Those Memphis cops were proud of their work
As Tyre Nichols sat propped against a police car, bloodied, dazed and handcuffed after being beaten by a group of Memphis police officers, one of those officers took a picture of him and sent it to at least five people, the Memphis Police Department said in documents released by the state on Tuesday.
The documents painted a picture of repeated misconduct by the officers, starting in the first moments after Mr. Nichols was pulled over for a traffic stop, through an arrest carried out with excessive force and continuing on through the many minutes when Mr. Nichols lay on the street in dire need of medical help.
Sending the photograph to acquaintances, including at least one outside of the Police Department, violated policies about keeping information confidential, according to the documents. But police officials said it was also part of a pattern of mocking, abusive and “blatantly unprofessional” behavior by the officers that also included shouting profanities at Mr. Nichols, laughing after the beating and “bragging” about their involvement.
The revelations came in internal affairs documents that the Memphis Police Department sent to a state agency, in which the department asked for the five officers — who have been charged with second-degree murder in Mr. Nichols’s death — to be decertified, meaning they could no longer work as police officers anywhere in the state.
In the documents, police officials described how the officers worked together as they severely beat Mr. Nichols, appeared to relish the assault afterward and then made a series of omissions and false claims in their reports about what happened.
Demetrius Haley, the officer who sent the photographs and who forced Mr. Nichols out of his car, also never told Mr. Nichols why he had been stopped or that he was under arrest. After Mr. Nichols ran away from the officers, several of them caught up with him a few minutes later and unleashed a series of punches and kicks while he was being restrained. And when one officer met with Mr. Nichols’s mother afterward, the officer “refused to provide an accurate account” of what had happened, the police officials said.
Despite policies requiring officers to activate their body cameras during “all law enforcement encounters and activities,” none of the officers’ body cameras captured the entire incident, according to the documents. One of the officers, Emmitt Martin III, at one point put his body camera in his car, the documents said.
In reports after the Jan. 7 assault, at least two of the officers said that Mr. Nichols had tried to grab an officer’s gun — a claim for which there is no evidence, according to the documents — while leaving out details of the beating.
All five of the officers were fired by the Police Department, as was a sixth who had fired a Taser at Mr. Nichols as he ran away. City officials said on Tuesday that seven more police officers were being investigated for possible policy violations in connection with the beating of Mr. Nichols, who died three days after the assault.
“We’re still adding names to the list,” Cerelyn Davis, the city’s police chief, said at a City Council hearing on Tuesday in which council members sought accountability from police and emergency management officials.
In the newly released documents, police officials said that Mr. Haley had admitted to sending a photograph of Mr. Nichols to at least five people, including two fellow officers, a civilian employee of the department and a female acquaintance. A sixth person also received the photo, the records state.
Mr. Haley’s lawyer, Michael Stengel, declined to comment, and lawyers for the four other officers did not respond to messages seeking comment late Tuesday.
Videos of the beating that were released by the city last month appeared to show Mr. Haley taking pictures of Mr. Nichols a few minutes after the beating, when the officers had propped him up against a police car. The videos show Mr. Haley shining a flashlight on Mr. Nichols and appearing to take a photograph with his phone. He then looks briefly at his phone and, a few seconds later, appears to take another picture.
Sick, sick, sick.
Haley was the cop who rolled up after the second altercation and ran up and kicked Tyre in the head. Apparently, he was so proud of his work he documented it and distributed it to friends. This person is a psychopath.
They all are:
Police officials also said in the documents that a civilian had witnessed at least part of the encounter and had recorded the officers with a cellphone. The witness’s opinion of the incident, according to the documents, was that officers had “left the injured subject lying on the ground, handcuffed and unattended.”