The city of Memphis, Tennessee, released graphic video of a traffic stop that led to police officers beating a man who later died.
Footage involving Memphis police officers and Tyre Nichols documents officers kicking and pepper spraying Nichols, with officers discussing their different actions during the altercation and complaining about their injuries.
Nichols, 29, was hospitalized after the officers assaulted him while conducting a traffic stop on Jan. 7. He later died from his wounds, police said, on Jan. 10.
The footage was split into four videos, taken from either body camera footage or surveillance cameras on street poles.
First video
Footage from the first video shows police vehicles surrounding Nichols’s car, with an officer opening Nichols’s driver-side door and yanking him out, yelling at him to “get the f*** out the f***ing car.”
Officers are yelling at him to “get on the f***ing ground” after Nichols visibly is on the ground. Nichols repeatedly says, “All right, all right, I’m on the ground,” and, “You don’t need to do that.”
At one point, he calmly says, “Please stop, stop,” to which an officer says he needs to turn around before “I break your s***.”
One officer says, “Bitch, put your hands behind your back before I break them,” and “I’ll knock your ass the f*** out.” Nichols responds with, “You guys are really doing a lot right now.”
“I’m just trying to go home,” Nichols says to the officers before he breaks free of the officers and tries to run away. An officer deploys his stun gun as Nichols is trying to run.
Second video
The second video, which has no volume, shows footage from a pole camera of officers surrounding Nichols while he is on the ground. He appears to be unable to walk and lies on the concrete, prompting the officers to drag his body toward the police car.
Nichols is leaning against the police car while officers walk around the corner where they arrested him. The end of the video shows a stretcher next to him and an ambulance arriving.
Third video
The third video shows most of the brutal attack at the corner where he was arrested, with officers kicking and pepper-spraying him as he is on the ground. One officer says, “Do you want to get sprayed again?”
Nichols is screaming, “Mom!” while officers keep spraying him. The officers try to get Nichols’s hands behind his back, telling him, “Give me your f***ing hands.”
The officer whose body camera footage serves as video three accidentally sprays himself in the eyes. That same officer walks back up to Nichols and tells his fellow officers to “watch out” as he pulls out his baton.
“I’m gonna baton the f*** out of you,” the officer says, per his personal body camera footage.
The entire time, Nichols appears to be unable to speak clearly and limps while officers are surrounding him.
Fourth video
The fourth video includes another close-up of Nichols’s arrest, but the officer’s body camera goes dark after it is knocked from his chest and cast to the ground after Nichols is sprayed and struggles with the officers.
The audio is similar to the third video, which captures Nichols moaning as officers are attempting to move him.
The officer retrieves his body camera from the ground and says, “He’s on something,” to the agreement of the other officers. The officers say from their point of view that Nichols was cutting through traffic.
Officers are heard requesting fire department emergency services to be brought to them, making sighs as if out of breath and commenting to each other about the situation while Nichols sits next to them on the ground. One officer complains about his knee, and another complains about his leg.
Nichols can be heard asking for water, and emergency services tend to him while officers discuss the ways they hit and sprayed him.
FIVE MEMPHIS OFFICERS CHARGED IN DEATH OF TYRE NICHOLS
His family, which had been shown the footage on Monday, had compared the footage to the 1991 video of police beating Rodney King in Los Angeles.
A link to all four of the videos can be found here. The footage contains graphic content.
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Former officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith are charged with second-degree murder, two counts of official misconduct, one count of official oppression, aggravated assault-act in concert, and two counts of aggravated kidnapping.
Haley, Martin, and Smith are in jail on $350,000 bond, and Bean and Mills were booked on $250,000 bond.
