The whole country was horrified last year when five Memphis police officers were seen viciously beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year old Black motorist who’d run from them on foot. Nichols died three days later, on Jan. 10, 2023, and the officers on tape were fired and charged with murder. Those steps in the right direction followed fierce activism and organizing in Memphis and across the country. The Department of Justice announced a pattern-or-practice investigation against the Memphis Police Department. But, beyond those initial steps, not enough has changed in the year since Nichols was beaten.
Not enough has changed in the year since Nichols was beaten.
At least for now, police chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis, who created the SCORPION Unit whose officers beat Nichols, remains on the job. (In Atlanta, she’d overseen the infamous Red Dog unit, which was eventually disbanded after the city agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that its officers used excessive force in a 2009 raid at a gay bar.)
A Memphis City Council committee voted 6-7 on Tuesday against the chief’s reappointment. A more consequential vote from the full City Council now looms.
Whether Davis is removed from office remains to be seen, but she shouldn’t have lasted this long. She should have been relieved from her duties immediately after Nichols’ death.
But not only did Mayor Jim Strickland (whose term ended Jan. 1) not fire Davis, but newly inaugurated Memphis Mayor Paul Young asked the City Council to keep Davis on. That’s peculiar enough, but adding insult to political injury, we in Memphis just learned that Strickland refused to enforce police reform ordinances that the city council passed after Nichols was beaten.
“In many instances, the Ordinances purport to direct officers how to do their jobs, and what they can and cannot do,” Strickland wrote in a letter to the council on Dec. 29. “There is absolutely no authority vested in the Council to direct the activities of the Division of Police Services in the manner set forth in those ordinances.”
As reported by MLK50, “One ordinance requires greater data collection on traffic stops, including the reason for the stop, whether force was used and the race, ethnicity, gender, age and location of anyone stopped, and publication of that data. Other ordinances require that police only use marked law enforcement vehicles when conducting traffic stops and not make stops solely for low-level offenses like a broken brake light.”
Davis says she’s been attempting reforms but hasn’t received internal support. “Change is uncomfortable for them,” she said in response to a council member who said most officers on the force don’t like her.
Like so many cities have before us, what we are witnessing in Memphis is the difficulty of enacting meaningful criminal justice reforms at the local level even after a high-profile tragedy that made news across the globe and garnered worldwide outcry. In our case, there’s not even unity within the activist community, as a local branch of the NAACP expressed its support for Davis this week. At the same time, many community members are calling for the city council to reject her reappointment. We’re demanding real reform.
We should commit to redirecting some of the resources allocated to the recruitment of more officers to grassroots organizations doing intervention work, especially related to social services and mental health support.
We need to actually implement and enforce reforms the city council confirmed, for starters. Furthermore, we need to re-evaluate the data related to what number represents a full complement of police officers. Those numbers have been grounded in faulty logic that presumes more officers means less crime and refuses to factor in studies that contend most of police officers’ time is spent doing something other than fighting violent crimes. Lastly, we should commit to redirecting some of the resources allocated to the recruitment of more officers to grassroots organizations doing intervention work, especially related to social services and mental health support.
The Memphis City Council signaled its position Tuesday when the committee, which is comprised of all the council’s members, voted against Davis, but the wait before the official vote may cause confusion and make some wonder if there will ever be real change. For many Memphians, Nichols’ death was the time to end business as usual. They want real reform, now.
Wherever previous instances of awful police violence have occurred — Louisville, Kentucky; Cleveland, Ohio; Ferguson, Missouri; Baton Rouge, Louisiana — we’ve seen the same slowness or refusal to act from state and federal lawmakers, governors and even presidents. To put it another way: Memphis is America. And in the words of Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, “Memphis, we need to get it together here because we going in the wrong direction.”
It’s no secret that real change is hard and complex. We shouldn’t envy anyone tasked with navigating the intricate nuances and complexities of the current landscape and strategizing for tangible, long-term impact. At the same time, it’s simple: What happened to Nichols was sickening, and people here are right to ask: If his brutal beating doesn’t lead to police reform, then what will?
But we’re learning in Memphis what Americans all over have learned: that the awfulness of police aggression, not even the awfulness of police aggression caught on tape, doesn’t lead to change by itself. Even then, it’s important that people who care about justice demand it and not let up.
