Too right the bystanders in the Tyre Nichols video are being held to account.
He was the delivery driver, dad of one and keen skateboarder kicked, punched and struck repeatedly with a baton while handcuffed in an horrific assault caught on camera on January 7.
He died of his injuries three days later.
The two Memphis Fire Department employees shown ambling onto the scene in the video and appearing to engage officers in chit-chat – before even attending to 29-year-old Tyre – have been relieved of their duties pending an investigation.
I’m glad the scrutiny comes after swift action to fire and charge five officers with second-degree murder – surely the blueprint for whenever this happens again.
I’m glad some of the other officers who failed to step in and stop the shocking assault are also on the hook. At one point, before an ambulance arrives, 10 of them are seen standing near Nichols body. No-one helps him.
And I’m glad that the controversial ‘Scorpion Unit’ from which some of the sacked officers came, was disbanded at the weekend.
Every case and conviction it has ever been involved in must surely now be re-examined. What I’m not glad about is that three years after George Floyd we are here again.
Nichols is clearly an extreme example but the sad history of Black people acting as oppressors in a white establishment is a long one.
Just think about the Tory ministers, past and present, and commentators who would willingly purge this country of people who look like them and leave migrants to drown in the English Channel.
While public lynchings continued in the US into the 1940s, now we just show them on social media.
I spoke with my kids to ensure they did not watch ahead of the Nichols video release on Friday.
We just cannot normalise watching any more men who look like us being murdered on camera.
I’m frustrated that – as exasperated and appalled as we all are over Nichols – his assault already appears to be falling down the global news agenda. It’s as if the world believes that, having shown outrage and disgust at the George Floyd killing, it has done its bit.
More than 1,100 people in the US were killed by the police last year alone.
Black people made up 26% of them, even though they consist of just 13% of the population.
Body cameras have not reduced it. The officers brutalised Nichols repeatedly despite wearing them – which speaks to their general lack of accountability. The supposed reform that politicians have been calling for since Floyd won’t reduce it.
Especially since a bill to increase police accountability has stalled in Congress, unable to get support from Republicans. Most of the reaction is all talk.
I remember believing things would change after officers were caught on video battering Rodney King back in 1991. Thirty years on police do the filming themselves.
During the World Cup I wrote here that I was more concerned about heading to the US in 2026 than I ever was in Qatar.
Nichols’ death – after Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Jayland Walker (shot 46 times), Eric Garner and thousands of others – is the reason why.
If you are Black, people and police are taught to fear you. The world is fed the myth that you are aggressive.
The justice system denies us.
Officers you believe will show empathy instead buy into the belief that they need to uphold the brutal culture of unwarranted, deadly force to fit in. Even when you comply it isn’t enough.
