Memphis police discriminate against black people and use excessive force, a Justice Department report says

The Memphis Police Department used excessive force and discriminated against black people, according to a later investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice the beating death of Tire Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.

A report released Wednesday marked the conclusion of the investigation, which began six months after Nichols was kicked, punched and beaten with a police baton as five officers attempted to arrest him after he fled a traffic stop.

The report states, “Memphis police officers routinely violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve.”

“The people of Memphis deserve a police department and a city that protects their civil and constitutional rights, earns their trust and keeps them safe,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in an emailed statement .

The city said in a letter released earlier Wednesday that it would not agree to negotiate federal oversight of its police department until it could review and challenge the results of the investigation.

City officials had no immediate comment on the report, but said they plan to hold a news conference Thursday after Justice Department officials held their own news conference Thursday morning in Memphis to discuss the findings.

Police video showed officers spraying Nichols with pepper spray and hitting him with a Taser before he ran away from a traffic stop. Five officers chased Nichols, kicking, punching and hitting him with a police baton just steps from his home as he called for his mother. The video showed officers running around, talking and laughing as Nichols battled his injuries.

Nichols died on January 10, 2023, three days after the beating. The five officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith – were fired and charged with murder in state court indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering allegations.

Nichols was black, as were the former officers. His death led to nationwide protests, raised the volume of calls for police reform across the U.S. and led to intense scrutiny of the police department in Memphis, a majority-black city.

The report specifically mentions the Nichols case and addresses the police practice of using traffic stops to combat violent crime. Police have encouraged officers in special forces, task forces and patrol departments to prioritize street enforcement, and officers and community members have described this approach as “saturating” or flooding neighborhoods with traffic enforcement, the report said.

“This strategy requires frequent contact with the public and gives officers wide discretion, requiring strict supervision and clear rules to guide officers’ activities,” the report said. “But MPD is not ensuring that officers are behaving lawfully.”

The report said prosecutors and judges told federal investigators that officials did not understand the constitutional limits of their authority. Officers stop and detain people without proper justification and conduct invasive searches of people and cars, the report said.

“Black people in Memphis disproportionately experience these violations,” the report said. “MPD has never reviewed its practices for signs of discrimination. We found that officers treat black people more harshly than white people who behave similarly.”

The investigation found that Memphis officers resort to force “almost immediately in response to minor, nonviolent crimes” that can cause pain or injury, even if the individuals are not aggressive.

The report said officers pepper-sprayed, kicked and fired a Taser at an unarmed man with mental illness who was trying to score a $2 soda at a gas station. By the end of an encounter in front of the gas station, at least nine police cars and twelve officers had been deployed to the incident, for which the man spent two days in prison for theft and disorderly conduct.

In a letter to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released Wednesday, Memphis City Attorney Tannera George Gibson said the city had received a request from the DOJ to enter into an agreement that would require her to “negotiate a consent decree , which is aimed at the institutional police and the police”. Emergency services.”

A consent decree is an agreement that requires reforms to be monitored by an independent monitor and approved by a federal judge. Federal oversight can last for years and violations can result in fines from the city.

It remains to be seen what will happen to attempts to reach such agreements between cities and the Justice Department once President-elect Donald Trump returns to office and appoints new department leadership. Under the first Trump administration, the Justice Department limited the use of consent decrees, and the Republican president-elect is expected to again radically reshape the department’s civil rights priorities.

“Until the City has had the opportunity to review, analyze and challenge the specific allegations that support your upcoming investigative report, the City cannot and will not agree to move toward or enter into a consent decree that is likely to become effective.” “It will take many years and cost Memphis residents hundreds of millions of dollars,” the letter said.

The officers in the Nichols case were part of a crime-fighting team called the Scorpion Unit, which was disbanded after Nichols’ death. The team targeted drugs, illegal weapons and violent criminals with the aim of increasing the number of arrests, sometimes using force against unarmed people.

According to the Justice Department report, Memphis police never established policies and procedures to run the unit despite concerns that it had minimal oversight. Some prosecutors told department investigators that there were some “outrageous” discrepancies between body camera footage and arrest reports and that if the cases went to trial they would be “laughed out of court.” The report found that the unit’s misconduct led to the dismissal of dozens of criminal cases.

At a trial in Nichols’ death, Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to federal charges agreed with prosecutors. The other three officers were convicted in early October of witness tampering in connection with the cover-up of the beating. Bean and Smith were acquitted of civil rights charges of using excessive force and acting indifferent to Nichols’ serious injuries.

Haley was acquitted of violating Nichols’ civil rights resulting in death, but he was convicted of two lesser charges of violating his civil rights resulting in bodily harm. The five men face sentencing by a federal judge in the coming months.

Martin and Mills are also expected to change their pleas of innocence in state court, according to attorneys involved in the case. Bean, Haley and Smith have also pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. The trial in the state case is scheduled for April 28.

Justice Department investigators have targeted other cities with similar investigations in recent years, including Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd and Louisville, Kentucky, after an investigation was sparked by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

In its letter, the city of Memphis said the Justice Department’s investigation “took just 17 months to complete, compared to an average of two to three years in almost all other cases, suggesting a rush to judgment.”