Memphis monstrosity: From race to cameras: Tyre Nichols should still be alive

I keep trying to convince myself there’s a silver lining.

The system worked. The Memphis Police Department moved quickly. The five officers who fatally beat Tyre Nichols are being held accountable.

But I can’t get away from the heartbreaking reality: A 29-year-old father with no criminal record, who lived with his mom and was working two shifts at his job, is dead.

And he died in the most monstrous way possible, after a brutal assault by five members of the police who are sworn to uphold the law. Now that we’ve all seen the shocking videos – with the cops kicking, punching and beating with a baton a defenseless man on the ground, crying out for his mother – it is one of the most gruesomely documented instances in an inglorious history of police brutality. 

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It is exceedingly difficult to watch. It shows, as Police Chief C.J. Davis said, an utter lack of humanity. That’s why the five officers have been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and other offenses.

But what separates this case from so many others is race, the inescapable fact that the officers and the victim are black, in a department headed by a black woman.

I’ve listened carefully to African-Americans on this subject. Some say that black officers are viewed suspiciously by the black community, that they are seen as upholding a white power structure that includes harsh police tactics.

If you turn the lens the other way, black officers may hold unfavorable views of potential black suspects because they are intimately acquainted with violence in the community. Davis moved quickly to abolish the elite Scorpion unit of which the five charged officers were a part, which was given extra leeway to deal with the most violent neighborhoods. Two more officers were suspended yesterday, one of them, according to the Washington Post, with a voice that appeared to be his heard on the tape saying, "I hope they stomp his ass."

On Sunday’s "Media Buzz," Fox News analyst Gianno Caldwell, while stressing that most officers are honorable, told me that black folks "may feel that they’re treated worse by black officers than white officers in some cases."

It grabbed me by the throat when Caldwell said this: "As a black man myself, when I go to get my driver’s license picture taken, I go and wear a full suit. I have a tie on. I smile big because I recognize that if the police pull me over and they see how I’ve identified [in the picture], "then maybe they would think twice about who I might be."

That, needless to say, is something white people don’t have to worry about.

New York Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, said race in this case remains "the pink elephant in the room." He told CNN that he felt "betrayal" when watching the video.

There were concerns, obviously, that the release of the horrifying footage might spark violence in Memphis and other cities. The reason it didn’t, beyond some scattered incidents, was twofold.

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One is that the family, especially Tyre’s mother, Rowvaughn Wells, who conducted herself with great dignity, asked that protests be peaceful. And, she told CNN’s Don Lemon, "I don't care what color a police officer is, but by them being Black, it hurt the Black community." 

Just as important, the lawyers who show up after every such tragedy, led by Ben Crump, praised the department’s response as a model for the nation. It’s harder to smash windows and shout "no justice no peace" when the family’s attorney said justice was in fact quickly being done.

There was a time when police departments were mostly white and there was rarely any footage showing police brutality, the 1991 Rodney King beating being an early aberration. It wasn’t until the age of cellphone cameras dawned that defendants and victims began to be believed when they challenged the police, or were deceased – the George Floyd murder being just one of countless examples.

And that, in turn, led to police having to wear body cams in most departments, which has to be a restraining force. And, as we saw in the Nichols beating, such footage can provide irrefutable evidence for criminal cops. (Most officers, regardless of race, are honest people trying to do a tough job, but rooting out the bad apples has been extremely difficult.)

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That brings me to the one infuriating mystery at the heart of this case. The five Memphis cops charged with murder know all about Floyd and Eric Garner on Staten Island and others who have died in police custody. They know they are wearing body cams that are recording their every action. Why would they risk their careers to beat the living crap out of a young man who was no threat to anyone?

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Here’s what Gianno Caldwell told me: "They believed they could get away with it." 

I think that’s right. Twenty years ago, they would have gotten away with it. Ten years ago, they might have gotten away with it. But thanks to the ubiquity of cameras, those days are hopefully over.