FBI director ‘appalled’ by video of Tyre Nichols’s fatal encounter with police – latest updates

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“We want to know, where are the unions? Where does the fraternal order of police unions stand on this? We want to hear…that you condemn the savagery…heinousness…brutality of this attack?” said Antonio Romanucci, one of the attorneys representing the family of Tyre Nichols.

Romanucci also called upon Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis to disband the specialized police unit known as the ‘Scorpion’ unit which the five police officers were a part of.

“The intent of the Scorpion unit has now been corrupted. It cannot be brought back to center with any sense of morality and dignity, and most importantly, trust in this community. How will the community ever, ever, trust a Scorpion unit?” he said.

“Officers have a duty to intervene in crimes being committed, even if it’s intervening with their own officers,” Crump said, calling for legislation to be passed which would require police officers to intervene when they see their their colleagues exercising excessive force.

Maya Yang

“We have never seen swift justice like this,” said Crump, referring to the five officers who have since been charged with murder.

“We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for any time any officers, whether they be Black or white, will be held accountable. No longer can you tell us we got to wait six months to a year,” he added.

“It is the culture that allows them to think that they can do this to Tyre,” Crump said, saying that it does not matter if the officers were Black, Hispanic or any other ethnicity.

“Call out the culture, call out the culture,” he said, as family members of Nichols chanted back.

“It is the institutionalized police culture that is on trial today,” he added.

Attorney Ben Crump is holding a press conference alongside Tyre Nichols’s family, where he has compared the swift indictment and arrest of five Black police officers for Nichols’s death to the comparatively slow response to other high-profile killings of Black men.

“This is not the first time that we saw police officers committing crime and engaging in excessive brutal force against Black people in America who were unarmed, but yet we have never seen swift justice like this,” Crump said.

You can watch the ongoing speech here:

Attorney general Merrick Garland said he was similarly distressed by Tyre Nichols’s death in Memphis.

“I have not seen the video but I have been briefed on that video. It is deeply disturbing, let me say horrific, from the descriptions I’ve been given,” Garland said. “I want to give my deepest condolences to Tyre Nichols’s family. I can’t imagine the feelings that parents must feel under these circumstances.”

He noted that the local US attorney has met with Nichols’s family to express his condolences, and that the justice department has “been working in support of the state and local law enforcement in this matter, and we will continue to do so.”

The attorney general also called for protests over the killing to remain peaceful.

“I want to repeat what the family has said, that expressions of concern, when people see this video, we urge that they be peaceful and nonviolent,” Garland said. “That’s what the family has urged. And that of course is what the justice department urges as well.”

FBI director 'appalled' by Nichols video, says civil rights investigation opened

FBI director Christopher Wray said he was “appalled” by video of Tyre Nichols’s beating at the hands of Memphis police, and that the bureau has opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal incident.

“What happened in Memphis is obviously tragic. I’ve seen the video myself and I will tell you I was appalled,” Wray said during a press conference. “I’m struggling to find a stronger word but I will just tell you I was appalled.”

He noted the FBI and justice department have opened an investigation into Nichols’s death under a statute governing police abuses, and “we’ll do it professionally without fear or favor by the book, as I think is expected of us”.

Here is Wray’s full comment:

Maya Yang

Cities across the country are preparing for potential protests ahead of the release of the Tyre Nichols footage later today.

Memphis police are expected to release video of 29-year-old Nichols being beaten on 7 January by five police officers who have since been charged with murder following his death three days later.

“You are going to see acts that defy humanity. You’re going to see a disregard for life, duty of care that we are all sworn to,” Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis said about the video.

Police on Capitol Hill have been beefing up security ahead of the release. Politico reports that workers were seen on Thursday evening unloading bicycle-rack type fencing near the Capitol.

“The Metropolitan Police Department has fully activated all sworn personnel in preparation for possible First Amendment activities in the District of Columbia,” Fox News reports Capitol police as saying.

In Austin, police told the outlet they are currently monitoring events in Memphis and that its officers “will be moving into tactical alert status beginning Friday morning.”

A law enforcement source from the Los Angeles Police Department also told the outlet that it currently has units on standby.

Meanwhile, Atlanta police issued a statement saying that they are “closely monitoring the events in Memphis and are prepared to support peaceful protests in our city.”

“We understand and share in the outrage surrounding the death of Tyre Nichols… We ask that demonstrations be safe and peaceful,” they added.

Ben Crump, an attorney for the family of Tyre Nichols, warned in an interview with ABC News this morning of the graphic content of the video of the arrest.

“It is going to remind many people of Rodney King,” Crump said, referring to the motorist whose 1991 beating by Los Angeles police officers sparked unrest in the city. “Tragically, unlike Rodney King, Tyre doesn’t survive. It’s so difficult to watch the video because even while he’s being brutalized, you still see the humanity in Tyre, that he was a good kid. Even while the police are saying all kind of profane things to him, he’s still is answering in a calm voice. He’s like, ‘what did I do, and I just want to go home.’”

A specialists in civil rights and wrongful death lawsuits, Crump has represented the families of other Black Americans who died at the hands of police, including George Floyd and Michael Brown. Here’s Crump’s full interview with ABC:

NBC News reports that some of the officers charged in Tyre Nichols’s death were part of a unit created recently to address rising crime in Memphis, but which has faced questions over its tactics and its members’ level of experience.

Steve Mulroy, district attorney of Tennessee’s Shelby County, confirmed that members of Memphis police’s Scorpion unit were among those involved in Nichols death. The unit, whose name is an acronym meaning Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods, was created in 2021 to lower violent crime.

But according to NBC, police reform activists in the city remember it better for aggressive tactics that they likened to gang violence:

Chelsea Glass, an organizer with Decarcerate Memphis, which advocates for reform of the criminal justice system, said Scorpion was a “rebranding” of a common police tactic: a street crime-fighting team that relied on low-level traffic stops as pretexts to find violent criminals and weapons.

“They harass everyday residents, and they’re calling this high-level policing,” Glass said. “But it’s really just stop-and-frisk on wheels. It doesn’t matter what name you slap on it.”

Keedran Franklin, a Memphis community organizer, said Scorpion was like other specialized police units — including the county-run Multi-Agency Gang Unit — in that the officers seemed to stoke fear and distrust by the way they confronted people.

“The way they move in unmarked cars, looking like regular guys, bumping to rap music, they got on hoodies, they’re really looking the part, like they’re a part of the community, but they’re police,” Franklin said. “Then someone maybe slips up, smokes weed or doesn’t have their seat belt on or a headlight is out, and they jump out and stop them and want to go through their car.”

Only after the officers got out of their cars would people see “SCORPION” on the backs of their vests.

“They’re their own internal little gang,” Franklin added. “When they turn them loose on the streets, how does that affect ordinary citizens?”

Meanwhile, it appears that recently hired officers were placed on the unit, a consequence of an exodus of experienced police from the Memphis force that worried veteran cops:

Mark LeSure, a former Memphis police sergeant who retired in 2021, said he began to see a large number of relatively inexperienced officers’ being put on specialized units as a lot of the police force started leaving in recent years. Such units did not have enough senior staff members training the new officers, he said, adding that that was concerning to him.

“Rookies were getting put on specialized units where they had no business being,” he said.

The Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis and Richard Luscombe report that Memphis’s police chief has warned of the distressing content in the video of the police stop of Tyre Nichols, which is expected to be released this evening:

The chief of the Memphis police warned on Friday morning that the video of officers beating Tyre Nichols is “perhaps worse” than the infamous footage of Rodney King being attacked by police in Los Angeles more than 30 years ago.

The police department intends to release the video to the public on Friday evening.

In her first interview since five officers were charged with murder on Thursday, police chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told CNN that she was “outraged” after seeing the “alarming” video of the traffic stop of Nichols, 27, who died three days after a 7 January apprehension spiraled into a fatal physical attack.

Davis said there appeared to be no legitimate reason for the traffic stop, and that she did not see any of the five officers intervene to stop excessive force by their fellow officers, saying they appeared to be in a state of “groupthink” as they confronted Nichols and became violent.

“I was in law enforcement during the Rodney King incident and it’s very much aligned with that type of behavior … sort of groupthink. I would say it’s about the same if not worse,” Davis said in a live interview on Friday morning.

Biden calls for 'meaningful reforms' after Tyre Nichols death

Joe Biden sent condolences to the family of Tyre Nichols in a statement released yesterday, while issuing a vague call for “meaningful reform” of policing, an issue on which he has had mixed success during the first two years of his presidency.

“Jill and I extend our heartfelt condolences to the family of Tyre Nichols and the entire Memphis community. Tyre’s family deserves a swift, full, and transparent investigation into his death,” Biden said.

“As Americans grieve, the Department of Justice conducts its investigation, and state authorities continue their work, I join Tyre’s family in calling for peaceful protest. Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable. Violence is destructive and against the law. It has no place in peaceful protests seeking justice.”

He also noted “the fact that fatal encounters with law enforcement have disparately impacted Black and Brown people.” Nichols was Black, as were the five officers charged with murder following his death.

“To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between law enforcement, the vast majority of whom wear the badge honorably, and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect,” Biden said. He pointed to his failed effort to see the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed, which led him to last year sign an executive order intended to increase police accountability.

The president didn’t call for any specific action following Nichols death, instead closing his statement with, “Today, we all must re-commit ourselves to the critical work that must be done to advance meaningful reforms.”

Joe Biden pulled off several unlikely legislative victories in Congress over the past two years, but one goal that eluded him was reforming the police.

Elected months after the death of George Floyd in 2020, Biden rejected many activists’ calls to defund the police, but encouraged lawmakers to pass legislation that would ban officers from using chokeholds and better document police officers’ use of force. But despite lengthy negotiations between Democrats and Republicans, the bill went nowhere, forcing Biden to turn to less-impactful executive orders to accomplish his criminal justice priorities.

Late last year, the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland took a look at the state of criminal justice reform nationwide, and found a mixed record:

Instead, throughout the midterm election season, Republicans fell back on the “tough on crime” rhetoric that has supported America’s mass incarceration crisis for decades.

Progressive officials at the local level, including reformist district attorneys such as Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and Andrew Warren in Tampa, Florida, have seen themselves directly targeted as a result of this regression to the hard right.

In Florida, the far-right governor, Ron DeSantis, suspended Warren for his refusal to enforce the state’s hardline anti-abortion laws. In Philadelphia, Krasner faces a Republican-led impeachment process in the state legislature, accused of contributing to the city’s increasing gun violence because of progressive reforms. (Krasner has labeled the process unconstitutional, and academic research has concluded there is no evidence to link reformist prosecutors with rising violent crime.)

Biden’s statement released in the wake of Tyre Nichols’s killing and the arrest of five officers involved noted his executive orders, and Congress’s failure to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, as the broad police reform was known. In a sign of how the political winds have shifted on the issue, it did not call on lawmakers to act again.

Biden calls for calm ahead of release of Tyre Nichols beating video

Good morning, US politics blog readers. This evening, police in Memphis will release video of Tyre Nichols being beaten to death by five officers who were yesterday charged with murder. Amid fears the footage could raise tensions over policing and racial justice nationwide, Joe Biden yesterday called for “peaceful protest” and condemned acts of violence. At the Capitol, police are reportedly increasing security to get ahead of potential unrest. The president spent much of the last two years encouraging lawmakers to pass a bill that would have reformed policing with the aim of stopping such killings, but the effort ultimately failed. We’ll see if such legislation gets renewed momentum amid the outrage over Nichols’ death.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• The GOP is convening in California to elect a new chair of the Republican National Committee, with incumbent Ronna McDaniel facing challenges from Harmeet Dhillon and Mike Lindell. Some in the party, most notable the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, have said it’s time for change at the top of the GOP after it underperformed in two consecutive elections.

• The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, will brief reporters at 2pm.

• The House of Representatives has convened and will consider a bill to restrict the president’s ability to withdraw oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve unless there is an increase in the percentage of federal land from which oil and gas is being produced. Biden and the Democrats oppose the measure.