The whole country was horrified last year when five Memphis police officers were seen viciously beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year old Black motorist who’d run from them on foot. Nichols died three days later, on Jan. 10, 2023, and the officers on tape were fired and charged with murder. Those steps in the right direction followed fierce activism and organizing in Memphis and across the country. The Department of Justice announced a pattern-or-practice investigation against the Memphis Police Department. But, beyond those initial steps, not enough has changed in the year since Nichols was beaten.
Not enough has changed in the year since Nichols was beaten.
At least for now, police chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis, who created the SCORPION Unit whose officers beat Nichols, remains on the job. (In Atlanta, she’d overseen the infamous Red Dog unit, which was eventually disbanded after the city agreed to pay more than $1 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that its officers used excessive force in a 2009 raid at a gay bar.)
A Memphis City Council committee voted 6-7 on Tuesday against the chief’s reappointment. A more consequential vote from the full City Council now looms.
Whether Davis is removed from office remains to be seen, but she shouldn’t have lasted this long. She should have been relieved from her duties immediately after Nichols’ death.
But not only did Mayor Jim Strickland (whose term ended Jan. 1) not fire Davis, but newly inaugurated Memphis Mayor Paul Young asked the City Council to keep Davis on. That’s peculiar enough, but adding insult to political injury, we in Memphis just learned that Strickland refused to enforce police reform ordinances that the city council passed after Nichols was beaten.
“In many instances, the Ordinances purport to direct officers how to do their jobs, and what they can and cannot do,” Strickland wrote in a letter to the council on Dec. 29. “There is absolutely no authority vested in the Council to…
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