How do Black officers respond to the ongoing debate around policing?
The five officers who beat Tyre Nichols were charged with murder and fired, and a sixth officer was fired soon after. As of yesterday, seven more officers are facing internal investigations and further discipline for Nichols’s death. Matt Rourke/AP Photo
Conversations on police brutality are sparking again across the nation after 29-year-old Tyre Nichols was brutally beaten by five officers with the Memphis Police Department last month. Nichols died in a hospital three days following the beating. This incident reminded some people of other victims of police brutality, such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Laquan McDonald and Michael Brown.
But in the case of Tyre Nichols, this is an instance where the officers involved looked like the victim. The five police officers that brutally beat up Nichols were Black. The previously mentioned victims died at the hands of white police officers.
To talk about the role of Black police and the ongoing debate around police policies, we were joined by a Chicago police detective and a professor of criminal justice.
GUESTS:
Miltonette Craig
Assistant Professor, Sam Houston State University Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology (former Illinois State University professor)
Jermira Trapp
Detective, Chicago Police Department
Prepared for web by Owen Henderson
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