Americans sickened and appalled by the bodycam video released Friday of the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis, Tennessee, poured out their horror, fury and frustration on social media.
The 29-year-old Black man died three days after he was viciously beaten and pepper-sprayed following a traffic stop.
“I am just trying to go home,” Nichols told police at one point.
Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, blasted the “depraved indifference toward human life” revealed in the video and called it “nothing short of an extra-judicial execution.”
Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor of political science at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, compared it to watching the vicious videotaped beating of Rodney King in 1991 by Los Angeles police officers during an arrest after a traffic stop. “It’s infuriating how little has changed since then,” she tweeted.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis also compared the two attacks, calling the video footage of Nichols’ beating “about the same if not worse” than that of LAPD officers attacking King.
“I was outraged. It was incomprehensible to me. I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything of that nature in my entire career,” Davis told CNN’s Don Lemon Thursday.
Lawmakers were calling for changes that would prevent the same type of brutal crime from happening again.
“Yes, the police officers who brutally murdered” Nichols “must be held accountable,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) demanded in a tweet. He also insisted: “We must do everything in our power to end police violence against people of color.”
Sen. Amy Klobucher (D-Minn.) said the nation owes it to Nichols, and to “so many others, to put an end to this brutality. Americans deserve a justice system that they don’t fear.”
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Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said her “heart goes out” to Nichols’ mother and his entire family, adding: “Justice must be done.”
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