(NewsNation) — A former police chief in Virginia says the officers who beat Tyre Nichols were trying to create “auditory witnesses” and believes a corrupted system is responsible for creating a culture of violence that led to Nichols’ death.
The five officers in Memphis could be heard on bodycam footage repeatedly yelling at Nichols to “give me your hands” even as they restrained him and pinned him to the ground.
RaShall Brackney, a former police chief in Charlottesville, Virginia, says it was an example of officers trying to create a justification for their actions.
“The first thing that crossed my mind beyond the violence is just the chaos, the disorganization, the raw emotion and the rage that was coming from the officers as a matter of course,” Brackney said Monday on “CUOMO.” “It seemed to be part of their narrative, the way they went about their work, the anger, the violence and the conflicting commands as they were all going towards their training and creating what I would call these auditory witnesses, so that if anyone heard what they were saying … someone would assume that Mr. Nichols was not complying, when in fact we know based on the video that he was.”
Videos of the Jan. 7 beating released Friday are filled with violent moments showing the officers, who are also Black, chasing and pummeling Nichols and leaving him on the pavement propped against a squad car as they fist-bumped and celebrated their actions.
The video has raised concerns about the medical response, and people are now demanding the names of every first responder on hand during the arrest. It takes more than 20 minutes after Nichols is beaten and on the pavement before any sort of medical attention is provided to him, even though two fire department officers arrived on the scene with medical equipment within 10 minutes.
“The medics, the firefighters who were trained to come in and assist, they’re doing nothing but standing around and taking it all in, and it’s because the system the way it is created corrupts everyone else who feeds into it,” Brackney said. “(It’s) not just in Memphis — this system corrupts the entire criminal legal system.”
The officers involved were part of a specialized united dubbed SCORPION. The 2-year-old specialized gang unit, with an acronym that stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, was designed to patrol high-crime areas in the city.
When she served as police chief in Charlottesville, Brackney disbanded the police force’s specialized units, including its SWAT team. An internal investigation revealed misconduct within the unit that resulted in disciplinary action.
“They are violating every training policy, but I can imagine these specialty units, they typically get no additional specialized training when they’re put out into these places,” Brackney said. “The highest levels of corruption that you do find in policing are going to be in these specialized units.”
