(NewsNation) — As the list of first responders who failed to follow protocol on the night of the Tyre Nichols arrest continues to grow, NewsNation sat down with a former Memphis police officer and retired fire lieutenant for an inside analysis of the incident.
“I can guarantee there is always one bad apple,” Former Memphis Police Officer and Retired Fire Lt. Cedric Pryor said.
Pryor served the city of Memphis for 25 years. His two and a half decades allowed him to analyze the Nichols bodycam footage with the expertise few have.
Pryor said standard training was ignored from the beginning by both the police and fire departments.
He said the police officers took extraordinary action for a traffic stop, dragging Nichols out of his car. Pryor pointed out that the officers never even identified themselves as police officers.
He explained that from the initial police stop, proper police protocol was not followed.
And over the course of the ensuing 13 minutes, the officers issued 71 contradictory commands.
“You pepper-spray the guy and then say put your hands behind your back. Well, you know, when you get pepper-sprayed what do you do? You want to touch your face. So how am I supposed to put my hands behind my back if you just pepper-sprayed me?” Pryor said.
Pryor said he saw glaring issues with the way the EMTs on the scene treated their patient. It took 27 minutes for an ambulance to transport Nichols to the hospital.
Throughout the course of that time, footage showed EMTs Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge standing off to the side on the right while Nichols writhes in pain.
But Pryor explained that the EMTs’ behavior also didn’t follow proper protocol.
“It’s not really a thing where the police say, alright, we are giving the patient to you. That’s not the way it works,” Pryor said. “You come on the scene, ‘OK, where is the patient at? What happened?’ You go over there and you assess the patient.”
Pryor said the EMTs should have taken care of the patient immediately when they arrived on the scene.
While Pryor still sees the Memphis Police Department and Fire Department as his family, he said the actions and failures he watched on the screen were unacceptable.
“You can’t tell me those officers were trained to do that. Everyone knows they weren’t trained to do that. They deserve to be terminated,” Pryor said. “For those fire department personnel, their neglect of duty, they deserve to be terminated.”
The district attorney said in no way is this investigation over, and his office said it expects more charges to be filed as more people are identified from this video.
