On Tuesday, the city of Memphis released approximately 21 hours of new “audio, surveillance and police body-camera footage that offered a fuller picture of the night police officers fatally beat Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black FedEx worker, during a traffic stop last January,” The New York Times reports.
The recordings provide additional context to what happened after the violent beating, including what the first responders and five fired police officers said in the final moments of Nichols’ life.
Unfortunately, this new information doesn’t offer up any additional insights into what alleged offense incited the traffic stop. But on one bodycam recording you can hear an “officer saying that Nichols ‘drove into oncoming traffic’ and ‘swerved like he’s going to hit my car’ after they turned on sirens and ordered him to stop. But the same officer also says Nichols ‘stopped at the red light and put his turn signal on.’”
According to the Associated Press, the commentary reveals that the public servants on the scene possessed an almost single-minded fixation “with the idea that he was high on drugs. Medics administered Naloxone to reverse a potential opioid overdose as Nichols slouched, unresponsive, after officers propped him up against a car.” You can hear one of the EMTs claiming, “He’s not injured. He’s just high.”
One thing made abundantly clear is that the videos all show Nichols attempting “to comply with the officers’ rapid-fire demands,” nor do they show him “reaching for a gun.”
In one of the especially damning recordings, you can hear a discussion between officers who had arrived on the scene but did not appear to partake in the violence. “I have a bad feeling about this,” divulged the officer.
Memphis city officials made the recordings public “based on a state judge’s order, which came down the same day that former officer Desmond Mills Jr. pleaded guilty in November to federal charges in the case.” The city also has plans to release several written documents related to the case in the next two weeks.
Per the city’s website, “The City is continuing to review documents for compliance with court order and will begin releasing documents in 14 days.”
Newly sworn Mayor Paul Young said, “Obviously, this is painful for all of us.”
Legal representatives of the Nichols family, including attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, are currently reviewing the footage as they pursue the family’s $550 million lawsuit.
Their statement reads: “As our legal team reviews the new bodycam videos of Tyre Nichols’ horrific death at the hands of Memphis Police, we expect the videos to affirm what we have said from day one: that there was absolutely no justification for the officers’ brutal and inhumane actions.”