On Jan 7th, 2023 five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee were caught on video abusing a black man to the point of killing him during a simple traffic stop over a minor infraction. On video, it appeared that the reason for stopping Tyre Nichols was for a minor issue – a tinted license plate cover. Later, the police claimed that they pulled him over for reckless driving but it’s questionable whether or not that is true. Nichols sustained heavy abuse from the five officers and died three days later in the hospital.

The five officers were part of a special unit in the Memphis police department, called SCORPION, which stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. This unit is supposed to focus on the city’s worst crimes – homicides, robberies, assaults and other felonies. It would be natural to question why the SCORPION unit was involved with stopping a black man for a simple traffic violation such as an obscured license plate.

This is, unfortunately, an all too familiar occurrence in interactions between US police officers and minorities. However, what is different here is that the officers, this time, were also black. This highlights that abuse of minorities is not only being perpetrated by one race over another, but in fact, even within the same race.

According to a study by the University of South Carolina, black people are 63 percent more likely to be pulled over even though they drive 16 percent less than other races. This means that black people are 95 percent more likely to be pulled over than other racial groups.

Not only is there a greater rate of black people being pulled over but once they are pulled over there is a much higher rate of either incarceration or physical altercations with the police.

Another study conducted by researchers for the Public Policy Institute of California, in the state of California, stops of black individuals are more likely to result in an arrest, at 9.5 percent of stops compared with 5.6 percent of stops of white individuals resulting in a jail booking. In other words, almost 1 in 10 Black people stopped are booked, while slightly more than 1 in 20 white people are. Furthermore, once stopped, black people experience a higher rate of intrusive action by the police. Black Californians are roughly three times more likely than white Californians to experience a stop that involves the police officer’s weapon.

In the case of Nichols the circumstances of the interaction with the police are further complicated by the fact that it was a special crimes unit which made the stop and killed Nichols.

According to law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller, the creation of the specialized unit (SCORPION) made sense for Memphis. “Statistically, crime was off the hook. Tactically, it was the logical move for a police department to create SCORPION. These units are sent to areas where the police are tracking upticks in violent crime.”

However, Miller goes on to explain, “The problems may lie in three key places: Did they receive specific, tailored training in de-escalation and how to manage events from spinning up too fast? In the selection process, beyond choosing officers who had records of making gun arrests, did they look at their civilian complaint history, use of force histories, and talk with their former supervisors about their fit for this kind of work? Finally, supervision”.

The public reaction, unsurprisingly, has been one of shock, dismay and sadness. The black community in the US is unfortunately already sensitive to police stops and interactions. This case is very difficult and probably compounded by the fact that the officers in question are black.

Nyla King-Boyd is a junior at Cathedral Catholic high school and currently one of the leaders for Black Student Union.

“The whole idea of bringing light to this issue of the black community is good, but I think that with some of the issues going on with BLM[Black Lives Matter] situation like money used advocating for Black civil rights has painted a bad image with what BLM stands for and I also think some of the violence that came along with the protests put a bad taste in people’s mouth,” King-Boyd said in reference to the public opinion on the Black Lives Matter movement.

We talked more about how the message it is trying to send is good but the execution and actions of BLM movement have gone too far and tainted their image.

With all the public attention that came since 2020 with rampant police brutality, the BLM movement has been tainted with performative activism, and those who use the chaos to their advantage.

“With the actions of some people who are supposed to be associated with BLM it has not been great,” said King-Boyd. “It distracts from the real purpose of what we are trying to protest.”

So the actions of a few members of the movement has caused the BLM movement to be looked down upon as a whole.

Police brutality and racism in America has been occurring for centuries. A lot of it dates back to Jim Crow laws and lynching way back from the 1870’s. While change and movements towards social issues such as this might seem impossible, given how changes in the course of 100 years or even 50 years, there will continue to be forms of movements and fights for changes and it takes a very admirable and honest person to take action. America has changed drastically compared to what it was in 1776 and while things might seem chaotic now, taking a step back to analyze will realize these sort of social issues have always occurred. Maintaining optimism and hope is far better than dreading and despairing everything that occurs today.