Tyre Nichols Footage Shows Brutal Police Assault, Prompts Protests Nationwide

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 10:10 a.m. ET. 

Authorities released the footage of the brutal assault on 29-year-old Tyre Nichols by the Memphis Police on Friday night. There were four videos, three from body cameras worn by the officers and one from a police surveillance camera stationed at the corner of the street, according to NBC News. The deeply disturbing footage shows Nichols being forcefully yanked out of his car by the police and being beaten and kicked, calling out for his mother. 

Cities across the country have broken out into protests. Memphis, Tennessee, where Nichols lived and was killed, gathered at a park and marched through the streets, causing I-55 bridge over the Mississippi River to close down. Protesters organized protests in in other major cities, like New York, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. Los Angeles, Detroit, Dallas, and more. Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, spoke at a vigil for her son on Thursday, asking for peaceful protests. “I don’t want us burning up cities, tearing up our streets, because that’s not what my son stood for.”  

Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was pulled over by Memphis police on the evening of January 7 “on suspicion of reckless driving,” per the New York Times, resulting in what the Memphis police described as two “confrontations,” the latter of which resulted in an ambulance being called. Nichols died three days later. Nichols, a father of a young boy, worked at Fed-Ex and enjoyed skateboarding and photography. A January 26 vigil for Nichols was held at a local skate park.

The footage was released sometime after 6 p.m. CT, according to Shelby County district attorney general Steve Mulroy. In the weeks since Nichols’s death, there have been several indications of the severity of the case, while the release of the footage of Nichols’s death was continuously postponed. 

A lawyer representing Nichols’s family described the footage, saying, “Not only was it violent, it was savage.” The preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by the family found that Nichols experienced “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” The director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said of the footage, “In a word, it’s absolutely appalling.” And Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis compared the killing to the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more horrified and disgusted, sad […] and, to some degree, confused,” Davis told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in a Friday interview on Good Morning America.

On January 18, the Department of Justice announced a civil rights investigation into the killing, following state authorities launching their own. All five officers involved in Nichols’s death, who were also Black, have been fired and charged with second-degree murder and have been released on bond.

In a statement after the video was released, Rep. Cori Bush said, “Let’s be clear: merely diversifying police forces will never address the violent, racist architecture that underpins our entire criminal legal system. The mere presence of Black officers does not stop policing from being a tool of white supremacy.” 

The video’s release comes at a boiling point for policing and protests nationwide. On January 3, 31-year-old teacher Keenan Anderson – cousin to Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of the Black Lives Matter Movement – was tased to death by Los Angeles police. Footage of his death showed Anderson begging for help, saying, “They’re trying to George Floyd me.” 

And on January 18 in Atlanta, a forest defender was killed by gunfire from law enforcement officers who were attempting to drive out protesters against the city’s new “Cop City,” a training center for police officers set to be built in an Atlanta forest. Nineteen people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” for participating in organizing associated with the “Stop Cop City” campaign. On January 26, following protests after the shooting, Georgia governor Brian Kemp declared a 15-day state of emergency and called in the National Guard.

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