eNewMexican

Early report on arrest contradicted by footage

By Jessica Jaglois, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mitch Smith

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A police report written hours after officers beat Tyre Nichols was starkly at odds with what videos have since revealed, making no mention of the powerful kicks and punches unleashed on Nichols and instead claiming that he was violent.

The police report painted Nichols, 29, who died three days after the Jan. 7 beating, as an irate suspect who had “started to fight” with Memphis police officers, even reaching for one of their guns. The videos, which were released last week, showed nothing of the sort.

Instead, they captured police officers yanking Nichols from a car, threatening to hurt him and then — after he ran away — catching up with him and inflicting the deadly beating. All the while, it appears from the videos, Nichols never struck back.

On Monday, the fallout from Nichols’ death continued. The Police Department announced that it had suspended two more officers, in addition to the five who have already been fired and charged with murder in the beating.

Meanwhile, the city’s fire chief, Gina Sweat, fired two emergency medical technicians and a lieutenant who had responded to the scene, saying that they all had violated a range of policies.

The official account written by a police officer early the next morning told a much different story in which Nichols was the assailant.

In Nichols’ arrest, the officer wrote that police stopped Nichols’ car Jan. 7 after seeing him drive quickly and into oncoming traffic, and that, once he was stopped, Nichols had been “refusing a lawful detention” and fought detectives on the scene.

The videos show that officers approached his car with their guns drawn, while threatening and cursing at him, before pulling him out and pushing him to the ground.

Nichols tries to follow officers’ contradictory and rapid-fire commands, which included ordering him to get on the ground while he was already lying down. “All right, I’m on the ground,” he says, before responding to another demand: “Yes, sir.”

But the police continued to be aggressive, with one threatening to fire his Taser at Nichols and another threatening to “break” his hands. The police report said that, sometime around this period, Nichols had grabbed for a detective’s gun, something not shown in any of the videos. The officers then deployed pepper spray into Nichols’ face, after which he ran away, toward his mother’s house.

When officers caught up with Nichols several minutes after he fled, they tackled him and severely beat him, with one officer delivering a series of blows to Nichols’ head while two other officers hold his hands behind his back.

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2023-01-31T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-31T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://enewmexican.pressreader.com/article/281724093692449

Santa Fe New Mexican