Memphis video recalls Rodney King case in California

First modification: 01/28/2023 – 11:26

His acquittal a year later for the assault on Rodney King set Los Angeles on fire, where anger over police violence spread throughout the city, with riots that left dozens dead and caused $1 billion in damage.

This Friday, the United States is once again faced with a tragic video that shows the brutal attack of five Memphis police officers on a 29-year-old black man. Tire Nichols died of his injuries on January 10, three days after the beating.

The five police officers, all black, were fired and charged with second-degree murder, among other charges. The relative speed with which the authorities acted contrasts with the official reaction after the beating of Rodney King. But both cases gained notoriety because of the existence of graphic material proving police brutality, said Jack Glaser, a specialist in police racial bias at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Before Rodney King, there weren’t a lot of people with video cameras, and the fact that somebody had a video camera and was able to record that, it generated national attention,” he told AFP. “Now this has skyrocketed with everyone constantly carrying (smartphones), plus police with body cameras,” he added.

– Accountability –

The existence of images, captured by police or bystanders, aids in efforts to hold officers accountable. “When that is lacking, there tends to be obstruction and solidarity among police officers to protect their jobs.” Patrick Oliver, a former police chief in Cleveland, Ohio, who now directs a criminal justice program at Cedarville University, agrees that the relative speed with which authorities acted is a result of the evidence. “It’s strange” to act so quickly against the troops, he told AFP. “The Memphis Police Department basically believes there is enough evidence to justify their administrative charges.”

The decision to release the video publicly so quickly was strategic, a kind of initial balm, he said. “The video is released after the officers were fired and the charges were announced.” “People who are justifiably outraged by this episode will know that the police department has taken action against the five officers, and that the state’s attorney has already taken criminal action.”

– “The tip of the iceberg” –

Lora Dene King, Rodney King’s daughter, who was seven years old in 1991, said Nichols’ death was part of a long line of police brutality that stretched from the beating of her father to Eric’s repeated “I can’t breathe.” Garner in 2014 when he was suffocated and the murder of George Floyd in 2020 in Minneapolis.

“The whole situation makes me sick, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be alive,” he said, referring to Nichols. “It will be another label and we will move on with our lives, and it will happen again.” For Glaser there was a cultural shift with the recognition of the prevalence of police violence against black men.

“Police leaders increasingly understand that they cannot just put up an internal wall…and that they will be held accountable,” he said. In his opinion, however, brutal episodes like the death of Tire Nichols are just “the tip of the iceberg” that we learn about from video and the scale of the violence.

“But there are many, many cases of the use of excessive, non-lethal force, of unnecessary actions,” he said. “This is the kind of situation that indicates how serious the biases are and how far-fetched the police mentality is.