“If you were an officer or first responder and you sat there and watched this young man die and you did nothing to help resuscitate him, you did nothing to give him aid, you’re just as culpable as the people who beat him down and killed him,” NAACP Memphis Branch President Van Turner said after video of the stop was released.
The United States Attorney’s Office, FBI Memphis Field Office and Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division launched a federal investigation into possible civil rights violations by the former officers.
These kind of charges are rare. On average, on-duty law enforcement officers were charged with federal civil rights violations 41 times per year over the past two decades, according to data analyzed by Syracuse University.
What happened during the traffic stop?
Haley was the first officer to pull Nichols from the car. Martin III arrived shortly after and began to restrain Nichols, according to police documents obtained last week by the Memphis Commercial Appeal, part of the USA TODAY Network.,
Nichols fled and Smith, Bean and Mills, Jr., were the first three officers to catch up him. They restrained Nichols, then Haley arrived and began kicking him. Bean and Smith held Nichols’ arms while Mills, Jr., pepper sprayed and then hit Nichols with a baton.
After the beating, Haley took photos of Nichols with his cellphone and sent them to multiple people, according to police documents.
Who are the former officers charged in Nichols’ death?
The former officers, all of whom are Black, were part of a violent crime unit called the SCORPION Unit, which was disbanded after Nichols’ death.
Bean, 24, and Haley, 30, were hired by the Memphis Police Department in August 2020. In 2016, Haley was accused of punching an inmate in the face during a random search while working as a Shelby County Corrections officer in a federal lawsuit. The suit was later dismissed.
Mills, 32, was hired by the Memphis Police Department in March 2017. His attorney Blake Ballin told reporters he was previously a jailer in Tennessee and Mississippi.
Martin, 30, and Smith, 28, were hired by the Memphis Police Department in March 2018.
Dig Deeper
Contributing: The Associated Press; Micaela A Watts, Katherine Burgess, Laura Testino and Josh Keefe , Memphis Commercial Appeal
Contact Breaking News Reporter N’dea Yancey-Bragg at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @NdeaYanceyBragg