Tire Nichols’ funeral was charged with political overtones

First modification: 02/02/2023 – 04:07

“Someone good” whose life was taken too soon by a “violent act” by the police. It was one of the phrases heard at the funeral of Tire Nichols, a young African-American man who was beaten to death by police officers shocked the United States.

At the scene, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke out this Wednesday, February 1, against police violence. After giving Tire Nichols’ mother a long hug at the Memphis church where the tribute was held, Harris spoke strong words criticizing the agents They beat him while he was screaming for help.

“Didn’t I have the right to be sure?” the vice president said. “This is a family that lost their son and brother after an act of violence” perpetrated by “those in charge of protecting them,” and “this violent act had nothing to do with public safety,” he spoke to the crowd.

Tire Nichols was “a good person, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being gone too soon,” the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner said at the opening of the church service. Mississippi Boulevard Christian.

“Today, as we celebrate Tire’s life and comfort his family, we inform this nation that the rerun of this episode, which hashtags African-American lives, has been canceled and will not be renewed for a new season.” he claimed. “In the end we will win,” he added.

The presence of a brother of George Floyd was highly symbolic. Floyd, a 40-year-old African-American man, died in 2020 under the knees of a white police officer. An act that triggered massive anti-racist protests.

Also at the ceremony was the mother of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman who was shot by police in the middle of the night in her apartment in Kentucky in 2020 and became another icon of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The person in charge of the funeral oration was the Reverend Al Sharpton, a figure in the fight for civil rights.

An ordeal

Tire Nichols, 29, was arrested on January 7 by agents of a special unit in Memphis, in the southern United States, for a simple traffic violation, according to police. But he received such a beating that, as indicated by his family, he was rendered unrecognizable and died three days later in the hospital.

Kamala Harris was invited to the funeral by Tire Nichols’ mother RowVaughn Wells and stepfather Rodney Wells.

As a sign of the attention paid by the White House to this case, President Joe Biden himself personally called Tire Nichols’ parents this week to salute “his courage and strength”, a few hours before the publication of the video of his ordeal on police hands.

RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells were invited by the caucus of African-Americans elected to Congress to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on February 7 in Washington.

Layoffs and dissolutions

The strong images of the arrest and the beating inflicted on the young man by the agents were broadcast, without cuts, by the main chains in the country, which made the authorities fear a social revolt.

The five police officers involved were fired and charged with murder. The Scorpion Unit to which they belonged, whose mission was to reduce illegal activity in sensitive neighborhoods by deploying more police officers, was disbanded. Three firefighters were fired in connection with the incident and two other officers were suspended.

President Biden plans to meet on Thursday at the White House with members of the parliamentary group to “debate legislation on police reform and other shared priorities,” said Olivia Dalton, spokeswoman for the Executive.

with AFP

*This article has been adapted from its original French version