A “good guy” whose life was taken too soon by “a violent act” by the police. At the funeral of Tire Nichols, a young African-American whose fatal beating by black police officers shocked the United States, the speakers, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, rose up against police violence.
After hugging Tyre Nichols’ mother for a long time in the Memphis church where the tribute was being held, Ms. Harris had harsh words for the officers who beat him up as he shouted that he had nothing done and called for help.
“Didn’t he have the right to be safe?” “, launched the vice-president. “Here is a family who lost their son and brother to an act of violence” perpetrated by “those responsible for protecting them”, and “this violent act was not intended to ensure public safety”, she said. in front of the crowd.
“We will eventually overcome”
Tyre Nichols was “a good person, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being gone too soon,” Reverend J. Lawrence Turner said at the opening of the service. Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. “Today, as we celebrate Tyre’s life and comfort his family, we inform this nation that the rerun of this episode, which hashtag black lives matter, has been canceled and will not be renewed for a new season. “, he launched. “We will eventually win. »
The Reverend Al Sharpton, a figure in the civil rights struggle, gave the funeral oration. A strong symbol, a brother of George Floyd, a black forties whose death in 2020 under the knee of a white policeman had triggered massive anti-racist demonstrations, was present, as was the mother of Breonna Taylor. The 26-year-old African-American was shot dead by police in her Kentucky apartment in 2020 in the middle of the night and has become an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement.
On January 7, 29-year-old Tire Nichols was arrested by Memphis Special Unit officers on charges of a traffic violation. Beaten, he died three days later in hospital.
Three firefighters and two new officers are facing disciplinary investigations for the homicide, for which five black officers have already been fired and charged with murder, Memphis police and firefighters said Jan. 30. Preston Hemphill, a white police officer on duty in this large southern United States city since 2018, “was suspended from the start of the investigations (…), along with the other officers”, said the spokesperson for local police, Kim Elder, in a statement.
Horror and misunderstanding
The city’s fire department also announced that it had fired two paramedics and a lieutenant. “Our investigation concluded that the paramedics responded based on the initial nature of the call (a person being pepper sprayed) and the information they received at the scene, and that they did not proper review” of Tire Nichols, Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said. The three sacked individuals are accused of violating “numerous rules and protocols” of the Memphis Fire Department, she added.
The images of the tragedy, captured by the on-board cameras of the agents and the surveillance cameras, were made public on Friday. We see the police brutally pull the young man out of his vehicle. Pinned to the ground, he is sprayed with tear gas and targeted by an electric pulse gun. He then fled on foot to his mother’s home. Caught, he is beaten with kicks, fists and truncheons.
The ordeal of Tire Nichols aroused horror and incomprehension in the United States. Several demonstrations in his honor took place this weekend in the country, without taking on the scale of the exceptional mobilization which followed the death of George Floyd, suffocated by a white police officer in 2020.
