Trial for 3 former Memphis officers charged in Tyre Nichols' death set to begin

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00:00Tell us then more about the case and of course the upcoming trial as well.

00:04Well, as you said, this is something that happened back in January of 2023

00:09and back then a 29-year-old Tyree Nichols, a black man, was pulled over

00:15for what the police officers said was reckless driving,

00:19even though that has never been actually confirmed.

00:22Five police officers, all of them also black men,

00:26who were a part of the city's crime suppression unit that was known as Scorpion.

00:31They were a unit that was actively going to so-called hotspots in the city of Memphis.

00:38After that arrest for that alleged reckless driving,

00:42he was dragged out of his car, thrown to the ground, as you said, pepper-sprayed, tased.

00:47He ran away at one point, was chased down, caught,

00:51and then the five officers took turn kicking him in the head, using that baton,

00:57punching him in the head.

00:59That lasted for several minutes, three minutes according to the report.

01:05He was then handcuffed, but he was still alive at that point.

01:08He was even interrogated for a little bit before he became unresponsive,

01:13then sent to the hospital and he actually died from his injuries

01:19three days after that arrest.

01:21At the time, the five police officers were actually fired a couple of weeks after the event,

01:28but several days before the first videos of that arrest actually were made public.

01:35There were five officers involved in the fatal beating.

01:39Only three, as you said, are on trial starting this Monday.

01:43That's because two of them decided to plead guilty for these federal charges.

01:48The two who pled guilty are facing 15 and 40 years in prison.

01:53The three others who are going on trial could face up to a life sentence if they are found guilty.

02:02Of course, this happening at a time in the United States

02:06when we've seen over the past few years events of police brutality,

02:11but this one specific and particular in the sense that the victim was a black man,

02:17but the five police officers were also black men.

02:20Of course, another accusation of police brutality,

02:24but what's being done in the U.S. more generally to try to reduce

02:27what many see as a culture of racism and violence within the police?

02:32Well, the first thing to look at is what happened in Memphis, of course,

02:36right after that death.

02:39The Scorpion unit that I was talking about, that was dismantled.

02:44It had often operated in unmarked vehicles with the officers covering their faces.

02:50So there was this idea of impunity for those who had some misconduct.

02:56So that was done.

02:57And then the Memphis City Council approved a series of police reform measures,

03:02including some on how and when traffic stops could be conducted by police officers

03:09and what they were allowed to do.

03:11But the state legislature, dominated by the Republicans,

03:14actually overturned many of those measures.

03:17So not much really has changed in the Memphis Police Department.

03:22Separately, the Justice Department launched an investigation

03:26into the whole Memphis Police Department and how they operate.

03:30This is something that we've seen happen, for example, in Minneapolis.

03:34Remember, that's where George Floyd was killed,

03:37a black man killed, this time by a white police officer

03:41who was also put on trial and convicted.

03:43There again, the Justice Department had an investigation.

03:47There was also more broadly in the United States

03:50an attempt to sort of curb that police brutality.

03:53After the death of George Floyd, there was the George Floyd bill

03:57that was passed in the House at the time, controlled by the Democrats,

04:02but it failed in the Senate.

04:04They were unable to pass it in the Senate.

04:07And that had several measures about police conduct,

04:10about reforming the police force.

04:13But as I was mentioning earlier,

04:16one of the big elements of police reform in the United States

04:20often is to target the racial bias,

04:23because very often these are white police officers

04:27killing or beating black men or Latino minorities.

04:32In this case, you saw that it was black officers on a black man.

04:37And so there are a lot of civil rights activists

04:40who say that only looking at racial bias

04:43when you talk about police reform is missing the point.

04:46Yes, it's part of it, but they are pointing to what you said,

04:49this culture within the police force of violence, of police brutality,

04:55and they point to the fact that some of the most diverse police forces

05:00in the United States, like Los Angeles, like New York, like Chicago,

05:04actually have some of the biggest numbers of police brutality.

05:09And to give you a number, this year we're still on track

05:13to beat possibly the record of police killings from last year.

05:17Right now, we are at 918.

05:20That is according to the mapping police violence database.

05:24Thanks very much, Ketavan Gordistani.

05:26Of course, we'll continue to follow that story for you on France 24.

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