Tyre Nichols' Killing Reveals America Has Some Bad Cops Not America's Cops Are Bad!

The reaction of officials and leaders in our country to the death of Tyre Nichols is an overreaction and is not good for the country, it is going to lead to the weakening of our nation's police departments and the deterrence of good people going into and staying in policing. Of course what happened to Tyre is outrageous and demands the full force of the Justice system those police officers directly involved beat Mr. Nichols to death it was indefensible and they deserve to be convicted of a homicide! However, the response of leaders and public commentators to the incident is overboard they behave like they are running scared they seem to be desperate to make sure they are perceived as angry over the injustice and zealots for police reform. People seeking to lead on this matter need to keep their perspective in the realm of good, they need to remember that the vast majority of police officers are good police officers they are essentially heroes they put their lives on the line everyday to serve and protect people in our communities; these five former officers in the Memphis police department and their SCORPION department were a bunch of bad apples they did not follow the norms nor the code of police officers we as a nation need to remember that doing what is good means you don't throw out the entire bushel for a few bad apples!

Part of the problem here with the nation's response to this Mr. Nichols' incident is the media is hyping this and using this big-time to advantage themselves in bringing in viewership spinning this as if America has police departments across the nation are conducting ancient Rome's Circus Maximus events on America's streets where they unjustly put people to death in a brutal manner. We need the media to act like good media here by sticking to their role of pointing to how and facilitating our nation's response to this horrible occurrence so that it is a good one! To this end, yes America as a nation can do more to weed out police brutality and stop it and Washington should review its policies and effort to see where effectiveness can be improved. But the evil here, the bad behavior that is hard to really comprehend is that a local police unit in Memphis Tennessee beat a person to death a person that at most was culpable of committing a low level misdemeanor or summary offense not that any level of violation of law would justify such a beating or any beating. The correct view here is that this horrible incident is largely a Memphis Tennessee problem this specialized Scorpion unit had a bad culture, the media is finding a mountain of evidence of a track record by this unit that its members were violating citizens of Memphis's rights at a level where it was common place it was the character of the unit. The bottom line here is that authorities in the Memphis Tennessee police department and the Memphis city government didn't do their job they should have picked up on this unit's track record and fixed the culture in the unit or shut it down. We as a nation need to stop with this posture where we want to take a flame thrower to the collective body of our nation's police departments!

A lot of people with the enablement of our sensationalism obsessed media is saying this Tennessee incident makes for a compelling reason that America needs to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the problem won't be solved without this bill becoming law; this enactment would be a terrible development and outcome for America! There is a lot of good provisions in this bill which would be helpful to America if such becomes law but there is a lot of really really bad provisions in this bill that if enacted will be unfair to police officers and bad for getting good police officers on the nation's police forces and empowering them to do their job. The Geroge Floyd bill wants to lower the standard for convicting a police officer for a crime from the "willful" standard that is that the police intended to violate the accused civil rights to the "knowingly or recklessly" standard. This will result in a lot of police officers unfairly being convicted of federal crimes; reckless is a subjective standard for instance a lot of police officers on occasion especially during riots find themselves in a fist fight with a civilian, what I and many other people would conclude is legitimate self defense under such circumstances a lot of people would conclude is reckless behavior by a police officer. Such a change in the law will result in a lot of good police officer ending up in jail because of the personal viewpoints of prosecutors and members of the public that serve on juries, fair evaluation of police officers performance will be cast aside. The George Floyd bill also eliminates qualified immunity for police officers that currently protects them from much civil liability over their work as police officers because it requires a clear violation of a person's civil rights for liability to attach. This change will knock down the current protection for police officers where if their behavior is reasonable under the circumstances they are safe from lawsuits and it gives lawyers, judges and juries the power to second guess police officers in civil lawsuits- to be succinct it throws police officers under the bus!

The media downplays that the Federal government has the tools to fix this Memphis police department problem, going back to the President Barack Obama administration the Executive Branch of the Federal Government can use the Department of Justice to conduct a "pattern or practice" investigation and once they identify a culture or system problem they can work with the respective authorities in the department to fix the problem. Now if Congress wanted to pass legislation giving the DOJ the power to bring a lawsuit against an errant police department and once establishing the need to do so with the approval of the respective Judge conduct such an investigation and implement need changes and if need be put the police department in a conservatorship for a time that would be a helpful move by Congress. But this would seem to be unnecessary this would only be needed with involuntary action by the DOJ which common sense would seem be very unusual for such power to be needed by the DOJ because what Police Department that has a police brutality problem isn't going to want to have the DOJ help fix it because the civil liability on that local community for such a problem hold the potential to be crushing!

Two brief comments, it is unjust what happened to the emergency personnel that responded to the Tyre Nichols incident with them being fired. Many people don't like this about how our nation and society works but the reality is that the law across our nation provides that police are in authority on the street they have cart blanche power to maintain order, control things, to enforce public laws which means they have the power to make arrest even unjust arrest, that is not to say remedies cannot be had later. What this means in terms of scrutiny of the responding EMTs behavior is that on January 7th 2023 for the incident in question the Memphis police were in authority at that scene their authority was absolute and beyond contestation like it is across America on any American street in regards to police power. It did not matter what those EMTs thought needed to be done for Tyre, it did not matter that the EMTs thought the twenty minute delay was too long, until the police in control at the scene approved the EMTs moving in to help Tyre they were powerless to do so therefore it is unjust to penalize them for the inaction that was out of their control. All this repercussion to the Emergency personnel is just local authorities throwing them to the wolves of public outrage over this Memphis police brutality to placate the public anger. This incident should be an opportunity to remind all parents, guardians and leaders across our nation that they should be educating people in their charge to comply and cooperate with the police, they have full control on the street; that is not to say that Tyre's uncooperative behavior on January 7th justified the assault or any physical striking of him because it did not. But nevertheless across America we have a lack of respect for police problem and it does not matter that there is a significant behavior problem amongst some police; it is a values problem here we have across America - having good values means you respect the police and respect their authority!

Lastly, from the major media reports it seems like the Memphis DA is charging the five police officers being charged with this crime with second degree murder that is the knowing killing of another. Prudence seems to call for also charging these former police officer defendants with voluntary manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. It goes a little too far to believe these former officers intended to beat Mr. Nichols to death on the street a lot of jurors could conclude they were just angry that he broke free and fled from the police and they did not have the mens rea to kill Tyree, it was reaction to spontaneous anger. At least one defendant could also argue that he was trying to handcuff Tyre and he was surprised by his police co-workers wind-up punches and he was not in agreement with such assaultive behavior, the jury should be given options to justly hold all the defendants accountable for their wrongful behavior during this incident!

 

These "elite" units apparently often get canned after awhile because they inevitably become an untouchable pack within the departments that create them. Our local police department actively rotates people in and out of teams like SWAT and Street Crimes to keep this sort of dynamic from getting a foothold. One thing they do along that line which I am not sure what to think about is that they do it with the detective positions too, at least with the men. They have so few women that they pretty much have to keep the same ones in place much longer for things like rape investigations.

 

Let's point out that this is the standard police reaction. When police are trying to subdue a suspect who is not cooperating and difficult to subdue (usually due to big muscular body size and build), they will often (maybe even typically) resort to harsh physical tactics, anything to bring the suspect under control, but also to punish them for making things difficult.

It's not always so easy for police to take a suspect into custody.

In many Third World countries, it's standard practice for police to simply order the suspect into the back of an open truck, and if they refuse to get in the police beat them up.