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tyre nichols, a 29 year old black man in memphis, was beaten up by several cops on jan 7th and died three days later. all five of the cops, who are black, were fired, arrested, and charged; the police chief denounced their actions as 'inhumane'. the bodycam video will be released about 3 hours after this post at 7pm EST. hopefully we won't see a recurrence of the floyd riots, although several cities, including atlanta which is dealing with its own controversial cop shooting incident, are preparing for an eventful evening. the police reform movement, which has stalled, may also be pushed back into the forefront of public consciousness.
4 videos have been released on the city of memphis vimeo account: https://vimeo.com/cityofmemphis
The best view is in video 2 starting around 2 minutes in. While he's struggling with 2 officers on the ground a third one comes up and kicks him in the face a couple of times. Then later he's standing up and struggling and one hits him in the back with a baton. Later they pepper spray him on the ground while it looks like he's not resisting any more. Later two officers are holding him up by the arms and one comes up and punches him in the face and body a couple of times.
I think they knew that the view from the body cameras was crap and only caught audio, because they kept saying things like "give us your hands" while holding his arms behind his back.
Yes, body cams re important, but the cops demeanor changed when they realized there was the traffic light cam. They knew the body cam footage was going to be messy and chaotic; the body cameras didn't stop them. The body cam footage isn't what is going to put them away; the street light camera is.
You can also see one cop accidentally drop his camera before the beating commences, only to pick it up again immediately after they're finished in video 4.
I'm sure some other convenient "data loss" or "camera malfunctions" could've happened if necessary.
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