Memphis Police Face Pressure to Reform Culture After Nichols Killing and Other Abuse Claims

Monterrious Harris, 23, rarely leaves his east Memphis home these days. He says a violent encounter with city police, just days before the January beating death of motorist Tyre Nichols, left him badly shaken. Five former officers, all of them Black, face murder charges in the Nichols case.

Harris says he had gone to his cousin's apartment and was trying to back his Chrysler 300 into a parking space when he was intercepted. He recalls masked men, two of them carrying assault rifles, who shone a flashlight in his eyes and ordered him out of the car. They never identified themselves as police, he says, and he thought he was being robbed. They were members of the so-called Scorpion task force, the same unit involved in the attack on Nichols.

Harris says he was thrown to the ground, dragged, stomped and beaten until neighbors came out of their apartments, and he believes those witnesses saved his life. He ended up in the hospital and was arrested on charges that a judge later dismissed. He says he has not worked since, and the sight of police cars or the sound of sirens still sets him off.

His attorney, Robert Spence, is pursuing a $5 million lawsuit against the city. Spence argues that Memphis sent inexperienced and largely unsupervised officers into high-crime areas to aggressively police them, and says the aim was to intimidate residents, particularly young Black men. He describes it as a political move to look tough on crime in a city with one of the highest violent crime rates in the country.

The Scorpion unit was disbanded after Nichols died, but mayoral candidate Van Turner, a former president of the Memphis NAACP, says the damage to public trust was already done. Turner said residents want safe communities and a return to community policing, but not at the cost of innocent people being hurt or killed. He added that many were stunned that Black officers were accused of beating a Black man to death.

The case has put new scrutiny on a department that has previously operated under court orders to address unconstitutional abuses of power. The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal civil rights investigation and later a civil pattern-or-practice probe. That inquiry will examine use of force; stops, searches and arrests; discriminatory policing; and dangerously aggressive traffic enforcement.

City councilman JB Smiley welcomed the federal review, saying there has been little transparency or candor from police leadership. The council has passed ordinances to curb petty traffic stops and to create an online portal for police misconduct records, and it approved a pay raise to help recruit and retain officers. The effects have yet to be seen. Police Director Cerelyn Davis and Mayor Jim Strickland declined NPR's questions. Strickland earlier said he was disappointed by the probe and hoped it would find a department that abides by the Constitution. Council member Frank Colvett said that when a police chief says the culture of the department trumps policy, "you got a big problem," though he expects the DOJ to find pockets of misconduct rather than widespread corruption.

Some activists doubt the investigation will change much given the history of past probes and settlements. Amber Sherman of Black Lives Matter and Decarcerate Memphis says police target poorer, majority-Black zip codes and wants officials to hold the department accountable, including by firing the chief. A 19-year-old Black man who died in police custody last month after being detained for allegedly rummaging through mailboxes is the subject of a separate state investigation.

The Rev. Earle Fisher, who joined clergy in petitioning the Justice Department for the probe, said its findings could validate long-standing complaints. Others, including food truck operator Keedran Franklin, are calling for more investment in addressing poverty and for less conflict between residents and police.

RowVaughn Wells, Nichols' mother, has filed a $550 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city, alleging her son died "at the hands of a modern-day lynch mob." She said she is heartened that federal investigators are in town, and hopes that, as with George Floyd in Minneapolis, her family's loss can bring change.