Emotional farewell for Tyre Nichols in Memphis marked by calls for justice

MEMPHIS - Days after the horrific footage of Tyre Nichols’s beating by Memphis police was released, the city gathered to celebrate his life in an emotional funeral marked by anguished calls for justice by family members and dignitaries.

Among the mourners was Vice President Kamala Harris, who decried Nichols’s treatment by the police. “This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety. It was not in the interest of keeping the public safe because one must ask, was not it in the interest of keeping the public safe that Tyre Nichols would be with us today? Was he not also entitled to the right to be safe?” Harris said, standing just feet from Nichols’s black, flower-draped casket at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church.

“When we talk about public safety, let us understand what it means in its truest form: Tyre Nichols should have been safe,” Harris said. She praised Nichols’s family for their “strength, courage and grace” and said the nation “mourns” with them.

Both Harris and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who delivered the eulogy, urged Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a broad package of police reforms introduced after Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers in 2020. The proposed legislation would ban certain forms of force and establish a national database that would track problem officers.

Their calls were echoed by members of Nichols’s family, including his mother, RowVaughn Wells.

“Tyre was a beautiful person, and for this to happen to him is just unimaginable,” Wells said, her voice shaking and her face wet with tears. “That George Floyd bill . . . we need it passed. . . . Because if we don’t, the next child that dies - that blood is going to be on their hands.”

Sharpton said the officers in the Nichols case might have acted differently if they had known they might face “real accountability” for their actions. He said the case was particularly painful because Nichols, who was Black, was beaten by Black police officers. He said he believed race played a role in how they treated Nichols. “I believe that if [Nichols] had been white, you wouldn’t have beat him like that that night,” Sharpton said.

Addressing an audience that included relatives of others who had been killed by police, including family members of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Sharpton acknowledged Memphis’s anguished history as the city where Martin Luther King Jr. lost his life fighting for civil rights.

[Police reform talks are back in Congress, but there’s little hope for a deal]

Nichols had been killed “in the city that they slayed the dream,” Sharpton said. “What has happened to that dream?”

He said the civil rights movement is part of the reason the Black police officers were able to get hired by the police department, and their treatment of Nichols was a betrayal. “There’s nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors that you walk through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight to get you through them,” Sharpton said.

Nichols died Jan. 10, three days after an alleged traffic stop erupted into a beating by Memphis police officers who were part of a specialized unit tasked with curbing a surge of crime in the city.

Footage of the incident captured on police body-camera video and a city surveillance camera showed Nichols being repeatedly kicked and punched by the officers, who used their fists, a baton and a Taser on him. Nichols showed no signs of resisting arrest and at one point begged for his mother and his life.

The footage does not show what led to Nichols’s encounter with the police. An initial statement from the Memphis Police Department said Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving, but department officials now say they cannot substantiate that claim.

It took 22 minutes for an ambulance and stretcher to arrive at the scene after officers announced Nichols was in custody. The Memphis Fire Department said Monday that it had fired three emergency medical technicians who responded to the scene for violating “numerous” department policies, including a failure “to conduct an adequate patient assessment.”

[Tyre Nichols beating raises scrutiny on ‘elite’ police units]

Five Memphis officers - Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean, all of whom are Black - were subsequently fired from the department and later charged with second-degree murder and other counts in Nichols’s death. Two other officers have been relieved of their duties but not fired.

Local prosecutors have said additional charges could be filed in the case. The Justice Department is conducting a separate federal civil rights investigation into Nichols’s death.

On Wednesday, the city of Memphis announced it would release all audio and video footage related to Nichols’s case after its investigation is completed. In a statement, Jennifer Sink, the chief legal officer for the city, said she expected that investigation to be completed “in the next few weeks.”

Wednesday’s service was held in one of Memphis’s oldest and largest Black churches. As mourners arrived, they were greeted by pictures of Nichols - a son, brother and father of one - flashing on television screens throughout the sanctuary, including images of him skateboarding, one of his longtime hobbies.

At one point, a video montage showed images taken by Nichols, an amateur photographer who had been out taking pictures the night of his encounter with police.

The Rev. J. Lawrence Turner, the pastor of Mississippi Boulevard, opened the service by describing Nichols as “a good person,” “a beautiful soul,” and a “human being” who had been “denied his rights to life . . . denied the dignity of his humanity.”

“As we celebrate Tyre’s life and comfort this family, we serve notice to this nation that the rerun of this episode that makes Black lives hashtags has been canceled and will not be renewed for another season,” Turner said. “We have come, and we shall overcome.”

The service drew not only relatives of Nichols, but also members of the community, including some who shared their own experiences with police violence.

Toward the back of the chapel, Lorenzo Menton sat quietly by himself.

Menton, a 44-year-old born and raised in Memphis, did not know Nichols. But, he said, the day felt personal to him because he lost his brother in a police-involved shooting in June. He also said he recognized one of the officers charged in Nichols’s death from his own time behind bars years ago.

Demetrius Haley had been a corrections guard in Menton’s unit, he said, when Menton was incarcerated on a drug charge from 2007 to 2008.

Menton said he was at the funeral because he wanted to show his support and make it clear that he is expecting the officers to be convicted and sentenced. He also said he came because he saw his brother in Nichols.

“I’m looking at him like he’s my brother,” Menton said of Nichols, adding that he had watched the video of his beating. “I especially hate the part where he’s crying for his mama. I can see my brother calling out for my mother before he died.”

Wells, Nichols’s mother, was seated in the front pew next to Harris for the service and wept as speakers decried what had happened to her son. She was the last person to speak at the two-hour service, where she thanked everyone who was praying for her family and thinking of her son.

“I promise you, the only thing that’s keeping me going is the fact that I really, truly believe my son was sent here on assignment. And I guess now his assignment is done, and he’s been taken home,” Wells said, gasping through her tears.

From the back, a woman interrupted.

“He’s going to change the world,” the woman shouted.

“Yes,” Wells said.

“It’s not in vain,” the woman said.

“Yes,” Wells said.

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Bailey reported from Minneapolis. Bella reported from Washington.