Police video showed officers pepper spraying Tyre Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he ran away from a traffic stop
The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people, according to the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation launched after the beating death of Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.
The Justice Department announced an investigation into the Memphis Police Department in July 2023, looking at the department’s “pattern or practice” of how it uses force and conducts stops, searches and arrests, and whether it engages in discriminatory policing. The investigation was announced six months after the January 2023 beating death of Nichols by police.
It remains to be seen what will happen to attempts to reach such agreements between cities and the Justice Department once President-elect Donald Trump returns to office and installs new department leadership. The Justice Department under the first Trump administration curtailed the use of consent decrees, and the Republican president-elect is expected to again radically reshape the department’s priorities around civil rights.
Nichols died on Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating. The five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — were fired, charged in state court with murder, and indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges. Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to the federal charges under deals with prosecutors. The other three officers were convicted in early October of witness tampering related to the cover-up of the beating. Bean and Smith were acquitted of civil rights charges of using excessive force and being indifferent to Nichols’ serious injuries.Haley was acquitted of violating Nichols’ civil rights causing death, but he was convicted of two lesser charges of violating his civil rights causing bodily injury.
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