*Let’s be clear, the five former Black Memphis police officers got everything they deserved for beating Tyre Nichols to a pulp. They were fired and charged with second-degree murder, two counts of official misconduct, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, one count of official oppression, and one count of aggravated assault.
It didn’t take a gruesome, horrid, hideous video of Nichol’s murder to convince anyone with a speck of human decency that the cops didn’t step over the line between lawful policing and pure naked, unabashed thuggery. They obliterated the line. Memphis police and city officials pressed for prosecution. They should be commended. They set a potential template for how other city and police officials should quickly act on wanton police violence against civilians.
However, here’s the tormenting question that dangles heavily in the air in the wake of the tape and the murder.
What if five white cops had beaten Nichols to a pulp? Nichols family attorney Benjamin Crump lightly raised that question. He was far from alone.
I asked it, and many other Blacks asked the same question. Just one week before Nichol’s murder, a videotape was released that showed a swarm of white and non-Black Los Angeles PD officers manhandling, and repeatedly tasing Keenan Anderson on the ground. Anderson like Nichols was a young African American male and cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullers. Anderson died later of cardiac arrest that resulted directly from the repeated tasing.
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Now contrast this. The L.A. Police Protective League did not issue an angry statement blasting the cops in the Anderson death. It apparently saw nothing inappropriate in their use of force against Anderson. However, in a public statement, that same police group lambasted the five former Memphis officers for allegedly violating all the canons of lawful police work.
Get the rest of this Earl Ofari Hutchinson commentary at theHutchinsonReport.net.
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