Tire Nichols: Memphis Scorpion’s street crime unit is called upon to disband

The elite SCORPION street crime unit of the Memphis Police Department is called upon to disband, after several members were involved in the traffic control that resulted in the beating and death of Tire Nichols.

The unit was created to fight rising violent crime, but critics say its aggressive tactics and lack of oversight are a recipe for tragedies like Nichols’ fatal beating, revealed in its full brutality in footage released Friday. released.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Nichols’ family, said such units could turn into “a pack of wolves” and called for the SCORPION unit to be terminated.

“We believe this was a pattern and practice, and Tire is dead because that pattern and practice was not monitored by the people who were supposed to monitor it,” Crump said at a news conference.

Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’ death, though it was unclear how many of them were part of the SCORPION unit, and MPD has not released that information.

The recently released footage of the first traffic stop leading to Nichols’ death shows officers in the unmarked Dodge Chargers favored by the unit, wearing hoodies with the logo of the Organized Crime Unit, of which SCORPION is a part.

Created in October 2021 as a result of pressure over rising crime, SCORPION stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in our Neighbourhoods. Its mandate is to deter murder, assault and robbery.

Memphis officials have said the unit is made up of about 40 officers in four teams focusing on crime hotspots.

Each team has members focused on auto theft, gang investigations and “crime suppression,” Mayor Jim Strickland said in a January 2022 speech.

A 2021 video of the launch of the unit showed several dozen officers, mostly men, going for roll call before going on patrol. Some wore civilian clothes and drove unmarked cars.

In the first few months of its existence, between October 2021 and January 23, 2022, SCORPION made 566 arrests.

Of those, according to Strickland, 390 were felony arrests. Agents seized tens of thousands of dollars and more than 250 guns, the mayor said.

However, there have been previous complaints about SCORPION’s alleged heavy-handed tactics.

Cornell McKinney told WREG-TV that the same SCORPION team involved in Nichols’ death stopped him on Jan. 3, four days before Nichols’ fatal assault.

“All I heard is a ‘Freeze, get out of the car.’ Raise your MF hands before I blow your head off. You both get out of the car. Raise your hands,” he said, recalling the incident, which happened as he was driving home with a friend.

“So I put my hands up, and one of the officers came to the car, and he physically pulled me out by my shoulder with a gun no more than a foot from my head,” McKinney said.

McKinney said police accused them of having drugs in the car and demanded to know which of the two friends possessed the drugs.

But he says the police then admitted they had found no drugs and let the two men walk free.

When he later saw the officers charged with Nichols’ death, he recognized the faces of the same officers who had apprehended him.

The Five Agents – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith – have since been fired and charged with manslaughter.

A former veteran Memphis police officer, who said he knew each of the indicted ex-police officers, told CBS News that “for the most part, you have to be a go-getter” to join the SCORPION unit.

“You have to be someone who wants to make a difference, who wants to get the bad guy,” he said of the unit’s “pro-active” mentality.

“I never thought this would happen,” added the former officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Because at least some of the officers charged with Nichols’ murder belonged to SCORPION, questions have been raised about whether they were acting as part of the unit when they apprehended him for alleged reckless driving.

Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, died in hospital three days after the January 7 violent physical confrontation with the five black officers.

The five officers have since been charged with manslaughter, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression and fired.

The Nichols case has raised concerns that the unit was straying from its core mission, lacked adequate oversight, and used tactics that increased the risk of violence.

Crump, the Nichols family’s attorney, pointed out that Nichols’ meeting with police began with a traffic stop, which is not part of the unit’s mandate to deal with violent crimes.

Critics say such stops are excuses to look for guns or drugs and can escalate into violence.

It is not the first time such units have come under scrutiny. In 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd, New York City dismantled its Anti-Crime Unit, which operated with similar tactics and goals to SCORPION.

Last January, amid rising violent crime, the Anti-Crime Unit was curtailed weeks after Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, took office and pledged to crack down on crime.

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis this week announced a review of all of the police’s specialized units, including SCORPION, in response to Nichols’ death. She called the incident “horrific, reckless and inhumane.”

The department did not immediately respond to questions about SCORPION’s status, past complaints against the unit, and whether all five officers were assigned to it.