After five Memphis police officers brutally beat Tyre Nichols last month, one officer took two cell phone photos of the visibly injured 29-year-old Black man and texted one image to at least five people, newly revealed internal police department documents show.
On
January 7, 2023, five Black police officers of the Memphis Police
Department (MPD), severely assaulted Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black
man, during a traffic stop. Nichols was hospitalized in critical
condition and died three days later.
Demetrius Haley, one of five officers fired and charged with murder in Nichols death admitted that he texted a photo to five people, including two other Memphis officers, a female acquaintance and a civilian employee, according to the documents, obtained by CNN.
A sixth person was also identified as a recipient of the same photo, the documents state.
Also, surveillance video of the beating released to the public shows one of the officers Demetrius Haley twice held up his cell phone and shined a flashlight on Nichols.
The sharing of the photo was just one allegation among many laid out in the internal documents, which accuse the officers of a slew of misconduct and policy violations before, during and after the interaction with Nichols on January 7.
Taken together, the police documents
accuse the officers of pulling over Nichols without telling him the
reason for the stop, using excessive force, turning off or otherwise
obscuring their body-worn cameras, laughing and bragging about the
beating and then misleading investigators.
The offenses are laid out in five decertification request letters one for each officer sent by the police department in January to a state commission that enforces policing standards. If their decertification is granted, they would be unable to work for other state law enforcement agencies.
Nichols is described in the letters
as a nonviolent, unarmed subject who posed no significant threat to the
officers. He died three days after the beating.
All five officers Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Desmond Mills Jr. were internally charged with violating the department's policies on personal conduct, neglect of duty, excessive or unnecessary force and use of body-worn cameras, the letters show. Some also were charged with additional violations. The charges are not criminal in nature.
The documents say that all five officers declined to make any statements during the administrative hearings. In each case, the president of the police union, Lt. Essica Cage-Rosario, submitted a letter stating investigators had not provided the body-camera footage or other officer statements beforehand.
These are only a few examples of the GROSS violations of this officer's right to due process, Cage-Rosario said, according to the documents.
A
sixth police officer also has been fired but not charged. The officers
were all members of the specialized SCORPION unit, which has since been
disbanded. Further, the Fire Department fired two EMTs and a lieutenant
for their inadequate response to the incident.
Seven more officers are expected to face administrative discipline related to the case, the Memphis city attorney announced Tuesday.
Nichols? family entered the House of Representatives chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, as invited guests of first lady Jill Biden to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 7. Biden addressed the need for police accountability in his speech.
The
documents added further details to the entirety of the police
interaction with Nichols, only some of which is captured on surveillance
and body camera footage.
The interaction began with a traffic stop for alleged reckless driving, police initially said.
However,
the internal police documents say Haley exited his unmarked vehicle and forced (Nichols) out of his vehicle while using loud profanity and
wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie over (his) head.
Haley never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest, the documents state.
In the following moments, Haley pepper-sprayed Nichols directly in the eyes and kicked him on the ground, the documents say.
After
Nichols fled the scene, the officers caught up to him at a second
location near his family home and punched and beat him as he lay
restrained on the ground, the video shows.
At one point, Haley was on an active cell phone call where the person overheard the police encounter, the documents state.
The
documents lay out numerous uses of excessive force against Nichols
committed by each officer and say several of the men failed to intervene
or report the violent actions of their fellow officers.
At one point, Smith and Bean held Nichols by the arms while other officers pepper-sprayed and ?excessively struck? him with a baton, the department says. Smith and Bean also admitted to punching Nichols several times as they tried to handcuff him, the letters say.
After the beating, the officers can be heard on body-worn camera making multiple unprofessional comments, laughing and bragging about (their) involvement, the documents say.
The officers also failed to
immediately provide aid in the critical moments after the beating and
did not immediately help when medical personnel requested to remove
Nichols handcuffs, the documents say. The documents also note Smith is a
certified EMT.
Their conversation and inaction after the
beating was witnessed by a civilian who took photos and cell phone
video, the documents state.
Mills knew Nichols had been ?pepper sprayed, tased, struck with an ASP baton, punched, and kicked? but didn't provide him aid, according to the documents. Instead, he admitted in his report he walked away to decontaminate himself from the chemical irritant spray, his letter says.
About 23 minutes
passed between the time Nichols appeared to be subdued and a stretcher
arriving on scene, surveillance video shows.
After Nichols
arrest, the officers statements and reports contradicted one another
and omitted or distorted key details about their violence toward
Nichols, according to the letters.
Their accounts were not
consistent with each other and are not consistent with the publicly
known injuries and death of Mr. Nichols, the documents say.
When
speaking to Nichols? mother after the arrest, Mills and his supervisor
?refused to provide an accurate account of her son?s encounter with
police or his condition,? his letter says.
Martin made
?deceitful? statements in his incident summary, in which he claimed
Nichols tried to grab his holstered gun as officers forced him to the
ground, his letter says. Video evidence, however, ?does not corroborate?
his statements, it says, adding Martin never disclosed that he punched
and kicked Nichols several times. Instead, it says, he said he
administered ?body blows.?
Haley also said in a statement and
in body camera footage that he heard an officer tell Nichols, ?Let my
gun go!? But the claim was ?deemed untruthful? after a review of video
evidence, the documents say.
All five of the officers either
never turned on their body-worn cameras or only recorded snippets of
their encounter with Nichols, which is a violation of the department?s
policies, the letters say.
Both Bean and Mills were initially
recording their encounter with Nichols but removed their cameras while
the scene was still active, their letters state.
Bean took the camera off his vest and left it on the trunk of a car before walking away to have a conversation with other officers about the incident,? the letter says. Mills took his vest off entirely, leaving it on another car with the camera still attached, his letter says.
