crossed the lines that were crossed by other officers in this incident,” Ballin said.