Four of the five former Memphis Police Department officers charged for the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were suspended or reprimanded in prior incidents while working for the department, according to recently unveiled personnel files.
Two of the officers were written up after failing to fill out required reports about the use of force during arrests. Two other officers were suspended without pay for traffic accidents, and one of those officers was suspended for failing to file a report about an incident of domestic abuse.
The officers include Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Justin Smith, and Emmitt Martin III, who were fired from the department in the wake of the 29-year-old Black man’s death and charged with second-degree murder.
Tadarrius Bean, who was also fired and indicted, is the only officer involved in the death of Nichols who has not faced prior disciplinary actions, according to city records.
The officers faced little if any consequences, according to reviews of the officers’ records, and they were praised in at least two instances, with other officers describing their actions as one-time events.
In a summary for a hearing about a domestic violence call that went undocumented, an officer was credited as a “top producer” for the department.
Mr Haley received a written reprimand in June 2021 following a February incident in which he failed to fill out a “response to resistance form” after a woman detained by Mr Haley had accused him of using excessive or unnecessary force. The woman complained after he “grabbed a complainant by the arm and turned her around to be handcuffed as she resisted arrest,” according to the charges.
Memphis officers are required to complete a response to resistance form when “any part of the office’s body” is used during an arrest, according to the department.
A summary of the hearing in the case said that Mr Haley was “simply mistaken … as to the amount of force necessary”.
Memphis Police Department Lt William Acred described him during the hearing as a “hard-working officer” who “routinely makes good decisions” and that the incident was a “limited event”.
A few months later in August of 2021, Mr Haley lost control of his cruiser, hit a curb and a stop sign.
He received a traffic citation and the case was dismissed.
Mr Mills also was reprimanded for failing to fill out a response to resistance form following an incident in March of 2019. He is accused of taking a woman to the ground during an arrest following a traffic stop.
A hearing summary claimed that he did not fill out the form because he “did not realize it applied to his actions” in that case.
He also was reprimanded for “rough or careless handling of equipment” after accidentally dropping his mobile device during a traffic stop; it was run over by another vehicle.
In March of 2019, Mr Martin was suspended for three days without pay after failing to check the back of his squad car at the end of a shift after transporting two suspects. A handgun was found on the floor of the back seat.
The following November, he was suspended for one day without pay after failing to issue a report after responding to a domestic disturbance call two months earlier on 27 September.
He said he did not believe a report was necessary because people inside the home were intoxicated and none of the parties involved wanted to file a report. “Officer[s] cannot base their decision to arrest based on the victim’s consent or on the perception of the victim’s willingness to cooperate with prosecution,” according to the case file.
During a hearing, Officer James Schmedes defended Mr Martin as “one of the shift’s top producers”.
Mr Smith received a two-day suspension in April of 2021 after driving an unmarked cruiser that crashed into the back of a Ford F-150, which then hit the driver’s side of a Chevrolet Malibu.
The personnel files were released on the eve of Nichols’s funeral in Memphis, where the Rev Al Sharpton will deliver a eulogy, and Vice President Kamala Harris and the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor will be in attendance. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump – who is representing Nichols’s family – will also deliver a “call to action” with demands for urgent reform in the wake of police violence against Black Americans.
