He was only 29 years old. And like a number of African-Americans already, Tire Nichols died after being brutally arrested by the police in early January. A drama that revives fears of racial tensions in the United States.
The five police officers involved were charged and jailed on Thursday for murder, authorities said. These police officers from Memphis, a large city in Tennessee, all African-Americans, are the subject of several charges, including murder, assault and kidnapping, prosecutor Steve Mulroy announced at a press conference. . They were fired last week. The internal police investigation concluded that they had used excessive force. Other officers are still under investigation.
US President Joe Biden called in a statement for a “prompt, complete and transparent investigation” into this tragedy. Video of the arrest will be released Friday after 6 p.m. “I expect you will be outraged” when you see these images, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis admitted on Wednesday. Deeming the organization of demonstrations likely, she called not to “incite violence or destruction”. In his press release, Joe Biden says he joins the family of Tire Nichols in calling for the demonstrations to be “peaceful”, because “anger is understandable, but violence is never acceptable”.
Beating for three minutes
On January 7, the police wanted to arrest Tire Nichols for a traffic violation. As officers approached, a “confrontation took place” and “the suspect fled”, according to law enforcement. Caught up, Tire Nichols was finally arrested. Complaining of having difficulty breathing, he was hospitalized. He died three days later.
The details of the arrest are not yet clear: the video has so far only been shown to relatives and their lawyers. According to them, “the police beat him to the point that he was unrecognizable”. “It is a pure and simple beating, without interruption, of this young man for three minutes,” said lawyer Antonio Romanucci. What happened was “inadmissible” and “criminal” and “should not have happened”, hammered David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, “shocked” and “disgusted” by what he saw. “In a word, it’s absolutely appalling,” he said.
The agents in question are “directly responsible for the physical violence committed on Mr. Nichols”, Cerelyn Davis explained on Wednesday, believing that it was “not just a professional error, but a lack of humanity. “, an act” heinous, irresponsible and inhuman. »
The case finds a particular echo in a country still marked by the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, in May 2020, and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, against racism and police violence, which had followed. And the drama has reignited the debate on police violence in the country.