In a terrible way, the death of Tyre Nichols brings vindication to members of the Black community in Memphis who live in terror of police.
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.
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.
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. People want more police, Demster said, but "what they're really trying to say is we want more detectives looking for violent criminals."
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.
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