Cheryl V. Jackson, Indianapolis Star
Sat, February 4, 2023
Dozens of protesters took to Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis Saturday afternoon to call attention to police brutality and promote defunding police departments.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation - Indianapolis called for justice in killings of Tyre Nichols, Herman Whitfield III and others across the country.
Nichols died after allegedly being beaten by Memphis, Tennessee, police officers on Jan. 6, 2023, during a traffic stop.
Rosetta Walker, 10, was among the speakers during the protest against police brutality organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation -- Indianapolis at Monument Circle on Feb. 4, 2023.
Herman Whitfield III died after an encounter with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on April 25, 2022, when he was electrocuted at his parents’ home. Before the encounter, Whitfield's father reportedly told officers his son was "having a psychosis" and needed an ambulance.
“We want to see indictments. We want to see convictions,” said Noah Leininger with the organization. “We think nothing less than a conviction in that case is a modicum of justice.”
“If we're not out here and this falls out of public consciousness, then it’s going another year until the next person gets murdered by police,” Leininger said. “We need justice for all of these people now. It still keeps happening.”
“We’re not satisfied until there’s a conviction and these people are in jail,” Leininger said. “Even with people in Indiana, cops caught brutalizing people during the downtown protests in 2020; they still haven’t faced trial. Their trial is still waiting until this summer.”
He, like most of the half-dozen speakers, called police culture anti-Black and anti-working class.
“The culture has to be reformed by reforming who is in power,” Leininger said. “Right now, police departments across the country lack community oversight, lack community supervision and they can do whatever they want and get away with it because they protect the people who have the property.”
“Only when the police are controlled by the working class instead of the police oppressing the working class will we start to see a police culture that is actually protective of the people instead of the property of the wealthiest in our country.”
Stephen Lane, an organizer with the Indianapolis Liberation Center, said he preferred to have policing left to communities.
“We've been protesting this for decades...our families have been protesting this for decades since the '60s, since before the ‘60s. When will things ever get better? When will things ever change?” he said. “They killed Herman Winfield III right here in Indianapolis. They killed Tyre Nichols in Memphis. They're killing other people in California. It seems like in every state there's the issue with the police. And we're told it can be reformed; it can be made better. Where are the results?”
Saturday’s event was part of a series of demonstrations across the state.
One of the youngest in attendance grabbed the microphone to call for police to be less quick to pull on citizens.
“Everyone deserves a chance, even if they’ve done something wrong,” said 10 -year-old Rosetta Walker, with an impromptu follow up to her mother’s presentation. “I have learned that even if they do something wrong, a single word like ‘I’m sorry,’ it will change everything. They're just so busy pow, pow, pow, bang, bang, bang; shooting everyone.”
U.S. Justice Dept. to review Memphis police after Tyre Nichols' killing
Family members of Tyre Nichols hold a news conference in Memphis
Sun, February 5, 2023
By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department will participate in a review of the Memphis Police Department after the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man fatally beaten by officers in the Tennessee city last month, according to city officials.
The review was disclosed in a bulletin by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland. The bulletin said the Justice Department as well as the International Association of Chiefs of Police would take part in an "independent, external review" requested by the city to assess the Memphis Police Department's special units and use-of-force policies.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Memphis police on Friday fired a sixth officer involved in the death of Nichols. Five other officers, all Black, were previously fired and charged with second-degree murder. The sixth officer to be fired is white.
Nichols repeatedly cried, "Mom! Mom!" as the five Memphis police officers charged with the Black motorist's murder pummeled him with kicks, punches and baton blows after a Jan. 7 traffic stop, video released by the city showed.
He was hospitalized and died of his injuries three days after the confrontation in the city where he lived with his mother and stepfather and worked at FedEx.
His death has further fueled an ongoing national debate in the United States about race and police brutality.
The Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services will take part in the review, the city said.
The mother of Nichols, RowVaughn Wells, and his stepfather, Rodney Wells, are due to attend President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday in Washington.
Nichols' funeral, held in a Memphis church on Wednesday, was attended by Vice President Kamala Harris and relatives of other Black people killed by police in U.S. cities.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)
In Tyre Nichols' neighborhood, Black residents fear police
GARY FIELDS
Sat, February 4, 2023
MEMPHIS (AP) — In a terrible way, the death of Tyre Nichols brings vindication to members of the Black community in Memphis who live in constant fear of the police.
Often, before, people didn't believe them when told how bad it is.
The fatal beating of Nichols, 29, by five police officers tells the story many residents know by heart: that any encounter, including traffic stops, can be deadly if you're Black.
Examples abound of Black residents, primarily young men, targeted by police. Some are in official reports. Anyone you talk to has a story. Even casual discussions in a coffee shop net multiple examples.
A homeowner who called the police because a young man who had been shot was on his front porch. The responding officers ignored the gunshot victim and entered the caller’s home. The caller was slammed to the ground and a chemical agent used on him as he was subdued. The officers then lied about the circumstances, but there was video.
A woman who lives in a “safe” northeast Memphis neighborhood yet says her 18-year-old son was hogtied and pepper-sprayed by police several years ago –- while she was with him. He became agitated after police arrived on the scene while he picked up his child from a girlfriend, triggering a mental health crisis, she said.
In police sweeps, unmarked cars roll into neighborhoods and armed plainclothes officers jump out, rushing traffic violators and issuing commands. The result is a community in fear, where people text, call and use social media to caution each other to stay inside or avoid the area when police operations are underway.
“There’s one type of law enforcement that keeps people safe, and then there’s a type of law enforcement that keeps people in check,” said Joshua Adams, 29, who grew up in south Memphis' Whitehaven, home to Elvis Presley’s Graceland Mansion, now a mostly Black neighborhood.
If you are in the wrong neighborhood “it really doesn’t matter whether you’re part of the violence or not,” said Adams. “I’m less likely to be shot in a gang conflict than I am to be shot by police.”
Chase Madkins was about a block from his mother’s Evergreen neighborhood home just east of downtown Memphis dropping off his 12-year-old nephew when the blue lights of an unmarked police car flashed behind him.
Within seconds the officer ordered him out of the car and told him he made an illegal turn, and his license plate was not properly displayed because it was bent at the corner.
Madkins said the officer, dressed in tactical gear with his face covered and no visible identification, refused to give his badge number, unless he consented to a weapon search of the car.
Madkins, 34, consented, but called an activist friend to get to the scene.
“I had to remind myself, `Chase, this is how people get murdered, in a traffic stop,’” he said. To this day he does not know who the officer was.
The random stops are meant to terrorize, said Hunter Demster, organizer for Decarcerate Memphis. He's the one Madkins called when he was stopped in November.
“They go into these poor Black communities and they do mass pullover operations, terrifying everybody in that community,” Demster said. Some people might think the officers are looking for murderers or people accused of heinous crimes, or have stacks of warrants for violent criminals, he said, but “that is not the case.”
People want more police, Demster said, but “what they’re really trying to say is we want more detectives looking for violent criminals.”
Marcus Hopson, 54, a longtime resident and barber in the neighborhood, said the sweeps remind him of how in the early 1990s New York focused on nuisance crimes and zero tolerance and that morphed into stop-and-frisk.
“It didn’t work then. It’s not going to work now,” said Hopson, who now splits time with a home in Mississippi. “You are terrorizing the neighborhoods.”
Black residents make up about 63% of the city’s population of 628,000. In many ways it is two cities: One is Beale Street and blues, barbecue and Elvis. The other is a spiritual center because of what happened here decades ago. There’s the Mason Temple where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous and prophetic speech proclaiming that Black people would eventually reach a world of equality. And there is the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, less than 2 miles away, where an assassin’s bullet killed King the next day and changed the future of Black life.
This undated photo provided by Ryan Wilson shows Tyre Nichols, who had a passion for skateboarding and was described by friends as joyful and lovable. Nichols was fatally beaten by police during a traffic stop in Memphis, Tenn., on Jan. 7, 2023. (Courtesy of Ryan Wilson)
What that left here is complicated, especially when it comes to policing and crime. In 2021, the year the SCORPION unit – a specialty squad that all five officers were part of -- was set up, homicides hit a record, breaking one set in 2020, the previous year. Homicides dropped in 2022 but high-profile cases kept crime in the news. Most of the victims those years were young Black men. In the cases where arrests have been made, the suspects were overwhelmingly Black.
“There are more officers in Black communities here because unfortunately we’ve seen a spike in crime in our communities,” said Memphis NAACP President Van Turner.
But adding police without addressing the underlying issues, including poverty, won’t help, he said.
“You have not resolved the systemic issues which create the crime in the first place," Turner said.
The data also shows a disparity between the city's population and who police target with force: Black men and women accounted for anywhere from 79% of use of force situations to 88%. The data doesn't show how many of those people were being sought on a warrant for violent crimes.
The Memphis police chief has called Nichols’ death “heinous, reckless and inhumane.” The five officers, all of whom were Black, accused of beating him were all charged with second-degree murder, and other officers and fire department employees on scene also have been fired or disciplined and could be charged. The SCORPION unit has been disbanded. The chief has ordered a review of all the special units.
Some people in the community are willing to give the police chief a chance to reform the department.
Marcus Taylor, 48, who owns a janitorial business and lives in south Memphis, urged officers in the precincts to come into their communities and network, “talk to store owners, go to barbershops, come to basketball games, and do it regularly. Get to know the people you are supposed to be protecting.”
“Come out without the lights flashing,” he said. “You’re out here to protect and serve, not beat up and whip. Everybody is not that hardened criminal.”
Madkins, who was among hundreds of people attending Nichols’ funeral on Wednesday, said he wants to be hopeful. He heard the words of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who delivered a eulogy: “I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But we won’t stop until we hold you accountable and change this system,” Sharpton said.
“I felt affirmed. I felt seen and heard in my own struggle,” Madkins said.
The vindication, if you can call it that, comes too late for Tyre Nichols.
At the place where he was fatally beaten grows an unofficial symbol of violence and tragedy –- a makeshift memorial with balloons and stuffed animals. It is around the corner from his mother’s home.
Nowhere seems safe for Black young men and boys.
When they start walking around the neighborhoods alone, or first start to drive, parents universally caution them on what to do when they encounter cops.
“This has to change,” said Erica Brown, 47, who described officers hogtying and pepper-spraying her son while she was with him. The memories of that day in 2014 kept her from watching all the video of Nichols being beaten. “Not just here in Memphis, but it needs to change nationwide.”
___
News researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York. Also contributing were journalists Claudia Lauer from Philadelphia, and Adrian Sainz and Allen Breed from Memphis.
Family members of Tyre Nichols hold a news conference in Memphis
Sun, February 5, 2023
By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department will participate in a review of the Memphis Police Department after the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man fatally beaten by officers in the Tennessee city last month, according to city officials.
The review was disclosed in a bulletin by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland. The bulletin said the Justice Department as well as the International Association of Chiefs of Police would take part in an "independent, external review" requested by the city to assess the Memphis Police Department's special units and use-of-force policies.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Memphis police on Friday fired a sixth officer involved in the death of Nichols. Five other officers, all Black, were previously fired and charged with second-degree murder. The sixth officer to be fired is white.
Nichols repeatedly cried, "Mom! Mom!" as the five Memphis police officers charged with the Black motorist's murder pummeled him with kicks, punches and baton blows after a Jan. 7 traffic stop, video released by the city showed.
He was hospitalized and died of his injuries three days after the confrontation in the city where he lived with his mother and stepfather and worked at FedEx.
His death has further fueled an ongoing national debate in the United States about race and police brutality.
The Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services will take part in the review, the city said.
The mother of Nichols, RowVaughn Wells, and his stepfather, Rodney Wells, are due to attend President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday in Washington.
Nichols' funeral, held in a Memphis church on Wednesday, was attended by Vice President Kamala Harris and relatives of other Black people killed by police in U.S. cities.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)
In Tyre Nichols' neighborhood, Black residents fear police
GARY FIELDS
Sat, February 4, 2023
MEMPHIS (AP) — In a terrible way, the death of Tyre Nichols brings vindication to members of the Black community in Memphis who live in constant fear of the police.
Often, before, people didn't believe them when told how bad it is.
The fatal beating of Nichols, 29, by five police officers tells the story many residents know by heart: that any encounter, including traffic stops, can be deadly if you're Black.
Examples abound of Black residents, primarily young men, targeted by police. Some are in official reports. Anyone you talk to has a story. Even casual discussions in a coffee shop net multiple examples.
A homeowner who called the police because a young man who had been shot was on his front porch. The responding officers ignored the gunshot victim and entered the caller’s home. The caller was slammed to the ground and a chemical agent used on him as he was subdued. The officers then lied about the circumstances, but there was video.
A woman who lives in a “safe” northeast Memphis neighborhood yet says her 18-year-old son was hogtied and pepper-sprayed by police several years ago –- while she was with him. He became agitated after police arrived on the scene while he picked up his child from a girlfriend, triggering a mental health crisis, she said.
In police sweeps, unmarked cars roll into neighborhoods and armed plainclothes officers jump out, rushing traffic violators and issuing commands. The result is a community in fear, where people text, call and use social media to caution each other to stay inside or avoid the area when police operations are underway.
“There’s one type of law enforcement that keeps people safe, and then there’s a type of law enforcement that keeps people in check,” said Joshua Adams, 29, who grew up in south Memphis' Whitehaven, home to Elvis Presley’s Graceland Mansion, now a mostly Black neighborhood.
If you are in the wrong neighborhood “it really doesn’t matter whether you’re part of the violence or not,” said Adams. “I’m less likely to be shot in a gang conflict than I am to be shot by police.”
Chase Madkins was about a block from his mother’s Evergreen neighborhood home just east of downtown Memphis dropping off his 12-year-old nephew when the blue lights of an unmarked police car flashed behind him.
Within seconds the officer ordered him out of the car and told him he made an illegal turn, and his license plate was not properly displayed because it was bent at the corner.
Madkins said the officer, dressed in tactical gear with his face covered and no visible identification, refused to give his badge number, unless he consented to a weapon search of the car.
Madkins, 34, consented, but called an activist friend to get to the scene.
“I had to remind myself, `Chase, this is how people get murdered, in a traffic stop,’” he said. To this day he does not know who the officer was.
The random stops are meant to terrorize, said Hunter Demster, organizer for Decarcerate Memphis. He's the one Madkins called when he was stopped in November.
“They go into these poor Black communities and they do mass pullover operations, terrifying everybody in that community,” Demster said. Some people might think the officers are looking for murderers or people accused of heinous crimes, or have stacks of warrants for violent criminals, he said, but “that is not the case.”
People want more police, Demster said, but “what they’re really trying to say is we want more detectives looking for violent criminals.”
Marcus Hopson, 54, a longtime resident and barber in the neighborhood, said the sweeps remind him of how in the early 1990s New York focused on nuisance crimes and zero tolerance and that morphed into stop-and-frisk.
“It didn’t work then. It’s not going to work now,” said Hopson, who now splits time with a home in Mississippi. “You are terrorizing the neighborhoods.”
Black residents make up about 63% of the city’s population of 628,000. In many ways it is two cities: One is Beale Street and blues, barbecue and Elvis. The other is a spiritual center because of what happened here decades ago. There’s the Mason Temple where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous and prophetic speech proclaiming that Black people would eventually reach a world of equality. And there is the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, less than 2 miles away, where an assassin’s bullet killed King the next day and changed the future of Black life.
This undated photo provided by Ryan Wilson shows Tyre Nichols, who had a passion for skateboarding and was described by friends as joyful and lovable. Nichols was fatally beaten by police during a traffic stop in Memphis, Tenn., on Jan. 7, 2023. (Courtesy of Ryan Wilson)
What that left here is complicated, especially when it comes to policing and crime. In 2021, the year the SCORPION unit – a specialty squad that all five officers were part of -- was set up, homicides hit a record, breaking one set in 2020, the previous year. Homicides dropped in 2022 but high-profile cases kept crime in the news. Most of the victims those years were young Black men. In the cases where arrests have been made, the suspects were overwhelmingly Black.
“There are more officers in Black communities here because unfortunately we’ve seen a spike in crime in our communities,” said Memphis NAACP President Van Turner.
But adding police without addressing the underlying issues, including poverty, won’t help, he said.
“You have not resolved the systemic issues which create the crime in the first place," Turner said.
The data also shows a disparity between the city's population and who police target with force: Black men and women accounted for anywhere from 79% of use of force situations to 88%. The data doesn't show how many of those people were being sought on a warrant for violent crimes.
The Memphis police chief has called Nichols’ death “heinous, reckless and inhumane.” The five officers, all of whom were Black, accused of beating him were all charged with second-degree murder, and other officers and fire department employees on scene also have been fired or disciplined and could be charged. The SCORPION unit has been disbanded. The chief has ordered a review of all the special units.
Some people in the community are willing to give the police chief a chance to reform the department.
Marcus Taylor, 48, who owns a janitorial business and lives in south Memphis, urged officers in the precincts to come into their communities and network, “talk to store owners, go to barbershops, come to basketball games, and do it regularly. Get to know the people you are supposed to be protecting.”
“Come out without the lights flashing,” he said. “You’re out here to protect and serve, not beat up and whip. Everybody is not that hardened criminal.”
Madkins, who was among hundreds of people attending Nichols’ funeral on Wednesday, said he wants to be hopeful. He heard the words of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who delivered a eulogy: “I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But we won’t stop until we hold you accountable and change this system,” Sharpton said.
“I felt affirmed. I felt seen and heard in my own struggle,” Madkins said.
The vindication, if you can call it that, comes too late for Tyre Nichols.
At the place where he was fatally beaten grows an unofficial symbol of violence and tragedy –- a makeshift memorial with balloons and stuffed animals. It is around the corner from his mother’s home.
Nowhere seems safe for Black young men and boys.
When they start walking around the neighborhoods alone, or first start to drive, parents universally caution them on what to do when they encounter cops.
“This has to change,” said Erica Brown, 47, who described officers hogtying and pepper-spraying her son while she was with him. The memories of that day in 2014 kept her from watching all the video of Nichols being beaten. “Not just here in Memphis, but it needs to change nationwide.”
___
News researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York. Also contributing were journalists Claudia Lauer from Philadelphia, and Adrian Sainz and Allen Breed from Memphis.
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