By Landis Lain
I watched the video of police officers as they beat Tyre Nichols to death during a traffic stop. It broke my heart. Again. How many times does this have to happen before people realize that this culture of brutalizing people must stop? Why do police officers continue to think it is acceptable to brutalize and kill people for what essentially was a failure to obey a command? Why did they drag him out of the car? They never tell him why he was stopped. They never say he has committed a crime. They had his car. They obviously could have simply let him run and gone to his home to pick him up at a later date if he had actually committed some crime besides driving while Black in America. It broke my heart that five Black men beat another Black man to death in acts reminiscent of every moment of police brutality that has ever occurred in this country. They treated him like a runaway slave and did everything to him except release dogs to catch him and bring him down. Then they beat him to death because they could. The video was horrifying evidence that change must occur.
The so-called scorpion squad expected to engage in that egregious behavior with impunity. The culture and thought process that it is okay to brutalize people must change. The entire police culture in this country must be overhauled. Because obviously, the race of the police officers does not matter, they had the sanction of the Blue Lives Matter folks. If there hadn’t been a video, those police officers would never have been charged. I find it interesting that because the officers were Black some people are calling it Black on Black crime instead of Blue on Black crime. Because those police officers beat him to death with the cloak of blue surrounding them. The entire brotherhood of police and fire and emergency response stood there and watched the modern-day lynching of a young man who was calling for his mom.
Some have yelled at me for watching the video, but I will be damned if I cannot at least bear witness to Tyre Nichols’ suffering. Six Black families are destroyed. That video is the reason the officers are being charged. That video is the reason that Tyre Nichols’ last testimony on this earth is immortalized. That video is proof that no matter the race of the police officer, we as Black people must all be terrified of the police because they are not our friends. Did no one notice that the police response to put down the Memphis protest was greater than the response of the United States government to put down an insurrection? I have a son. A grandson. Sons of my heart. They are in very real danger from the folks who are supposed to serve and protect their community. Justice must be served. We must not rest until justice is served for us all.
