Tire Nichols Arrest: Three Memphis Fire Department Members Fired

UPGRADE DAY

Three firefighters and two new police officers are facing disciplinary investigations into the fatal beating of African American Tire Nichols, for which five black officers have already been fired and charged with murder, announced Memphis police and firefighters on Monday. 

Three firefighters and two new officers are facing disciplinary investigations into the fatal beating of African-American Tire Nichols, for which five black officers have already been fired and charged with murder, Memphis police and firefighters said Monday.

On January 7, 29-year-old Tire Nichols was arrested by police officers from a special unit in this large city in the southern United States. The officers accused him of a traffic violation: he was badly beaten and died three days later in the hospital.

pic.twitter.com/p9ldt4w5Y0

— Memphis Fire Department (@MEM_Fire) January 30, 2023

In the early afternoon, local police spokeswoman Kim Elder said in a statement that a sixth officer had been “suspended from the beginning of the investigations (…), at the same time as the other agents”.

The officer in question is identified as Preston Hemphill, a white police officer on duty in this major southern US city since 2018.

A new statement from Memphis police, posted late Monday on Twitter , announced the suspension of a seventh police officer, without identifying him.

The city's fire department also announced, in a separate statement on the social network, that it had dismissed two paramedics and a lieutenant . 

“Our investigation concluded that the two paramedics responded based on the initial nature of the call (a person who had been pepper sprayed) and the information they received at the scene, and that they did not failed to conduct a proper review” of Tire Nichols, Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said.

The three terminated individuals are accused of violating “numerous rules and protocols” of the Fire Department. Memphis Fire Department, added Gina Sweat.

Questions

The images of the tragedy, captured by the officers' on-board cameras and surveillance cameras, were made public on Friday. 

We see the police brutally extracting the young man from his vehicle. Pinned to the ground, he is sprayed with tear gas and targeted by an electric pulse gun. He then fled on foot to his mother's home. Caught, he is beaten with kicks, punches and truncheons.

The role played by each of the police officers has not been made public. But for the lawyers of the family of Tire Nichols, Preston Hemphill is the one who used his electric taser on the young man. According to them, he let go “I hope they will smash him”, when his colleagues went in pursuit of the young man.

“Why is his identity and his role in the Tyler's death are only made public today? “, ask Me Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci in a press release. 

“One wonders why the white agent involved in this brutal attack was protected from public attention, from disciplinary action and prosecution? they add, demanding “all the answers”.

The ordeal of Tire Nichols has aroused horror and incomprehension in the United States. Several demonstrations in his honor took place this weekend in the country, without taking on the scale of the exceptional mobilization that followed the death of George Floyd, suffocated by a white police officer in 2020.