MEMPHIS — Five Memphis police officers were charged on Thursday with second-degree murder for the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black...
The city has been bracing for more than a week for the release of video footage that officials say depicts in agonizing detail how a stop this month for suspicion of reckless driving ended with Mr. Nichols being hospitalized in critical condition on Jan. 7 and dying three days later. Civic leaders and others in Memphis have raised concerns about the reaction the footage could provoke among residents who are already anguished and outraged about Mr. Nichols’s death.
A grand jury returned indictments on Thursday against the five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — with charges that include kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, in addition to second-degree murder, prosecutors said. The officers, all of whom are Black, were fired last week.
“The actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Steven J. Mulroy, the district attorney for Memphis, told reporters on Thursday.
Officials have sought to assuage residents, promising an aggressive pursuit of accountability. On Thursday — 16 days after Mr. Nichols died — they offered up the charges as evidence that they were following through. “We did work quickly to expedite this investigation,” Mr. Mulroy said.
The city is expected to release the video on Friday evening. Officials said it would consist of nearly an hour of footage taken from police body cameras and stationary cameras, with limited redactions, such as blurring out faces of people who are not city employees. “People will be able to see the entire incident from beginning to end,” Mr. Mulroy said in an appearance on CNN.
The officers were booked into the Shelby County jail on Thursday, with bail amounts ranging between $250,000 and $350,000. As of Friday morning, all but one had posted bail and had been released.
The charges grew out of an unusually fast-moving state investigation that revealed that the officers — who were part of a specialized unit patrolling high-crime areas of the city — had used a level of force that was beyond excessive, officials said. A separate federal civil rights investigation is also underway.
“In a word, it’s absolutely appalling,” David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which led the investigation, said of what he witnessed in the footage.
“I’m shocked, I’m sickened by what I saw and what we learned through our investigation,” he added. “Let me be clear, what happened here does not reflect proper policing. This was wrong, this was criminal.”
In Memphis, a city of 628,000 where nearly two-thirds of residents are Black, the fact that all five of the fired officers are Black has added a complicated layer of pain. “I was waiting for their faces to be on TV,” said Carrie Louise Pinson, a 73-year-old resident and longtime activist, “and when I saw all Black policemen — how could you do this?”
Lawyers representing the officers said on Thursday that they had not seen the video and could not comment specifically on the allegations. Still, they urged the community to avoid rushing to judgment and challenged the portrayal of the officers as vicious and violent.
“No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” said William Massey, who is representing Mr. Martin.
“At this point, we don’t know what proof they have,” he added. “We do not have discovery, and we’ve not seen the video. So we’re kind of in the blind right now.”
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