MEMPHIS, Tenn. – After three former Memphis police officers were acquitted Wednesday in the beating death of Tyre Nichols, community and civil rights leaders expressed outrage over another disappointment in the long push for police reform.
Nichols' death at a traffic stop more than two years ago sparked nationwide protests and renewed calls for systemic change as the first post-George Floyd case that revealed the limits of an unprecedented reckoning over racial injustice in Black America.
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Now, Wednesday's acquittals again show the need for reforms at the federal level, civil rights leaders said.
“Tyre and his family deserve true justice — not only in the courtroom, but in Congress, by passing police reform legislation once and for all," NAACP President Derrick Johnson posted on social media. "Traffic stops should never be a death sentence, and a badge should never— ever — be a shield to accountability.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke Wednesday to Nichols' mother and stepfather, said they were outraged.
“Justice can still be delivered,” Sharpton added in a statement, referring to the officers' upcoming sentencing in a federal civil rights case. “Tyre’s death was preventable, inexcusable, and tragic.”
Officers avoid a murder conviction
Nichols, 29, was on his way home on Jan. 7, 2023, when he was stopped for an alleged traffic violation. He was pulled out of his car by officers, one of whom shot at him with a Taser. Nichols ran away, according to video footage that showed him brutally beaten by five officers. An autopsy found he died from blows to the head.
An out-of-town jury from a majority-white county found Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith not guilty of all state charges, including second-degree murder, in the fatal beating. All five officers, the city of Memphis and the police chief are being sued by Nichols’ family for $550 million. A trial has been scheduled for next year.
“Let this be a rally and cry: We must confront the broken systems that empowered this injustice and demand the change our nation — and Tyre’s legacy — deserves,” said civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the family in the lawsuit.
Nichols' family, supporters rally in Memphis
On Thursday, more than 100 supporters of Nichols’ family joined them at a rally at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The museum is built on the site of the former Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.
Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, spoke to the crowd in the rain, covered by an umbrella, in front of the balcony where King was felled by a rifle bullet. Behind her, people held posters showing with a photo of a hospitalized Nichols, his face swollen and bruised. On the posters was the saying, “I Am a Man,” the rallying cry for the sanitation workers' strike that brought King to the city.
Wells said the verdict was a “devastating blow” to her family. She said the jury didn't care about her son. Jurors were brought in from the Chattanooga area after a judge's ruling that intense pre-trial publicity made it difficult to find an impartial jury.
“They were allowed to come here and look at the evidence, but they didn't see the evidence,” Wells said. “What they saw was a Black man running from the police. They didn't care that my son was afraid for his life.”
A push for police reform
After Floyd's 2020 murder by a former Minneapolis police officer, states adopted hundreds of police reform proposals, creating civilian oversight of police, more antibias training and stricter use-of-force limits, among other measures. But federal reforms in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act have been stuck in Congress without enough bipartisan support to get enacted during the Biden administration.
The Nichols case sparked a 17-month federal investigation into the Memphis Police Department, which found a host of civil rights violations, including using excessive force, making illegal traffic stops and disproportionately targeting Black people.
Last year, police traffic-stop reforms put in place in Memphis after Nichols’ death were repealed by GOP Gov. Bill Lee, despite pleas from civil rights advocates.
One of the ordinances had outlawed traffic stops for reasons unrelated to a motorist's driving, such as a broken taillight and other minor violations. Lee echoed arguments from Republican lawmakers who said Nichols’ death needed to result in accountability for officers who abuse power, not new limits on traffic stops.
Speaking after Wednesday's acquittal, Shelby County District Attorney Steven Mulroy said: “Our office will continue to push for accountability for everybody who violates the law, including, if not especially, those who are sworn to uphold it.”
“If we’re going to have any silver lining from this dark cloud of both the event itself and in my view today’s verdict, it has to be that we need to reaffirm our commitment to police reform,” he said.
Memphis struggles with police accountability
Thaddeus Johnson, a former Memphis police commander and a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, said Nichols' beating and Wednesday's acquittal compound wounds from generations of policing problems in the majority-Black city.
“I do believe that reform is local, but I do believe this has kind of put a black eye on things,” Johnson told The Associated Press. "People feel like police cannot be held accountable. Or they won’t be held accountable.”
Andre Johnson, a pastor at Gifts of Life Ministries in Memphis and a community activist, said he was disappointed but not surprised at the verdict.
“It is extremely difficult to convict officers even when they are on camera,” he said, calling the acquittal ”a loud and clarion acknowledgment that certain groups of people do not matter.”
“For a lot of people who have had engagement with police officers, the message is loud and clear: that even if we get you on camera, doing what you did to Tyre, that you cannot face justice,” Johnson said.
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Brewer reported from Norman, Oklahoma. Mattise reported from Nashville. Associated Press writer Travis Loller in Nashville contributed.