“From Slave Patrol to Police” : The Murder of Tyre Nichols and the Corrupt Legacy of Cops
According to a 2022 statistic, there were 660,288 full-time police officers employed in the United States in 2021. That number was the highest in 2008 with 708,569 officers, and the lowest in 2013 with 626,942 officers. According to another statistic, only about 13% of police officers are Black. 13%.
On January 7th, 2023, five Black Memphis police officers severely beat 29 year old Tyre Nichols, a Black father of one and FedEx employee. Nichols died from injuries from the beating three days later. Initially, officers approached Nichols because of reckless driving. Upon his attempt to flee the crime scene, officers pursued Nichols, eventually catching him and resorting to physical violence.
After much deliberation, the Memphis Police Department released the body camera footage to the public. According to a recent article published by CNN, “Video Shows Tyre Nichols Calling For His Mother, Beaten By Officers Now Charged In His Death”, sources say, “The city…[of Memphis]… on Friday night released body camera and surveillance video of the January 7 traffic stop and beating that led to the 29-year-old’s death in hospital from his injuries three days later. The release comes a day after five Memphis police officers, who also are Black and have been fired, were charged with murder.”
One of the most polarizing elements of the breaking story was that all 5 police officers were Black. This comes after a majority of police brutality incidents have featured white police officers killing unarmed Black and Brown men and women. Black on Black crimes are not something unheard of. Black policemen are not something unheard of. Then why is this element of the incident so clear in the minds of Black people in America? Because it’s once again highlighting the legacy of a broken system.
Writers Rick Jervis and Jessica Guynn, in their 2023 article for USAToday, “When The Officers Are Black: Tyre Nichols’ Death Raises Tough Questions About Race In Policing”, writes, “How the officers’ race will influence protesters in the streets – and any future jury in the courtroom – remains to be seen. But experts, activists and attorneys told USA TODAY that the race of the officers involved is far less important than the race of the victim. They say a ‘historically biased culture of policing’ puts Black people at risk regardless of an officer’s race.
The murder of Tyre Nichols reveals a grotesque but recurring flaw in the police system: police was and is never about protecting. It is about power. It is about control. How else do five able-bodied individuals, who are assumed to have been trained to de-escalate and respond in a safe and timely manner, end up brutally beating and murdering an innocent 29 year old unarmed man? They do so when they feel their authority has been threatened, masked under the pretense of their own safety.
The origins of the police can be traced back to the “Slave Patrol” of the 1700-1800’s. According to the NAACP website, the Slave Patrol was created with one goal in mind: “to establish a system of terror and squash slave uprisings with the capacity to pursue, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners.” The individuals were established to enforce black codes and fugitive slave laws in order to maintain a system rooted in control and dehumanization.
This system has metamorphosed into an even more brutal system that has claimed the lives of millions of Black men through imprisonment and death. America has seen the birth of what is now presently known as the modern police system that has begat the unintended legacy of implicit bias, racial profiling, prison industrial complex, and the incessant killing of Black men.
