Video released to the public over the weekend included a mysterious white hand in one of the scenes tasing Nichols. It was Preston Hemphill. His picture was missing from the screenshot of the 5 Black cops who were immediately arrested and charged.
For context, we read a lot of OP-ed’s regarding this specific police shooting. White drivers are rarely, if ever, pulled from their cars and beaten to death without provocation by police officers of any race. The Memphis video demonstrates merely that Black officers can as easily as their white counterparts become instruments of a brutal law enforcement system that was largely shaped by historical white privilege. The argument that the officers in the Nichols killing proved race was not an issue has little more validity than a claim that, say, a few Black slave masters in pre-Civil War Charleston, S.C., proved slavery was not rooted in race. It obviously was.
The Memphis video is proof to many police organizations that the beating was well outside the scope of professional norms, much as when Derek Chauvin went rogue when he crushed the life from George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. “This is not representative of those who wear the law enforcement uniform and take an oath to protect and keep their fellow citizens safe,” read a statement from the National Sheriffs’ Assn. on the Nichols killing. If the Memphis officers and others like them are weeded out of police departments, the law enforcement establishment argues, the good cops can do their work with minimal change to current police standards.
We have also argued that the use of the hashtag should also related to the assailants and not the victims. The victims are dead, Breonna, Trayvon, Sandra, and Tamir for example. But, the officers who took their lives are alive. That should be the name we remember. It relates to public safety. Especially, at risk communities which for Black Americans, is the entire country. A lot of warnings were sent out regarding violence amid pending protests, unseen on January 6th 2021. Is it that the government has decided Black America is violent and White America is not? Or have we gone really bizarre with racism in the United States?
EDITORIAL SOURCE: Five things the Tyre Nichols videos don’t show – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
