After having hugged the mother of Tire Nichols for a long time in the church in Memphis where the tribute to the young African-American who was beaten by the police was organized, Kamala Harris had harsh words for the agents who beaten as he cried out that he had done nothing 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 hammered in front of the crowd.
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,” he said again.
A strong symbol, a brother of George Floyd, a black man in his forties whose death in 2020 under the knee of a white police officer had triggered massive anti-racism demonstrations, was present, as was Breonna Taylor’s mother. The 26-year-old African-American was shot dead by police in her Kentucky apartment in 2020 in the middle of the night and became an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement. And it was the Reverend Al Sharpton, a figure in the struggle for civil rights, who delivered the funeral oration.
Tire Nichols, 29, was arrested on January 7 by officers from a special unit in Memphis, in the southern United States, for a simple traffic violation, according to the police. But beaten relentlessly, so much so that he had become unrecognizable according to his family, he died three days later in hospital.
Kamala Harris had been invited to the funeral by Tyre Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, and stepfather Rodney Wells. As a sign of the attention paid by the White House to this affair, President Joe Biden himself spoke last week with the parents of Tire Nichols to salute “their courage and their strength”, a few hours before the publication of the video of his ordeal at the hands of the police.
RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells were also invited by the parliamentary group bringing together African-American elected officials to attend Mr. Biden’s State of the Union speech on February 7 in Congress in Washington.
The unbearable images of the arrest and beatings inflicted on the young man by the agents were broadcast, without cuts, by the largest channels in the country, raising fears of a social conflagration to the authorities.
The five police officers involved were fired and charged with murder. The “Scorpion Unit” to which they belonged, which had the mission of reducing the number of illegal activities in sensitive neighborhoods by deploying more police there, was dismantled. Three firefighters were dismissed in connection with the facts and two other police officers suspended.
President Biden plans to host members of the Caucus of African-American lawmakers at the White House on Thursday to “discuss legislation on police reform and other shared priorities,” said Olivia Dalton, a spokeswoman for the executive.