Brutal Murder of Tyre Nichols should put end to police lawlessness-Mourners
2023.02.02 02:35
Brutal Murder of Tyre Nichols should put end to police lawlessness-Mourners
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – On Wednesday, relatives of Black people who had been shot and killed by police in cities all over the United States attended Tyre Nichols’ funeral in a Memphis church to comfort the family of the Black 29-year-old who had been fatally beaten by police last month.
Preachers at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church spoke over a flower-adorned casket, recalling a young man who was passionate about skateboarding and photography and pleading for Nichols’s acquittal.
Families and civil rights leaders have also called for an end to police violence against Black Americans on a regular basis. They spoke to a congregation that included people whose relatives were African Americans Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, who were killed by police in 2020 and sparked protests.
Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells, stated:
“We cannot continue to allow these people to brutalize our children.”
Before giving a speech to the congregation, Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Memphis and embraced RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, in the church pews.
According to Harris, “This is a family that lost their son and brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe.” Tyre Nichols ought to have been protected. The Democrat pledged to assist in the passage of federal legislation to curb police misconduct.
Nichols passed away in a hospital on January 10 from injuries he suffered three days earlier when he was beaten by Memphis police officers when they pulled him over on his way home.
The family’s attorney, Ben Crump, has described the incident as a “police lynching.”
Five of the officers, who were all Black, were fired by the Memphis Police Department. They were charged with second-degree murder, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct, and oppression last week by prosecutors.
In his eulogy for Nichols in the city where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has frequently spoken at the funerals of victims of police brutality, referred to the five officers as “thugs” and traitors to the civil rights movement.
Sharpton said:
“You didn’t get on the police department by yourself,” as the crowd cheered and yelled. To open the doors for you, people had to march and go to jail, and some of them lost their lives. “How dare you act as though that sacrifice was in vain?”
Two additional officers who were involved in the events that led to Nichols’ death have been relieved of duty, effectively suspended, and an investigation is currently underway. On Monday, the city fire department fired two paramedics and their on-scene supervisor, and the Shelby County sheriff’s department suspended two deputies.
The city released police video of the confrontation on Friday. It showed officers spraying Nichols with pepper spray and beating him with punches, kicks, and baton blows as he yelled for his mother. When Nichols tried to flee, one officer was seen firing a Taser stun gun at him.
At the end of the video, you can see that Nichols was handcuffed, bleeding, and slumped against the side of a police car for nearly a quarter of an hour before getting medical help.
Cerelyn Davis, the chief of police, has called the behavior in the video “inhumane” and said that investigators have not proven that Nichols was driving recklessly when he was stopped, as the officers who arrested him said at the time.
The beating has been condemned by civil rights advocates and Nichols’ family lawyers as the latest instance of a Black person being brutalized by a racist law enforcement system that disproportionately targets people of color, even when the officers involved are not white.
Nichols moved to Memphis in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 after growing up in Sacramento, California. He worked for FedEx (NYSE:) and had a son who was four years old. job to eat with his coworker and stepfather at his house.
Another family lawyer, Antonio Romanucci, has said that Nichols was also a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. He said that it was a cause for which he gave his life, “and essentially what that makes him a martyr.” Nichols was also a strong supporter of the movement.
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