Memphis, Tenn. – After three former police officers, they were acquitted on Wednesday in the death of the death of Nichols tiresCivil and Community Rights leaders expressed their outrage at another disappointment in the long impulse for police reform.
The death of Nichols in a traffic stop more than two years ago caused national protests and renewed calls to a systemic change as the first case after George Floyd that revealed the limits of an unprecedented calculation on racial injustice In black America.
Now, Wednesday’s absolute shows again the need for federal reforms, civil rights leaders said.
“Tire and his family deserve true justice, not only in the courtroom, but in Congress, by approving a police reform legislation once and for all,” said Naacp president, Derrick Johnson, on social networks. “Traffic stops should never be a death sentence, and a badge should never, never, be a shield for responsibility.”
The reverend to Sharpton, who spoke on Wednesday with the mother and stepfather of Nichols, said they were outraged.
“Justice can still be delivered,” Sharpton added in a statement, referring to the next sentence of the officers in a federal civil rights case. “Tire’s death was preventable, inexcusable and tragic.”
Nichols, 29, was heading home on January 7, 2023, when he was arrested for an alleged traffic violation. The officers took him out of his car, one of whom shot him with a taser. Nichols escaped, according to video images that showed him brutally beaten by five officers. An autopsy found He died from blows to the head.
Three officers were MISIO HEAD Of all state positions, including second degree murder, in the fatal beating. The five officers, the city of Memphis and the police chief are being sued by the Nichols family for $ 550 million. A trial for next year has been scheduled.
“Let this be a rally and cry: we must face the broken systems that empowered this injustice and demand the change that our nation, and the legacy of Tire, deserves,” said civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, who represents the family in demand.
After Floyd’s murder in 2020 by a former Minneapolis police officer, the states adopted hundreds of police reform proposalsCreating police supervision, more bias training and more strict force use limits, among other measures. But federal reforms in George Floyd’s Justice Law in the Police They have been trapped in Congress without sufficient bipartisan support to be promulgated during the Biden administration.
The Nichols case caused a 17 months federal research In the Memphis Police Department, which found a series of civil rights violations, including the use of excessive force, making illegal traffic stops and disproportionately attacking black people.
Last year, Police traffic stop reforms Published in Memphis after Nichols’ death was repealed by the governor of Republican Party Bill Lee, despite the pleas of civil rights defenders.
One of the ordinances had banned traffic stops for reasons not related to the conduct of a motorist, such as a broken rear light and other minor violations. Lee echoed the arguments of Republican legislators who said that the death of Nichols should result in the responsibility of the officers who abuse power, not the new limits in traffic stops.
Speaking after Wednesday’s acquittal, Shelby County District Prosecutor Steven Mulroy said: “Our office will continue to press for the responsibility of all those who violate the law, even if not especially, those who swore that they defend it.”
“If we are going to have some positive side of this dark cloud of the event itself and, in my opinion, today’s verdict must be that we must reaffirm our commitment to police reform,” he said.
Thaddeus Johnson, a former Memphis Police commander and the main member of the Criminal Justice Council, said the wounds of Nichols and the compound of Wednesday’s absolute of generations of police problems in the city-generation of the majority.
“I think the reform is local, but I think this has put a purple eye on things,” Johnson told the AP. “People feel that the police cannot be responsible. Or they will not be responsible.”
Andre Johnson, pastor of the Gifts of Life Ministries in Memphis and a community activist, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the verdict.
“It is extremely difficult to condemn the officers even when they are in chamber,” he said, calling the acquittal “a strong and clarification recognition that certain groups of people do not matter.”
“For many people who have had commitment to police officers, the message is high and clear: that even if we take it to the Chamber, doing what it did to tire, who cannot face justice.”
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Brewer reported from Norman, Oklahoma. Mattise reported from Nashville. The writer Ap Travis Loller in Nashville contributed.
