![]() The federal response is already assuming a familiar shape. Body cameras may have given us visual evidence of Nichols’s deathly beating, but were no deterrent. The crisis in Memphis is the latest lesson in how limited the most popular reforms are, including those that might have seemed like game-changers not so long ago. Memphis meanwhile, has a dedicated website proudly proclaiming that its police have implemented all of the “8 Can’t Wait” recommendations. The officers in that unit are now allegedly responsible for Nichols’s death. The result was a slate of reforms that neither meaningfully changed how cops operate nor provided an effective check on Memphis’s aggressive new crime-fighting measures, including the formation of the menacingly acronymed SCORPION unit. Abolitionists had since published a competing list, “ 8 to Abolition,” whose tenets would end up functioning more as a wedge issue for Republicans and a scapegoat for Democrats’ electoral failings than an option that cities were seriously weighing. But Memphis had already leapt on what were now the most politically palatable reforms on the table. This spiraling discord led Packnett Cunningham to resign from Campaign Zero and Sinyangwe to issue an apology, conceding that the organization had failed to meet the moment. “But I would like to see it with some more meat.” “I do applaud their efforts,” said Al Lewis of the Memphis Coalition of Concerned Citizens, back when the city council first started looking into “8 Can’t Wait” in 2020. Even less radical local activists seemed wary. McHarris co-authored a widely circulated Medium post that called for it to be retracted, itemizing all the ways its key proposals had been tried before and failed. In their view, Campaign Zero’s program was neither bold nor statistically sound enough to guide such a critical policy response. Radical proposals like defunding and abolishing the police were in wider circulation than ever before by then, and many activists wanted to harness that energy to secure bigger systemic overhauls. The rollout of “8 Can’t Wait” was greeted with the kind of furious movement backlash that had, until that point, been mostly relegated to backstage drama. Mckesson in particular was controversial among Black Lives Matter stalwarts: Despite his commitment to the cause, he had a knack for monopolizing media coverage and regularly disagreeing with other organizers (his early support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a big point of contention). The list was the brainchild of Campaign Zero, an anti-police-violence organization founded after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson in 2014 and operated since 2020 by veteran activists DeRay Mckesson, Sam Sinyangwe, and Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Memphis was one of several cities with more modest ambitions that turned to “ 8 Can’t Wait,” a set of measures whose architects claimed could “decrease police violence by 72 percent” - stuff like banning chokeholds, mandating de-escalation before shooting people, and limiting when cops were allowed to open fire at moving vehicles. The most dramatic was Minneapolis’s since-abandoned proposal to disband its police department. And it happened in a city that had embraced the most widely touted police-reform measures on offer after Floyd’s death and the ensuing protests, revealing the limits of that agenda.įederal-reform talks may have stalled after that tumultuous summer, but some localities rushed to implement new policies aimed at curbing police violence. It also followed the worst year for police killings yet recorded: Cops killed 1,176 people in 2022. Whatever happens in Memphis or elsewhere these next few days, the Nichols case has provoked the most anxious official response to any act of police brutality since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in 2020. “You can get your point across, but we don’t need to tear up our city because we do have to live in them.” “I want each and every one of you to protest in peace,” she said at a vigil for her son on Thursday. Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, found herself drafted unceremoniously into the role of peacekeeper, which has become a familiar duty among parents whose kids have been slain by cops. Mulroy promptly charged the officers with second-degree murder. President Biden called for calm, Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis proclaimed the attack a “ failing of basic humanity,” and Shelby County district attorney Steven J. The 29-year-old Black man was beaten by five Memphis cops in a display of violence so savage that officials spent the lead-up scrambling to head off the expected outcry. We now have access to video of Tyre Nichols’s alleged murder, which started with an assault on January 7, ended with his death on January 10, and was captured in police body-camera footage made public at 7 p.m.
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