{"id":9133,"date":"2023-01-30T20:47:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-31T01:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=9133"},"modified":"2024-09-24T22:06:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T02:06:48","slug":"justice-for-tyre-nichols-solidarity-against-police-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/01\/justice-for-tyre-nichols-solidarity-against-police-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice for Tyre Nichols! Solidarity against police murder!"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he horrifying video released Friday showing five Memphis police officers severely beating a defenseless and compliant Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, on January 7 has once again exposed the brutal racism of police murder.<\/p>\n

We at Tempest<\/em> stand with his family and the communities impacted by his death. We are in solidarity with the ongoing movement for Black Lives against racist killer cops.<\/p>\n

Nichols\u2019 murder comes in the wake of a record year of police killings. The Guardian<\/em> reports<\/a> that in 2022, law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people\u2014roughly 100 people per month. Most of those killings\u2014more than 70 percent\u2014occurred during routine, non-threatening police encounters. In more than 30 percent of cases, the person killed was fleeing for their life\u2014as was the case with Nichols. While making up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, Black people constituted 24 percent of those killed by police. Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people.<\/p>\n

Like every person murdered by police, however, Tyre Nichols was much more than another name, more than another statistic. He was a father to a four-year-old son and a FedEx worker. His mother, Row Vaughn Wells, was extremely close to her son. He had moved from Sacramento to Memphis to be near her, they shared a home there with his stepfather, and he had a tattoo of her name on his arm. He enjoyed skateboarding and photography. (You can find some of his work here<\/a>.) NPR published<\/a> a video\u2014a beautiful and heartbreaking counterpoint to the police video\u2014of Nichols riding a skateboard in the sunshine, jumping stairs, curbs, and walls while making elaborate turns.<\/p>\n

On the night of January 7, police pulled Nichols over and dragged him violently from his car. All five police officers at the scene weighed over 200 pounds in comparison to Nichols, who, despite his considerable height of 6\u20193\u201d, weighed less than 150 pounds. (He was living with Crohn\u2019s disease.) Nichols fled on foot toward his mother\u2019s house after the police Tasered him. Police caught him and threw him to the ground even as he protested that he was complying with their orders to lie down. Crying for his mother, he was kicked, punched, and beaten with a baton until he was bleeding, immobile, and in shock.<\/p>\n

Emergency workers were slow to arrive. The New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> that medics stood by passively and even walked away as Nichols writhed in pain for six minutes and 40 seconds. 23 minutes passed<\/a> before a stretcher arrived on the scene. Nichols died in the hospital three days later.<\/p>\n